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1 of 2097 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
November 6, 2012 Tuesday
Late Edition - Final
Dueling Bitterness On Cable News
BYLINE: By JEREMY W. PETERS
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; NEWS ANALYSIS; Pg. 10
LENGTH: 1195 words
As the cable news channels count down the hours before the first polls close on Tuesday, an entire election cycle will have passed since President Obama last sat down with Fox News. The organization's standing request to interview the president is now almost two years old.
At NBC News, the journalists reporting on the Romney campaign will continue to absorb taunts from their sources about their sister cable channel, MSNBC. ''You mean, Al Sharpton's network,'' as they say Stuart Stevens, a senior Romney adviser, is especially fond of reminding them.
Spend just a little time watching either Fox News or MSNBC, and it is easy to see why such tensions run high. In fact, by some measures, the partisan bitterness on cable news has never been as stark -- and in some ways, as silly or small.
Martin Bashir, the host of MSNBC's 4 p.m. hour, recently tried to assess why Mitt Romney seemed irritable on the campaign trail and offered a provocative theory: that he might have mental problems.
''Mrs. Romney has expressed concerns about her husband's mental well-being,'' Mr. Bashir told one of his guests. ''But do you get the feeling that perhaps there's more to this than she's saying?''
Over on Fox News, similar psychological evaluations were under way on ''Fox & Friends.'' Keith Ablow, a psychiatrist and a member of the channel's ''Medical A-Team,'' suggested that Joseph R. Biden Jr.'s ''bizarre laughter'' during the vice-presidential debate might have something to do with a larger mental health issue. ''You have to put dementia on the differential diagnosis,'' he noted matter-of-factly.
Neither outlet has built its reputation on moderation and restraint, but during this presidential election, research shows that both are pushing their stridency to new levels.
A Pew Research Center study found that of Fox News stories about Mr. Obama from the end of August through the end of October, just 6 percent were positive and 46 percent were negative.
Pew also found that Mr. Obama was covered far more than Mr. Romney. The president was a significant figure in 74 percent of Fox's campaign stories, compared with 49 percent for Romney. In 2008, Pew found that the channel reported on Mr. Obama and John McCain in roughly equal amounts.
The greater disparity was on MSNBC, which gave Mr. Romney positive coverage just 3 percent of the time, Pew found. It examined 259 segments about Mr. Romney and found that 71 percent were negative.
MSNBC, whose programs are hosted by a new crop of extravagant partisans like Mr. Bashir, Mr. Sharpton and Lawrence O'Donnell, has tested the limits of good taste this year. Mr. O'Donnell was forced to apologize in April after describing the Mormon Church as nothing more than a scheme cooked up by a man who ''got caught having sex with the maid and explained to his wife that God told him to do it.''
The channel's hosts recycle talking points handed out by the Obama campaign, even using them as titles for program segments, like Mr. Bashir did recently with a segment he called ''Romnesia,'' referring to Mr. Obama's term to explain his opponent's shifting positions.
The hosts insult and mock, like Alex Wagner did in recently describing Mr. Romney's trip overseas as ''National Lampoon's European Vacation'' -- a line she borrowed from an Obama spokeswoman. Mr. Romney was not only hapless, Ms. Wagner said, he also looked ''disheveled'' and ''a little bit sweaty'' in a recent appearance.
Not that they save their scorn just for their programs. Some MSNBC hosts even use the channel's own ads promoting its slogan ''Lean Forward,'' to criticize the Republicans. Mr. O'Donnell accuses them of basing their campaigns on the false notion that Mr. Obama is inciting class warfare. ''You have to come up with a lie,'' he says, when your campaign is based on empty rhetoric.
In her ad, Rachel Maddow breathlessly decodes the logic behind the push to overhaul state voting laws. ''The idea is to shrink the electorate,'' she says, ''so a smaller number of people get to decide what happens to all of us.''
Such stridency has put NBC News journalists who cover Republicans in awkward and compromised positions, several people who work for the network said. To distance themselves from their sister channel, they have started taking steps to reassure Republican sources, like pointing out that they are reporting for NBC programs like ''Today'' and ''Nightly News'' -- not for MSNBC.
At Fox News, there is a palpable sense that the White House punishes the outlet for its coverage, not only by withholding the president, who has done interviews with every other major network, but also by denying them access to Michelle Obama.
This fall, Mrs. Obama has done a spate of television appearances, from CNN to ''Jimmy Kimmel Live'' on ABC. But when officials from Fox News recently asked for an interview with the first lady, they were told no. She has not appeared on the channel since 2010, when she sat down with Mike Huckabee.
Lately the White House and Fox News have been at odds over the channel's aggressive coverage of the attack on the American diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya. Fox initially raised questions over the White House's explanation of the events that led to the attack -- questions that other news organizations have since started reporting on more fully.
But the commentary on the channel quickly and often turns to accusations that the White House played politics with American lives. ''Everything they told us was a lie,'' Sean Hannity said recently as he and John H. Sununu, a former governor of New Hampshire and a Romney campaign supporter, took turns raising questions about how the Obama administration misled the public. ''A hoax,'' Mr. Hannity called the administration's explanation. ''A cover-up.''
Mr. Hannity has also taken to selectively fact-checking Mr. Obama's claims, co-opting a journalistic tool that has proliferated in this election as news outlets sought to bring more accountability to their coverage.
Mr. Hannity's guest fact-checkers have included hardly objective sources, like Dick Morris, the former Clinton aide turned conservative commentator; Liz Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney; and Michelle Malkin, the right-wing provocateur.
Telling the truth is not just a problem for the White House, Ms. Malkin asserted recently, before attacking Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee. ''We've talked about them before,'' Ms. Malkin said, ''the lying liars and the crap weasels, like Debbie Wasserman Schultz out there. And she really is in a classlessness all by herself.''
Peter Johnson, a commentator and the personal lawyer to Roger Ailes, the Fox News chairman, has suggested that the president is a liar and has even wondered whether the administration chose not to aid American forces in Libya for the sake of appearances. ''Was there a political calculation that was made to sacrifice Americans on the ground so we didn't kill innocents in front of the consulate?'' he asked.
Mr. Johnson then noted another political scandal that broke in an election year and failed to receive adequate scrutiny at the time: Watergate.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/06/us/politics/on-cable-news-networks-a-battle-of-bitterness.html
LOAD-DATE: November 6, 2012
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: The Rev. Al Sharpton Jr. on MSNBC, which a recent Pew Research study found gave Mitt Romney very little positive coverage. (PHOTOGRAPH BY OZIER MUHAMMAD/THE NEW YORK TIMES)
A television at a Romney event was tuned to Fox News, whose stories on President Obama were found to be mostly negative. (PHOTOGRAPH BY EVAN McGLINN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES) (A11)
DOCUMENT-TYPE: News Analysis
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company
2 of 2097 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
November 6, 2012 Tuesday
The International Herald Tribune
The Spirit of America
BYLINE: By ROGER COHEN
SECTION: Section ; Column 0; Editorial Desk; OP-ED COLUMNIST; Pg.
LENGTH: 816 words
NEW YORK -- Four years ago, on the eve of the victory of Obama in the 2008 election, I attempted to define what America is.
It is renewal, I suggested, the place where impossible stories get written.
It is the overcoming of history, the leaving behind of war and barriers, in the name of a future freed from the vengeful clamp of memory.
It is reinvention, the absorption of one identity in something larger -- the notion that ''out of many, we are truly one.'' Americans are decent people. They're not interested in where you came from. They're interested in who you are.
At the close of this endless campaign -- on one of those crisp, clear New York days where the glimmer of possibility seems to lurk at the tapering edge of the city's ruler-straight canyons -- it is worth recalling that America, alone among nations, is an idea; and that idea dies when hope and possibility disappear.
As a naturalized American who recalls the 1,000 faces in the room where I swore the oath of allegiance and how they mapped the world and yet shared some essential notion of humanity, I confess to the convert's zeal. I had to take a dictation back then to become a citizen. It was supposed to prove my command of English. The second sentence was, ''I plan to work very hard every day.'' So here I am writing, loneliest of tasks.
It has been a hard, uneven road from 2008. The idealism vested in America's first black president was also vested in an introverted man whose talent for the deal-making that oils the wheels of politics proved limited. Barack Obama is the least ''political'' president since Jimmy Carter.
The United States is as divided today as it was four years ago -- over economic policy, of course, but more deeply over social policy: the whole regressive God-invoking push of the Republican right against a woman's right to abortion, gay rights, marriage equality and so on.
One nation sometimes feels like two.
But even with its debt and division and uneven recovery the United States has come a long way from the abyss of 2008. Obama is a man more likely than not to make smart decisions. He's also lucky. Sandy blew in a week before the election and by the time it blew out Mittmentum was dented, Bloomberg on board and New Jersey's Republican governor cooing.
There have been big achievements: the winding down of the wars, health reform, getting Osama bin Laden, and restoring the battered American idea.
Obama has fallen short of the pledge he made in 2009 when said we ''cannot keep this country safe unless we enlist the power of our most fundamental values.'' Drone killings have nothing to do with due process. But the country no longer inhabits the ''dark side'' of torture and rampant renditions.
By allowing gays to serve openly in the military and by signing legislation to back equal pay for equal work for women, Obama has strived to make the United States more inclusive.
America turns its back on its core ideas when it discriminates against women or on the basis of people's sexual orientation.
Romney has led a campaign that has said everything and the contrary, embracing war then peace, changing positions on Obamacare, refusing to reveal how he will offset tax cuts. He wants to deny women the right to abortion. His America, it seems, would be more unequal and divided.
Last week I wrote about the sharp divisions in the Jewish community of Cleveland, Ohio, where the Senate candidacy of a young right-wing Jewish ex-Marine named Josh Mandel has exacerbated the tensions of a close campaign where some Jews have tried hard to portray Obama as anti-Israel. Mandel, who has campaigned against the Democratic incumbent Sherrod Brown, is related by marriage to the influential Ratner family.
After the column a paid ad in the form of an open letter to Mandel from several members of the Ratner family appeared in the Cleveland Jewish News. It read in part:
Dear Josh, Your cousins, Ellen Ratner and Cholene Espinoza, are among the many wonderful couples whose rights you do not recognize. They were married almost eight years ago in Massachusetts, at a time when it was the only state in the nation to allow same-sex marriage. Their wedding, like yours, was a beautiful and happy occasion for all of us in our family. It hurts us that you would embrace discrimination against them.
We are equally distressed by your belief that gay men and women should not be allowed to serve openly in the military. Like you, Cholene spent many years in the armed forces. A graduate of the Air Force Academy and an accomplished pilot, she became the second woman in history to fly the U-2 reconnaissance plane. And yet, you have argued that she, like many gay and lesbian soldiers, should be forced to live a life of secrecy and lies.
The letter embodies the spirit that overcame slavery and Jim Crow and has made America an ever-reinvented land always pushing to the next frontier. It is cause for hope.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/06/opinion/the-spirit-of-america.html
LOAD-DATE: November 6, 2012
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
DOCUMENT-TYPE: Op-Ed
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company
3 of 2097 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
November 6, 2012 Tuesday
Late Edition - Final
The Real Loser: Truth
BYLINE: By KEVIN M. KRUSE.
Kevin M. Kruse, a professor of history at Princeton, is the co-editor, most recently, of ''Fog of War: The Second World War and the Civil Rights Movement.''
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Editorial Desk; OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR; Pg. 29
LENGTH: 1053 words
Princeton, N.J.
THE director Steven Spielberg, whose ''Lincoln'' biopic opens Friday, recently said he hoped the film would have a ''soothing or even healing effect'' on a nation exhausted after yet another bitter and polarizing election.
But there's one line attributed to Lincoln that Daniel Day-Lewis, who plays the president, doesn't utter in the film: ''You may fool all the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all the time; but you can't fool all of the people all the time.''
The omission makes sense. Not only is the line probably apocryphal, but also, this Election Day just might demonstrate that you really can fool all of the people -- or at least enough of them -- in the time it takes to win the White House.
Venomous personal attacks and accusations of adultery, miscegenation and even bestiality are as old as the Republic. Aaron Burr was the sitting vice president when he killed Alexander Hamilton.
But while the line between fact and fiction in politics has always been fuzzy, a confluence of factors has strained our civic discourse, if it can still be called that, to the breaking point.
The economic boom and middle-class expansion of the postwar era encouraged relative deference for officials, journalists and scholars. It's true that reporters and politicians had far cozier relationships, but the slower news cycle allowed more time for verification and analysis.
Candidates accordingly believed that being caught in an outright lie could damage their careers. (As Daniel Patrick Moynihan reportedly said, ''Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.'') They tended only to bend the truth, not break it.
In 1948, President Harry S. Truman denounced Republican financiers as ''bloodsuckers'' and ''gluttons of privilege,'' but grounded his inflammatory language in the facts of Congress's legislative record. He denied his ''give 'em hell'' reputation, saying later only that ''I used to tell the truth on the Republicans, and they called it that.''
Two years later, Richard M. Nixon, running for the Senate from California, said his opponent, Representative Helen Gahagan Douglas, was ''pink right down to her underwear,'' a red-baiting remark, but one that referred to statements she'd made calling for global disarmament and civil rights for women and blacks.
The brass-knuckle 1964 campaign is remembered for Lyndon B. Johnson's alarmist ''daisy ad,'' which suggested that Barry M. Goldwater's election might lead to nuclear war. But it rested on statements Goldwater had made indicating a loose attitude toward nuclear weapons. (''Lob one into the men's room in the Kremlin,'' he once joked.)
The attack ads devised by the strategist Lee Atwater for Vice President George Bush in the 1988 campaign, one of the dirtiest ever, were grounded in at least a kernel of truth. Mr. Bush's opponent, Michael S. Dukakis, might not have deserved blame for the furlough program that let Willie Horton commit additional crimes, but at least the program and prisoner were real. Atwater exploited these events, but did not invent them.
At least four factors since the 1970s have lowered the cost for politicians who lie and, more important, repeat their fabrications through their attack ads. First is the overall decline in respect for institutions and professionals of all kinds, from scientists and lawyers to journalists and civil servants.
Second are changes in media regulation and ownership. In 1985, the conservative organization Fairness in Media, backed by Senator Jesse Helms, tried to arrange a takeover of CBS and ''become Dan Rather's boss.'' It failed, but two years later conservatives set the stage for an even bigger triumph. For decades, radio and television broadcasters had been required to present multiple viewpoints on contentious public debates on the grounds that they were stewards of the public airwaves. But in 1987, members appointed by President Ronald Reagan to the Federal Communications Commission abolished this ''fairness doctrine.'' The change facilitated the creation of conservative talk radio and cable outlets to combat perceived liberal bias. Liberals followed suit with programming (albeit less effective) of their own.
As this cacophony crescendoed, a third trend developed as political operatives realized they had more room to stretch the truth. In 2004, an aide to President George W. Bush dismissed a journalist for being part of a ''reality-based community'' of people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' But even Mr. Bush believed there were limits to truth-bending. The ads that attacked the military service of Senator John Kerry came from the ostensibly independent ''Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.'' After the ads aired, Mr. Bush belatedly called them ''bad for the system.''
A fourth factor: most news organizations (with notable exceptions) abandoned their roles as political referees. Many resorted to an atrophied style that resembled stenography more than journalism, presenting all claims as equally valid. Fact checking, once a foundation for all reporting, was now deemed the province of a specialized few.
But as this campaign has made clear, not even the dedicated fact-checkers have made much difference.
PolitiFact has chronicled 19 ''pants on fire'' lies by Mr. Romney and 7 by Mr. Obama since 2007, but Mr. Romney's whoppers have been qualitatively far worse: the ''apology tour,'' the ''government takeover of health care,'' the ''$4,000 tax hike on middle class families,'' the gutting of welfare-to-work rules, the shipment by Chrysler of jobs from Ohio to China. Said one of his pollsters, Neil Newhouse, ''We're not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers.''
To be sure, the Obama campaign has certainly had its own share of dissembling and distortion, including about Mr. Romney's positions on abortion and foreign aid. But nothing in it -- or in past campaigns, for that matter -- has equaled the efforts of the Romney campaign in this realm. Its fundamental disdain for facts is something wholly new.
The voters, of course, may well recoil against these cynical manipulations at the polls. But win or lose, the Romney campaign has placed a big and historic bet on the proposition that facts can be ignored, more or less, with impunity.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/06/opinion/the-real-loser-truth.html
LOAD-DATE: November 6, 2012
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: DRAWING (DRAWING BY MATT DORFMAN
ORIGINAL DRAWING BY MARCUS WICKLIFFE BALDWIN, LIBRARY OF CONGRESS)
DOCUMENT-TYPE: Op-Ed
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company
4 of 2097 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
November 6, 2012 Tuesday
Late Edition - Final
A Frantic Election-Eve Day on the Campaign Trail
BYLINE: By THE NEW YORK TIMES
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; THE CAUCUS; Pg. 14
LENGTH: 6711 words
New York Times political reporters are traveling with the presidential candidates and their running mates on the last day of campaigning before Election Day. What follows is a running diary of the day.
12:09 A.M. | A Raucous Homecoming for Ryan
MILWAUKEE - Lest he forget where he is after visiting four airplane hangars in four states across three time zones, Representative Paul D. Ryan could glance behind him at the enormous banner, "Victory in Wisconsin.''
But then, he could hardly forget he had finally arrived home. To the strains of "It's a Long Way to the Top if You Want to Rock and Roll,'' he received five minutes of raucous applause from the crowd of 2,500, his biggest response in days. He gave a bear hug to Gov. Scott Walker, who had introduced him. "Boy, it feels so good to be home,'' he exclaimed.
Standing in the middle of the crowd, his voice a mix of rasp and emotion, Mr. Ryan said, "We have traveled across this country as a family, talking with people throughout America who care so deeply about the country.''
He cited a list of conservative Republican leaders from Wisconsin, including the governor, Senator Ron Johnson and Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee. "Here we are, this state, our beautiful 10 electoral votes,'' he said. "They can't take us for granted anymore.''
Yet, in presidential elections, as his audience well knew, he said, "We haven't gone Republican since 1984.'' Exhorting a crowd that needed no uplift, he started a chant of "One more day!''
"Let's prove 'em wrong!'' he said.
"I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart on behalf of my family,'' he said. "Thank you for waiting in line, thank you for taking the time, thank you for getting people to the polls ''
His words were drowned out by cheers, supporters waving flags and "Wisconsin Believes" signs with fervor.
Mr. Ryan had one more flight, a hop to his hometown of Janesville. But he wasn't quite finished campaigning. Late in the day his campaign announced that after voting Tuesday morning, he would head to Ohio and Virginia.
He will arrive in Cleveland at 11:55, shortly after Mitt Romney, for a joint appearance. He'll get to Richmond at 2:55. Then, of course, it is on to Boston.
- Trip Gabriel
12:02 A.M. | Emotions Run High in Last Moments on the Trail
DES MOINES - 10:30 p.m., Central time - And during the last rally, here where it all started, President Obama shed a tear.
Mr. Obama was talking before a crowd of 20,000 here, shivering in the cold. He told the story about the lady who first started the whole "fired up, ready to go" chant, in Greenwood, S.C., back in 2008.
And then, he talked about Iowa, about knocking on doors during the 2008 Democratic primaries, and sitting in living rooms here in this state, when his campaign seemed at once so improbable yet so full of hope.
And then, the tears came. The president is not one for showing emotion. He quickly wiped them away, and kept talking.
- Helene Cooper
11:22 P.M. | Back Where It All Began
DES MOINES - 10:02 p.m., Central time - The first lady, Michelle Obama, is introducing President Obama in front of the State Capitol here, where it all started back in 2008.
There are 20,000 people here, who have been standing in the cold waiting on the president for hours.
"This is a pretty emotional time for us because as you know this is the final event of my husband's campaign," Mrs. Obama says. "So we had to come here."
She vows that "tomorrow we won't stop until every last voice and every last vote is counted."
She sounds exhausted. But her voice gets stronger when she introduces "the love of my life" and her husband jogs onto the stage, giving her a 10-second-long hug.
And then its President Barack Obama's last campaign rally.
"I've come back to Iowa one more time," he says, "to ask for your vote."
- Helene Cooper
10:30 P.M. | On the Last Stop of the Night, a Familiar Face
DES MOINES - 8:59 p.m., Central time - Air Force One is wheels down in Des Moines, and President Obama alights shortly after.
This is his last stop before heading home to Chicago.
He bounds down the stairs, now clad in a sports jacket to ward off the chill. His motorcade holds on the tarmac for a few minutes, awaiting arrival of the plane with the first lady, Michelle Obama.
At 9:16 p.m., the motorcade moves a few hundred feet to the Flotus plane. Mr. Obama gets out of his car and stands at the bottom of the steps to greet, and hug, his wife.
"How you doing?" he asks her.
Two minutes later, the motorcade is rolling.
- Helene Cooper
8:59 P.M. | Biden Seizes on '47 Percent' Remarks in Final Rally
RICHMOND, Va. - Closing out his campaigning at a frigid evening rally along the banks of the James River here, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. told a crowd of supporters that Mitt Romney had "personally offended" him when he spoke about 47 percent of Americans, saying that the Republican presidential nominee was talking about Mr. Biden's parents and people like them.
The long campaign showed little sign of taking its toll on the 69-year-old vice president, who, wearing a brown leather jacket and alternately energetically waving his finger and fist, urged the crowd to defeat the nominees of what he characterized as an increasingly radical and reactionary Republican Party.
"This is not your father's Republican Party," Mr. Biden said. "This is not John Warner's Republican Party, and this is not Mitt Romney's father's Republican Party," he added, referring to Virginia's popular former G.O.P. senator and to George Romney, who was governor of Michigan in the 1960s.
Much of Mr. Biden's talk here, which followed a performance by John Mellencamp, an Obama-Biden supporter, tracked his familiar stump-speech lines of recent weeks. But he seemed to bear down in an unusually personal way on criticism of Mr. Romney's secretly recorded comments at a fund-raiser earlier this year. In those comments, Mr. Romney had said that there are 47 percent of Americans who "are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them."
"It personally offended me," Mr. Biden said. "Who he was talking about were my mom and dad. Who he was talking about is those seniors who worked their whole life and got social security and now aren't paying taxes on it, nor should they pay any taxes on it. The majority of those people are people who are employed, who pay with their withholding taxes, pay their property tax. They probably pay an effective tax rate more than he pays on $20 million."
Mr. Biden added, "We are determined - Barack and I - to level the playing field for the middle class. Give them a fighting chance."
The rally was Mr. Biden's last official campaign stop, though he will vote Tuesday in his home state of Delaware.
- Richard A. Oppel Jr.
8:45 p.m. | A Big Crowd Gathers for Romney's Campaign Solo
FAIRFAX, Va. - Like President Obama (and Gov. Chris Christie), Mitt Romney had his own, admittedly casual brush with a musical legend on Monday: he name-dropped the mother of all rock groups, The Beatles.
As he surveyed the enormous crowd of at an athletic complex here, Mr. Romney appeared incredulous that they had turned out for him - and him alone. (His biggest crowd are often lured by a two-fer: Mr. Romney and a musical guest, like "Kid Rock.")
"I am overwhelmed," Mr. Romney said. "I am looking around to see if we have the Beatles here or something to have brought you but it looks like you came just for the campaign and I appreciate it."
- Michael Barbaro
7:58 P.M. | Stopping at a Campaign Office
COLUMBUS, Ohio - President Obama mades an unscheduled stop at a campaign office. Staffers and volunteers were working the phones, "Ohio for Obama" signs on the walls.
Mr. Obama walked in to cheers. "Let me say hi to everybody," he said jovially. "You guys are working hard."The president hugged and kissed some people, then paused and said: "This is the foundation of this campaign. All the ups and downs, the TV stuff doesn't matter because you guys are what make this campaign."
He then turned and hugged a woman who exclaimed: "Oh my god!"
Mr. Obama admonished a campaign worker who asked for a picture. "We're gonna do pictures with everybody...you're a field organizer, you gotta be looking out for your volunteers."Then the president sat down and began making phone calls to volunteers."This is Barack Obama, looks like I missed you, everybody's been telling me what a great job you're doing."After that phone call, he said, "I like this. This is intense right here."
He then made another call."Hi Jim. This is Barack Obama. It really is. Well listen. I heard all the doors you've been knocking on, I wanted to say thank you."
Jim must have been talking a lot because Mr. Obama listened for a long time.
A woman sitting next to the president said into her phone, "I'm sitting next to Barack Obama right now, he says hi to you!"She handed the phone to Mr. Obama, who said,"hey Gloria, keep it up!"
The woman returns to the call with Gloria: "That's right baby! He kissed me on the cheek!"
- Helene Cooper
7:50 P.M. | Campaign Aides Mum on Ryan's Election Day Plans
DES MOINES, Iowa - Back in the warm months, just after Mitt Romney tapped Representative Paul D. Ryan to be his No. 2, joint appearances by the running mates drew hugely enthusiastic crowds, which were larger than those Mr. Romney alone attracted, and the senior partner visibly drew energy from his younger ticket mate.
This is now, when Mr. Romney is the one with star power for Republicans, and Mr. Ryan has been much less noticed on the national stage.
With Mr. Romney announcing he is adding two last-minute events on Election Day, visits to field offices to inspire volunteers and attract publicity, will Mr. Ryan be going along?
Aides to Mr. Ryan are not saying, at least for now. One press aide said, "You won't hear it from me.'' The travelling campaign spokesman, Michael Steel, said, "No new information yet.''
Mr. Ryan is taking a short flight home to Janesville, Wis. late tonight after his finally rally in Milwaukee rally, then plans to vote tomorrow morning. The only other event on his dance card so far is a flight to Boston for the joint election night appearance.
Stay tuned.
- Trip Gabriel
7:15 p.m. | Romney Makes an Entrance
COLUMBUS, Ohio - Mr. Romney's aides wanted a big entrance for his rally here on Monday night. Their time-tested strategy of driving the candidate into an airport hangar on his campaign bus didn't feel right.
The obvious solution: have Mr. Romney ride in on his campaign plane.
At 7:15 p.m., as the crowd inside a hangar here waited for the candidate to walk in the front door, a giant side gate opened, music blared and the plane began to steer its way in.
Bob White, Mr. Romney's longtime friend, took out his cell phone to record the moment. "This place is going to go crazy," Mr. White predicted. It did.
But there was a small problem. The plane's first try in brought the right wing too close to the door, so the plane backed up and attempted a second try. It worked.
As Mr. and Mrs.Romney walked off, another aide, Beth Myers, soon followed, trailing behind. She radiated a can-you-believe-we-just-did-that mirth. "That," she yelled to her campaign colleagues. "Was s-o-o-o cool."
- Michael Barbaro
7:13 P.M. | Mellencamp Warms Up the Crowd in Virginia
RICHMOND, Va. - John Mellencamp took the stage 20 minutes ago to warm up the crowd at Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.'s final campaign stop here at the historic Tredegar Iron Works downtown.
He began singing "Jack and Diane" by himself, playing the guitar. Then he sang "Small Town," accompanied by a guitarist and accordion player.
In between the two songs, Mr. Mellencamp told the crowd, "In one man's success, there is real hope for us all. And that's why we're all here tonight."
Then he played "The West End," introducing it as a song about "what greed can do to a country when the middle class has no place to go."
"But the middle class is going to rise up again, and the rich are going to pay their fair share," Mr. Mellencamp told the crowd, adding: "Let there be no haves and have-nots - just a level playing-field that makes everything possible, and that we can still believe in the American dream."
The song's lyrics include:
For my whole life I've lived down in the West End But it sure has changed here Since I was a kid It's worse now Look what progress did Someone lined their pockets I don't know who that is
- Richard A. Oppel Jr.
5:14 P.M. | Jay-Z, Springsteen and the President in Ohio
COLUMBUS, Ohio - Jay-Z is firing up the crowd of 15,500 here in the Nationwide Arena in a fully amped-up show.
"Ohio, will you make some noise for your president, Barack Obama!"
President Obama is on stage. "Fired up!" he begins, trying to recreate the magic of 2008. "Ready to go!"
The crowds are smaller now, but here in this swing state to end all swing states, on this last day of campaigning, there is a rainbow mix of black, white and brown. And they are all screaming.
For Bruce Springsteen, who opened the show? Yes. For Jay-Z? Definitely. For the president? Sure, him too.
The president is touting his accomplishments. Twenty minutes into his speech, when Mr. Obama mentions the name "Mitt Romney," the crowd predictably boos.
Wait for it. Here comes the line: "Don't boo. Vote!" Mr. Obama says.
Back to his accomplishments. "The war in Iraq is over," Mr. Obama says. "Al Qaeda is on the path to defeat. Osama bin Laden is dead."
Mr. Obama's voice is starting to crack now, and his church-preacher cadence is coming out.
The president is doing a slew of radio interviews Monday, his aides said, and will even appear on ESPN during "Monday Night Football" time.
"Ohio, after four years, you know me by now," Mr. Obama says. There is allowance during his talk for some of the disappointment of the last four years.
"You may be frustrated with the pace of change but that's O.K., so am I," Mr. Obama said, his voice definitely cracking now. "But you know I mean what I say and I say what I mean."
He's tie-less, with a black blazer, leaning into the podium. The blue signs that say "Forward!" dot the arena.
Mr. Obama seems to be weaving in and out of enthusiasm and emotion. One minute he is droning on with the usual stump speech - "change is turning the page on a decade of war so we can do some nation-building at home" - and the next minute he seems to remember that this is it, the last day, his last chance.
And his voice rises again. "Ohio, my bet's on you. My hope is with you. My faith is with you."
Now he's yelling. His finger goes up and down against the podium, punctuating his points. "We've come too far to turn back now we will win Ohio let's go vote!"
The voice is almost gone. But he's still got another rally to do, in Des Moines, in a few hours.
- Helene Cooper
4:35 p.m. | In Colorado, a Ryan Pep Talk
JOHNSTOWN, Colo. - Representative Paul D. Ryan's marathon fly-around included rallies in four airplane hangars in three time zones, but he also managed a visit to a truck stop here, north of Denver.
Not just any roadside attraction, it's a place called Johnson's Corner, with its own Web site with an entry for "Our Story." It has been open 24-7, 365 days a year since 1952. It serves its celebrated cinnamon rolls.
"They're like the size of your head, I'm told," Mr. Ryan said to his two young sons as he entered the restaurant in search of voters and baked goods. He ordered two dozen of the rolls, each in a plastic clamshell and swimming in a bath of icing. He held one up to his son Sam's head to show its size.
A reporter asked how Mr. Ryan felt about the election. News flash: "I feel very good about it," he said.
He climbed onto an outdoor stage flanked by red and blue Kenworth tractor-trailer cabs, chrome gleaming.
Midway through Mr. Ryan's stump speech - after he asked supporters to "vote out of love of country"' and before he recited the five-point Romney-Ryan plan - a big rig on Interstate 25 tooted its horn as it passed the rally. "I'll tell you, truckers are great," Mr. Ryan said.
He implored Coloradans to "leave it all on the field" on Election Day, to urge friends and families to go to the polls. "Let's wake up on Wednesday morning knowing we did all we could," he said.
When reporters returned to the press bus, they found a surprise on each seat: a cinnamon roll the size of, well, a salad plate.
- Trip Gabriel
3:15 p.m. | The President Connects the Boss With a Famous Fan
COLUMBUS, Ohio - On what is supposed to be a day focused on swing states, New Jersey continues to pop up. The White House spokesman, Jay Carney, confirmed that President Obama had put Bruce Springsteen on the phone with Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey while the president and the Boss were flying to Columbus from Madison, Wis., on Air Force One.
Mr. Christie, a Republican, is well known as one of the biggest Bruce fans ever, but had not gotten love from Mr. Springsteen, a die-hard Democrat, in the past. Though Mr. Christie has attended more than 100 of his concerts, Mr. Springsteen has not invited him backstage.
But in these post-hurricane days of bipartisan bonhomie between Mr. Obama and Mr. Christie, who better than the president to serve as yenta between the Boss and his fan?
Mr. Christie promptly relayed the fact of the phone call to reporters. When asked, Mr. Carney confirmed: "When Potus told the governor he had someone who wanted to speak with him, Springsteen, who was using the handset across the table from the president, said, 'Governor, this is Bruce.' "
- Helene Cooper
4:17 p.m. | Ann Romney Goes to (Suburban) Washington
FAIRFAX, Va. - Mr. Romney and his wife, Ann, own three homes. But just before 4 p.m. on Monday, Mrs. Romney made it known that she wouldn't mind taking up residence in a fourth.
At a rally in a suburb of Washington - home of the coveted 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue address - Mrs. Romney took the stage and posed a question to a crowd of more than 10,000.
"Are we going to be neighbors soon?" she playfully asked.
(Based on the cheering response, the answer was an unequivocal yes.)
- Ashley Parker
3:18 p.m. | Campaign Coverage of the Boss
COLUMBUS, Ohio - We interrupt this Obama campaign report with a brief side trip to the Jersey Shore.
Air Force One is wheels down here after a one-hour flight.
Instead of scrambling to watch the president alight, the reporters traveling on the plane scramble to catch a glimpse of ... Bruce Springsteen.
Penetrating questions follow.
"Was this your first time on Air Force One?"
The Boss starts grinning. He nods. "It was pretty cool," he says.
Another hard-hitting question:
"What did you talk about on the plane with President Obama?"
Mr. Springsteen, famously a New Jersey native, says they talked about the impact of Hurricane Sandy on the Jersey Shore. "I'm feeling pretty hopeful," he says about the chances that his beloved seashore will recover.
A few minutes later, after his arrival at the campaign's Columbus event, another sharp query for Mr. Springsteen comes rocketing from the traveling press.
"Sir, have you spoken with Governor Christie since the storm?" Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, a Republican, is a huge Springsteen fan, but he doesn't get much love from his state's greatest export.
Times may be changing, though. "Yes," Mr. Springsteen replies. "We have."
O.K., back to the president. Seriously.
- Helene Cooper
2:44 P.M. | Romney to Hit Ohio and Pennsylvania on Election Day
DULLES, Va. - Mitt Romney, who had no plans to campaign on Election Day, has decided to travel to the swing states of Pennsylvania and Ohio on Tuesday.
Aides said Mr. Romney would visit campaign offices in Pittsburgh and Cleveland. Until now, his staff had said a rally in New Hampshire on Monday night would be his last event of the campaign.
Read more here.
- Michael Barbaro
2:14 P.M. | A Refreshed and Confident Biden in Virginia
STERLING, Va. - Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. finished his first campaign rally of the day about an hour ago in Sterling, Va., where he accused the Republican ticket of doing everything they could to confuse the electorate and to run away in the closing stages of the election from what he suggested were more radical and conservative positions they previously advocated.
Looking and sounding refreshed and confident, Mr. Biden spoke only about 20 minutes - shorter than a lot of his stump speeches - telling a smaller-than-usual but energized crowd that this state was crucial to the Obama-Biden campaign's re-election.
In fact, he said almost word for word the same thing he had told people at a rally in Lakewood, Ohio, on Sunday morning - except for substituting "Virginia" for "Ohio:"
"We need you, Virginia! With your help, we will win Virginia," Mr. Biden said. "We win Virginia, we win this election!"
Mr. Biden also pledged, without detailing how, that there would be 100,000 new math and science teachers over the next 10 years, "so our kids are the best in the world." He also asserted that the students of his wife, Jill, who teaches English at a community college in Virginia, "are going to hear the word 'insourcing' more than their parents heard the word 'outsourcing.'" Mr. Biden did not explain how that would happen, given the significant wage disparities between the United States and many other countries with skilled workers.
Though he was speaking in a wealthy enclave of suburban Washington, a good deal of Mr. Biden's speech sounded as if he were still in the gritty, union-heavy urban locations where he campaigned in Ohio. There, polls indicate that the $80 billion auto bailout that President Obama supported is popular and has helped buttress the Obama-Biden campaign's re-election hopes in a state that is often a battleground between the two parties.
In fact, in one of Mr. Biden's final points at his appearance in Sterling, he referred to a Romney campaign radio commercial that suggested that Chrysler and General Motors, which got federal financing during the auto bailout, were shifting work to China at the expense of American autoworkers. The ad had drawn an unusually harsh response from executives at both companies: A spokesman for G.M. called it "cynical campaign politics at its worst." Chrysler's top executive also felt compelled to e-mail his employees that it was "inaccurate to suggest" that Jeep production would be moved to China from the United States - a message that came as another Romney commercial left the impression that Jeep might shift jobs to China at the expense of domestic workers.
"Not a shred of truth to it," Mr. Biden said here, referring to the Romney advertising blitz over the auto bailout. "General Motors and Chrysler have denounced the Romney ads as untrue and a lie."
"Guys," he added, "when's the last time you've seen two major American corporations in the waning hours of the campaign go after a Republican candidate?"
- Richard A. Oppel Jr.
1:50 P.M. | Going All-In on Virginia
LYNCHBURG, Va. - Just how badly does Mitt Romney need to win Virginia?
The state's governor, Bob McDonnell, just answered that, perhaps accidentally, during a rally here when he spun through Mr. Romney's Virginia-laden schedule over the past week.
"He's spent three of the last five days of the campaign right here in Virginia," the governor said. "Paul Ryan was here all day Saturday."
Get the idea? Mr. McDonnell was not done, however.
"They've spent an immense amount of time and effort and energy on the ground to be able to tell the people of Virginia about their positive optimistic Romney-Reagan vision for the future of this great nation," Mr. McDonnell added.
- Michael Barbaro
1:18 P.M. | A Modest Crowd for Romney in Virginia
LYNCHBURG, Va. - Let us not measure Mitt Romney's electoral hopes on the size of his crowds today - or risk the wrath of his angry staff members, who eagerly blast out his overflow crowds (30,000 people Sunday night in Morrisville, Penn., on Sunday night) but are far more quiet with his smaller ones.
But it must be said: Mitt Romney's crowds, on this final day before Election Day 2012, are so far quite modest - 3,200 this morning in Sanford, Fla., and no more than a few thousand just now in Lynchburg, Va.
Of course, what actually matters is how many people show up to the polls, not how many people turn out to glimpse Mr. Romney one more time before Tuesday. And Lynchburg is an admittedly small area. ("For the size of our city, it's a good crowd," said Christine Wooldridge, of Lynchburg. "I've heard he's gotten crowds of 20,000, but that won't happen here.")
But Mr. Romney, like many politicians, feeds off his crowds. And this group of voters, halfheartedly waving flags on this sunny day, is a listless, sleepy bunch.
Mr. Romney dutifully made his way through his stump speech, but delivered all of his lines in the pitch you'd use in a boardroom, not a raucous political rally. When he asked the voters if they were "tired of being tired," he sounded pretty tired himself.
Still, his attempts at optimism were on full display as he ad-libbed this line: "It's not just the size of crowds, but this one is pretty darn impressive," he said, as if trying to convince himself.
- Ashley Parker
1:16 P.M. | Obama and Romney to Appear on 'Monday Night Football'
President Obama and Mitt Romney will appear at halftime of the "Monday Night Football" game in New Orleans between the Philadelphia Eagles and the New Orleans Saints. They will answer questions - presumably somewhat more oriented to the world of sports than to Libya or auto bailouts - from the ESPN studio host, Chris Berman.
It is becoming something of a tradition the night before the election: four years ago Mr. Obama and Senator John McCain also appeared at halftime on "Monday Night Football."
Read more on the Media Decoder blog.
- Bill Carter
12:51 P.M. | Ryan Makes a Plea to Nevada
RENO, Nev. - Under sunny skies and in the shadow of peaks already covered with snow, Representative Paul D. Ryan made Stop No. 1 on a day that will take him next to Colorado, Iowa, Ohio and, finally, a late-night rally in Milwaukee in his home state.
"We're doing a barn-burner today, we're crisscrossing the country, Mitt and I,'' Mr. Ryan told supporters in a darkened airplane hangar.
"It's kind of déjà vu, you look kind of familiar,'' Mr. Ryan said in a jocular vein. "You've seen a few of us around, haven't you? And you know why? Nevada can make the difference.''
That is possible, but Nevada looks like a tough battleground state for the Republican ticket. By some estimates, two-thirds of Nevadans have already voted. Democrats cast 44 percent of the ballots and Republicans 37 percent. It translates to a 50,000-vote margin for Democrats. A local official introducing Mr. Ryan called on Republicans to "burn down that firewall" on Tuesday. For the Republican ticket to prevail, Nevada analysts say, it would need a flood of independents breaking for Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan.
As Mr. Ryan arrived late Sunday night, his motorcade passed the Democratic headquarters of the Washoe County Democrats. The lights were still on at 11:45 p.m.
- Trip Gabriel
12:45 p.m. | A Day of Flybys for Romney
SANFORD, Fla. - Less than 24 hours before the polls open, Mitt Romney has entered the drive-through portion of his campaign.
He spent the last year traveling to voters, crisscrossing the country and dropping into small towns and rural communities.
But on the final day, they came to him.
Three of Mr. Romney's five rallies are veritable flybys, held in airport hangars so Mr. Romney can land, jog down the steps of his private plane to the blaring thrum of Kid Rock's "Born Free," and then begin taxiing to the next city nearly as soon as he has shaken the last hand and kissed the last baby.
When Mr. Romney's plane touched down here after an 18-hour day (four events in four states) just before 1 a.m. Monday, his aides had already begun setting up for the day's rally. A "Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Can't Lose" sign greeted the plane, and an empty hangar waited lighted and ready for the voters who would file in just hours later.
So, what do voters think, heading to an auxiliary airport hangar to glimpse the man who they hope will be the next president?
"It's a convenient venue for him to come into and land," Greg Baker, 65, of Sorrento, Fla., said with a shrug. "And rallies are rallies."
- Ashley Parker
12:28 P.M. | An Obama Supporter on Political Geography in Virginia
STERLING, Va. - An Obama-Biden supporter here, Bruce Burton, a union representative who lives in Fairfax County, explained in an interview the rough voting demographics of the state: "Virginia is reallytwo states: You have Northern Virginia, and then everything below the Rappahannock. And this part tends to be a lot more Democratic," he said, referring to the portion north of the river, which he said includes a lot more people from other parts of the country, more members of minority groups, and more federal government employees.
Mr. Burton blames the Republicans for trying to stymie Mr. Obama¹s efforts to revive the economy, and he credits the president's stimulus package for lowering the unemployment rate by a full percentage point. Citing a recent cartoon, Mr. Burton said, "For the Republicans to criticize the president for the economy is like John Wilkes Booth criticizing Abraham Lincoln for missing the second act of the play." He added: "Or Lucy pulling the football out and then blaming Charlie Brown because he missed." Senator Jim Webb of Virgnia is now warming up the crowd for former governor Tim Kaine, the Democrat who is running to replace him.
- Richard A. Oppel Jr.
12:16 P.M. | Springsteen Rallies the Crowd in Madison
MADISON, Wis. - Bruce Springsteen is introducing President Obama. "This is a song called 'Land of Hope and Dreams,'" he said, as he begins the familiar opening chords of his millennium anthem.
The crowd of 18,000 is bundled up in front of the state Capitol, and the American flag is waving in the background. Mr. Springsteen is acoustic. Atop a crane, David Plouffe, David Axelrod and Robert Gibbs stand, hands in pockets, watching the Boss as he stumps for their boss.
The song ends, and the president jogs onto the stage, engulfing Mr. Springsteen in a huge bear hug.
Reporters, who had been atop giant cranes themselves to get a better view of Mr. Springsteen, hastily scramble down to take notes as Mr. Obama begins his stump speech.
It's hard to hear, and Mr. Obama, who has been drinking hot tea to help his throat during the final campaign slog, already sounds hoarse. "Our fight goes on," he says. He describes his vision of an America where "everybody is doing their fair share, everybody is playing by the same rules, that's why you elected me in 2008 and that's why I'm running for a second term!"
The crowd is chanting: "Four more years! Four more years!"
- Helene Cooper
12:04 P.M. | A Rock Concert Atmosphere at Biden Rallies
STERLING, Va. - At Vice President Jospher R. Biden Jr.'s rallies, the aides like to play loud, loud music before and after, so booming that it is hard to interview the people there. Right now it's one of the campaign's favorites: "Roll With the Changes" by REO Speedwagon. "Oh, you got to learn to, got to learn to, got to learn to roll. ..."
- Richard A. Oppel Jr.
11:55 a.m. | Casual Monday in Madison
MADISON, Wis. - There's a Casual Friday feel in the lobby of the Sheraton Madison. Robert Gibbs and David Plouffe are in jeans, Mr. Gibbs in grungy-looking sneakers. Valerie Jarrett is not. David Axelrod and Reggie Love didn't get the jeans memo either. Nor Ben Rhodes nor Jay Carney. Jen Psaki is all in black.
It's a beautiful bright and chilly day. As the motorcade began rolling to the event, we were told, a crowd of 18,000 awaited.
The president arrived as Bruce Springsteen was playing an acoustic version of "Promise Land."
- Helene Cooper
11:51 A.M. | A Delivery Four Decades in the Making
SANFORD, Fla. - An air of unfinished family business has always hovered around the Romney campaign, from the George Romney posters in his Boston headquarters to the way both Mr. Romney and his wife, Ann, reverentially speak of Mr. Romney's father, the late three-term governor of Michigan.
And on Monday, just after 10 a.m. here, the generations of Romney men made their presence felt yet again.
Mr. Romney emerged onstage at his first rally of the day wearing a purple striped tie, courtesy of his older brother Scott. Scott has had the tie for years, and last night, when Mr. Romney saw it, he told his older brother he was in need of new neck ware.
"Can I add that to my rotation he asked?" (Yes, came the reply).
After the rally, a supporter approached Mr. Romney as he shook hands, and handed him a Ziploc bag containing six blue Romney pins from 1968, when Mr. Romney's father ran for president.
He had been holding onto the pins, waiting for just the right moment to give them to Mr. Romney. And less than 24-hours before Election Day - and more than four decades after George Romney's bid - he finally found his chance.
- Ashley Parker
11:23 a.m. | The Bidens on the Ground in Virginia
STERLING, Va. - Hundreds of people are already waiting at the Heritage Farm Museum at Claude Moore Park here for Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.'s first scheduled campaign event of the day, a rally with his wife, Dr. Jill Biden.
The Bidens flew to Washington last night after a three-stop swing in Ohio - perhaps the most critical battleground state this election, with 18 electoral votes - where Mr. Biden declared: "We need Ohio, we need you. We win Ohio, we win this election."
But the Obama-Biden campaign also needs Virginia and its 13 electoral votes. And so the 69-year-old vice president is spending the final day of the campaign in Virginia, ending with an evening rally in Richmond where John Mellencamp will perform. The state's Democratic Senators - Jim Webb and Mark Warner - and the former Democratic governor, Tim Kaine, are expected to attend both events, according to the Obama-Biden campaign.
- Richard A. Oppel Jr.
9:10 a.m. | Voices of Voters for Romney
SANFORD, Fla. - On the final day of campaigning, voters are at their most energized, their voices crying out during Mr. Romney's speeches with expressions of support and fury.
But what exactly are they shouting?
Here is a sampling:
"Help us take back our country!"
"We want Mitt."
"Fire Obama!"
"Unacceptable!"
"He's a loser!" (Obama)
"Keystone, pipeline!"
"We love you, Ann!" (Mr. Romney's wife)
"One more day! One more day!"
"45! 45! 45!" (Mr. Romney would be the 45th president)
"Mitt! Mitt! Mitt!"
- Michael Barbaro
10:15 a.m. | The Traveling Press and the Traveling Press Secretary
SANFORD, Fla. - It is a fitting coda to the frequently distant and contentious relationship between the reporters that travel with Mr. Romney and his campaign's traveling press secretary, Rick Gorka.
On Monday morning, the reporters yelled in unison for Mr. Gorka to walk to the back of the plane to answer questions, something he has done less and less over time.
He did so, warily, and sparingly.
REPORTER: What is the mood inside the campaign?
GORKA: "We are an economic campaign. Streamlining government. We feel great."
REPORTER: Is Mr. Romney planning a surprise rally in Ohio on Election Day, as we have heard?GORKA: "We'll advise his official schedule. And if there is anything beyond that, we will update you."
REPORTER: You said tonight's rally is his "final" rally? Is that accurate anymore?
GORKA: "We will have an official schedule we will announce."
And so it went, most questions bouncing back half-answered.
Until, suddenly, the questions and answers become rather warm and playful. Both sides seemed to realize the limitations of their long relationship, and to embrace it.A reporter asked Mr. Gorka to provide running, behind the scenes details about Mr. Romney's day on Tuesday, including his "last meal."
"He is going to live beyond Tuesday," Mr. Gorka deadpanned, drawing laughter.
A reporter pointed out that if Mr. Romney did have a last-minute rally on Tuesday, despite a widely reported schedule that said he would not, members of the news media would "have egg all over our faces."
To which Mr. Gorka replied dryly: "We don't want that."
Asked about his own mood on the final full day of campaigning, Mr. Gorka was reflective.
"I am sitting here. I am enjoying it. I know I have Patron underneath this plane to help me get through this day if I need to."
At that, Charlie Pearce, a campaign staffer, stalked Mr. Gorka from behind, walked down the plane's center aisle and placed a Philadelphia Eagle's helmet over Mr. Gorka's head.
The press laughed. Mr. Gorka laughed.
"Luckily there is nothing in here to be concussed," he said, pointing to the helmet.
"Now," he added, "I am ready for my close up."
- Michael Barbaro
9:30 a.m. | The Boss on The Plane
MADISON, Wis. - Call it Air Force Born to Run.
Obama spokeswoman Jen Psaki electrifies the press corps traveling with President Obama when she informs them that Bruce Springsteen will join President Obama on the presidential 747 on Monday for the last day of campaigning. The Boss, who will be performing at not one but three rallies Monday for Mr. Obama, will fly with thepresident from Madison to Columbus.
Stay tuned.
- Helene Cooper
8:45 a.m. | Crossed Signals on Economic Messaging
SANFORD, Fla. - Even on the final day of a presidential campaign, signals can become crossed. At a rally here, the Republican governor of Florida, Rick Scott, introduced Mr. Romney, whose message of economic turmoil under President Obama is central to his quest for the White House.
Mr. Scott did not seem to be playing ball.
"Guess what?" he asked the crowd in an airport hangar. "The biggest drop in unemployment in the country is in our great state of Florida."
Mr. Romney did not repeat that line when he took the stage.
- Michael Barbaro
8:36 a.m. | Obama Begins Three-State Swing in Wisconsin
MADISON, Wis. - President Obama began his last day of campaigning here in a state that almost every Democratic model for an Obama victory assumes will be in his column. But with Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin on the Republican ticket, the president is taking no chances.
After this weekend's marathon crisscrossing of every swing state, Mr. Obama's schedule on Monday looked almost tame by comparison. Even so, he was to hit three states before heading to sweet home Chicago for the night.
After the rally planned for Monday morning in this college town, Mr. Obama will return one last time to the swing state of all swing states for a rally in Columbus, Ohio. The president has been holding on to a small lead in the polls in Ohio, and his campaign aides believe that if he wins the state, he will win the election. Unless, that is, Mr. Romney manages to sweep all the other swing states, or turn a blue state - Mr. Romney planted a flag in Pennsylvania on Sunday - red.
After Ohio, Michelle Obama will join her husband for one last rally where the two like to insist that it all started - Des Moines. Mr. Obama's victory in the Iowa caucuses in 2008 catapulted his candidacy from also-ran to front-runner in the Democratic primaries, and the Obamas talk often about how much they loved tramping around in the snow in Iowa and hanging out with butter cows and whatnot at the Iowa State Fair.
In recent days, the president has been joined onstage by Democratic bigwigs. Former President Bill Clinton was with him on Sunday in New Hampshire, and Mr. Clinton will be on the road for him again on Monday in Pennsylvania, lest that state get its head turned by its new suitor, Mr. Romney.
In Florida, with its crucial Latino vote, Mr. Obama also got a lift on Sunday from Pitbull, a Cuban-American hip-hop artist.
But that is nothing compared to the firepower coming out for the president on Monday. The Obama campaign is hauling out its biggest weapon for dragging blue-collar white voters to the polls: Bruce Springsteen.
He is joining Mr. Obama at all three stops on Monday - Madison, Wis.; Columbus, Ohio; and Des Moines. And lest anyone forget the African-American vote, Jay-Z will also be joining the president in Columbus.
In Des Moines, Mrs. Obama will be onstage with her husband, to talk about the good old days.
Then the president and the first lady will head back to their hometown, Chicago, where they are planning to spend Election Day.
- Helene Cooper
This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.
URL: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/05/campaign-diary-candidates-spending-final-day-in-swing-states/
LOAD-DATE: November 6, 2012
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: PRESIDENT OBAMA, at a campaign rally in Columbus with Bruce Springsteen and Jay-Z. (PHOTOGRAPH BY DOUG MILLS/THE NEW YORK TIMES)
MITT ROMNEY, campaigning Monday in Fairfax, Va. (A14)
SANFORD, FLA. Supporters waited at an airport hangar for the arrival of Mitt Romney during a final day of campaigning in battleground states. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY STEPHEN CROWLEY/THE NEW YORK TIMES)
COLUMBUS, OHIO: Bruce Springsteen and his wife, Patti Scialfa, talked to reporters Monday after getting off Air Force One. (PHOTOGRAPH BY DOUG MILLS/THE NEW YORK TIMES)
MADISON, WIS. President Obama spoke before a crowd carrying campaign signs in front of the State Capitol. (PHOTOGRAPH BY DAMON WINTER/THE NEW YORK TIMES)
STERLING, VA. At rallies with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., aides like to play loud music before and after events. (PHOTOGRAPH BY OZIER MUHAMMAD/THE NEW YORK TIMES) (A15)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company
5 of 2097 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times Blogs
(After Deadline)
November 6, 2012 Tuesday
In a Word
BYLINE: PHILIP B. CORBETT
SECTION: TIMESTOPICS
LENGTH: 1154 words
HIGHLIGHT: This week's grab bag of grammar, style and other missteps, compiled with help from colleagues and readers.
It seems a bit churlish to nitpick when my newsroom colleagues have worked so heroically to cover a huge storm and the final stages of a national election.
And yet -- we strive for perfection all the time, whatever the odds. In that spirit, here's this week's grab bag of grammar, style and other missteps, compiled with help from colleagues and readers.
For about 10 minutes, Mr. Williams, shirtless and handcuffed on suspicion of robbery, claimed he could not breathe, and then collapsed in the back seat of a police cruiser.
Because there is just one subject with a compound predicate, the prepositional phrase at the beginning of the sentence controls all that follows, which is not what we intended; he did not collapse "for about 10 minutes." Add a separate subject for the second verb, to make it a separate clause: "and he then collapsed."
As a potential president, you don't like him anymore than you did in the past.
We meant "any more," that is, "by any additional amount." As one word, "anymore" means "any longer" or "from now on." (Another point: While "as a potential president" may look like a dangler out of context, I think in context it's clear enough that it relates to "him," not "you.")
[Caption] Two weeks before he was shot to death, Jeff Hall, was involved in a skirmish in Pemberton, N.J., at a conference of the National Socialist Movement.
No comma is wanted after the name.
Putting down his drill, Mr. Keosky pointed to all of his neighbors who, like he and his wife, Norma, were planning to ride out the storm in Cape May.
Make it "like him," of course.
"I know u won't see this,'' the young man wrote on one of the suspect's Facebook page, "but I'm just letting you know that I am coming for next time I see ur face or ur brother.''
Make it "one suspect's Facebook page" or "the Facebook page of one of the suspects."
[Caption] Women weight lifters in the United Arab Emirates, like Amna Al Haddad, are called masculine.
Avoid using "women" as a modifier like this; we wouldn't say "men weight lifters." Make it "female."
''Nobody wants to make a decision,'' said Diane S. Hinson, a reproduction lawyer in Maryland who has created a widely referenced map of state-by-state practices on surrogacy.
Avoid this jargony verbal use of "reference." Make it "widely cited," "widely consulted" or "popular."
The unusual spectacle of one BBC show broadcasting a hard-edged look at the journalistic integrity of another reflected the sense of crisis across Britain, as journalists, school officials, politicians and others question whether they did enough to stop decades of widely-rumored abuse by Jimmy Savile, a high-profile television personality and disc jockey known also for his philanthropy, who is accused of victimizing some 200 girls.
No need for a hyphen in a compound modifier with an adverb ending in "ly." (Also, the long and complex sentence could have used some surgery.)
"It reflects the energy out there, as well as what's important in this election - going forward or back," Stephanie Cutter, the deputy campaign manager, said when asked.
Perhaps, but that then begs the question of why it [an exclamation point in Obama's slogan] hadn't been there in the first place.
This isn't what "beg the question" means, as we have noted often. Make it "raises the question" or some other phrase.
That virus - called Shamoon after a word embedded in its code - was designed to do two things: replace the data on hard drives with an image of a burning American flag and report the addresses of infected computers - a bragging list of sorts - back to a computer inside the company's network.
Two pairs of dashes and a colon make this sentence convoluted and difficult to read.
Mr. Barzun was both of the academy and the public square, a man of letters and - he was proud to say - of the people.
To be parallel, the phrase after "and" must match the phrase after "both." Add another "of" before "the public square," or place the sole "of" before "both."
Perhaps, as a result, he often says that the American people need to instruct the government on where to draw the line.
No comma is wanted after "perhaps." (As this is written, "as a result" is parenthetical and "perhaps" seems to modify "he often says" - which is not what we meant.)
Wall Street has invested more heavily in Mr. Romney, a former financier who has pledged to repeal Mr. Obama's new financial regulations, than in any presidential candidate in memory. Employees of financial firms had given more than $18 million dollars to Mr. Romney's campaign through the end of September and tens of millions more to the "super PACs" supporting him.
This again: no need for "dollars," obviously.
[Caption] President-Elect Barack Obama, far left, and Vice President-Elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., far right, make a visit to the Supreme Court in January 2009. From left, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices John Paul Stevens, Clarence Thomas, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter.
[Text] Mr. Toobin's narrative in this volume concerning the court's deliberations on the Affordable Care Act - and how Mr. Roberts apparently moved from an alliance with the conservatives to strike down the heart of the law, to his decision to uphold most of it - is dramatic and absorbing.
In the caption, we can assume readers are able to pick Obama and Biden out in a photo without the directionals. In the text, despite the repetition, we should use Roberts's title, not "Mr.," in all references.
The commission, prosecutors charge, did not uphold their mandate and consequently did not allow the population to make informed decisions about whether to stay or leave their homes.
The plural "their" doesn't agree with the singular "commission."
After answering an ad on Craigslist, things got weird.
A dangler; "answering" does not go with "things."
Leading into the game, a popular train of thought ran that the Giants only had five winnable games at their disposable ...
Presumably we meant "disposal."
The Court of Appeals rejected a motion by a conservative group, New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedoms, which had accused the State Senate of violating the state's Open Meetings Law in its deliberations before it voted last year to allow gay men and lesbians to marry. The court did not provide an explanation of its decision.
As my colleague Charlie De La Fuente notes, a motion is a request to a court to do something. In this story, the purpose of the request was missing, leaving a major hole (the group was seeking permission to appeal).
The Bloomberg administration has long trumpeted the safety benefits of its many roadway initiatives, hoping to rebuff critics who consider the policies to be undue interventions from a meddling city.
Be wary of the government jargon "initiative." Consider "project," "plan," "proposal, "change," etc.
Subjunctivitis
Bright Passages
Only the Names Have Been Changed
Matters of Fact
Who's That Again?
LOAD-DATE: November 6, 2012
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
DOCUMENT-TYPE: News
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog
Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved
6 of 2097 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times Blogs
(The Caucus)
November 6, 2012 Tuesday
Live Coverage of Election Day
BYLINE: THE NEW YORK TIMES
SECTION: US; politics
LENGTH: 28364 words
HIGHLIGHT: President Obama was elected to a second term. Times reporters around the country shared scenes from polling places, analysis, voters' portraits and more.
President Obama was elected to a second term. Times reporters around the country shared scenes from polling places, analysis, voters' portraits and more.
2:18 A.M. | That's a Wrap
Barack Hussein Obama was re-elected president of the United States on Tuesday, overcoming powerful economic headwinds, a lock-step resistance to his agenda by Republicans in Congress and an unprecedented torrent of advertising as a divided nation voted to give him more time.
The candidates have given their speeches and gone home, and we're heading home, too. Be sure to check back on nytimes.com and The Caucus for continuing coverage. Thanks for following along.
- The New York Times
1:58 A.M. | The Caucus Click: Obama Speaks in Chicago
- Doug Mills
1:00 A.M. | Romney Concedes
Mitt Romney conceded the presidential race to President Obama, telling his supporters that he had wished his rival well during a telephone call moments before coming onto a stage at his Boston headquarters.
"This is a time of great challenges for America, and I pray that the president will be successful in guiding our nation," Mr. Romney said.
In very brief remarks delivered just before 1 a.m., Mr. Romney stressed the need for the country to come together to face the challenges that still face the nation's leaders.
"We look to Democrats and Republicans in government at all levels to put the people before politics," he said. "I believe in America. I believe in the people of America."
Mr. Romney thanked his family and his supporters and said he would pray for Mr. Obama to be successful. But he expressed sadness about not having the opportunity to lead.
"Paul and I have left everything on the field," he said, referring to his running mate, Representative Paul D. Ryan. "We have given our all to this campaign. I so wish I had been able to fulfill your hopes."
Transcript of Mr. Romney's speech.
- Michael D. Shear
0:37 A.M. | In New Hampshire, Disappointment Hits Close to Home
MANCHESTER, N.H. - In an evening of painful blows, Mitt Romney's defeat in New Hampshire came as a particularly hard knock.
The Live Free or Die state may carry only four electoral votes, but it is where Mr. Romney had kicked off his presidential campaign 16 months ago, and it is a state he frequently talks about as if it were his own. But President Obama exceeded most polls and defeated Mr. Romney here, 53.2 percent to 45.5 percent.
A short time after that result was announced, the networks began projecting that Mr. Obama had won the electoral vote and secured re-election. Mr. Obama's supporters jumped up and down and embraced as they watched the news on a big screen television set up in a ballroom at the Raddison Hotel here. The song "Signed, Sealed, Delivered" blared, and supporters danced and screamed.
Supporters had also broken out in song when news that the Granite State had tipped in Mr. Obama's favor was announced, with a full-throated version of "Walking in Obama Wonderland," a take on a popular soccer chant in Britain (and the other Manchester).
Diana Maldonado, a 24-year-old Obama volunteer, had worried that a Romney victory would affect her health care and student loans. She became teary when the results came in. "We did it," she said hugging a friend who wore a "Latinos for Obama" shirt.
The mood at both the Romney and Obama camps was optimistic throughout Tuesday. New Hampshire has a notoriously independent streak and votes in large numbers in often unpredictable ways. By many accounts turnout was more than 70 percent on Tuesday, thanks in part to sunny and seasonable weather.
"We thought the work people put in here would help, but this is even better than we expected," said James M. Demers, a Concord resident and a co-chairman of Mr. Obama's 2008 presidential campaign. He said Mr. Romney's comment at a closed-door fund-raiser that 47 percent of Americans pay no income taxes and consider themselves "victims" put New Hampshire, and the country, over the edge for Mr. Obama. "That really turned the state's independent voters off," Mr. Demers said.
"I just couldn't trust him," said Harold Fink, a 69-year-old member of the National Association of Letter Carriers. "He just wrote off half the people," he said of Mr. Romney's 47 percent comment.
Pat Furano, a 66-year-old retired teacher from Londonderry, said she felt positive but "you never know" with New Hampshire. She said her daughter recently married her partner, and she worried that same-sex marriage would be banned under a Romney presidency. "It feels wonderful," Ms.Furano said of Mr. Obama's re-election.
Even as Dan Forbes, a 58-year-old from Barrington, celebrated Mr. Obama's victory, he worried about the divisive mood in the country. "
- Amy Chozick
0:18 A.M. | Ballots Still to Be Counted in Miami-Dade County
One of the closest battleground states yet to be decided is Florida, where President Obama leads Mitt Romney - with 96 percent of precincts reporting - by roughly half a percentage point. Read more on FiveThirtyEight...
- Micah Cohen
0:14 A.M. | Romney Supporters Voice Frustration
BOSTON - Now that the electoral tide has turned against Mitt Romney, the crowd here at the campaign's election night party has turned against CNN.
Every time the network is turned on, audience members at the Boston Convention Center chant for a change of channel. "Fox! Fox! Fox!" they yell.
When Candy Crowley appeared on a screen moments ago, around midnight, the audience tried to drown her out, screaming the name of its rival network and waving miniature flags.
The Romney campaign's slogan is "Believe in America." But so far, the mantra here is "Turn On Fox"
- Michael Barbaro
0:10 A.M. | Obama Wins Virginia and Second Term
President Obama narrowly won Virginia over Mitt Romney, giving him at least 270 electoral votes, enough to win the presidency for another four years, The New York Times projects.
The race remains too close to call in Ohio and Florida. But with the addition of Virginia's 13 electoral votes, as well as those of Colorado and Nevada, Mr. Obama has at least 285 electoral votes.
The Virginia race was always one of the closest in the nation and one that both camps said they needed to win in order to succeed in the presidential election.
Mr. Romney made a big push in Virginia's coal country and in the areas near Norfolk, where there is one of the nation's largest naval bases. He also pushed hard in the state's rural counties.
But Mr. Obama won the state's populous suburbs outside Washington, where minorities have been increasingly moving in the last decade. The president also pushed hard for the support of women in the state, arguing that Mr. Romney would take the country backward on issues that are especially important to women.
- Michael D. Shear
12:04 A.M. | On Fox News, Rove Second-Guesses Fox News on Ohio
Karl Rove was incredulous. His colleagues at the Fox News decision desk had called Ohio - and the election - for President Obama, a move he insisted just a few minutes earlier would be premature.
"We've got to be careful about calling this when we have 991 votes separating the candidates," he scolded them. "I'd be very cautious about intruding into this process."
Silence settled over the set.
"That's awkward," Megyn Kelly quipped. And she and her co-anchor, Bret Baier, offered to broker something of a compromise. They would interview the decision desk about why it made its call.
And so ensued the most bizarre on-air encounter of election night: a network anchor putting her colleagues on the spot, forcing them to defend their news judgment.
- Jeremy W. Peters
11:54 P.M. | Obama Defeats ... Bieber?
And the results for the Twitter contest are also in.
This tweet sent by President Obama's campaign moments after learning of his re-election...
Four more years. twitter.com/BarackObama/st
- Barack Obama (@BarackObama) November 7, 2012
... has now overtaken what is likely the most-retweeted tweet of 2012 so far, by Justin Bieber.
RIP Avalanna. i love you
- Justin Bieber (@justinbieber) September 26, 2012
Mr. Bieber's message referred to a 6-year-old fan, Avalanna Routh, who died of cancer.
In other Twitter news, with 20 million messages about the election sent so far today, Nov. 6, 2012, just became the most tweeted about political event in the six-year history of the service, Andrew Fitzgerald, the manager of editorial programming at Twitter, said. On Election Day in 2008, by comparison, just 1.8 million Twitter messages were sent in total.
While this record is unsurprising given the overall rise of Twitter during the past four years, it shows a tangible picture of the service's growth. Today, there are approximately 140 million active Twitter users, said Mr. Fitzgerald, while in 2008, according to surveys conducted that year, active users of the service numbered fewer than five million.
President Obama, who joined Twitter in 2007 and has made social media a cornerstone of his administration and re-election campaign, has 22 million followers, while Governor Romney, a Twitter user since 2009, has 1.7 million followers.
- Alexis Mainland
11:42 P.M. | The Scene at Romney Headquarters
BOSTON - Around 11:15 p.m., a young man cupped his hands to his mouth - half in prayer and half in shock.
Fox News had just called Ohio for President Obama, bringing a deafening silence to the ballroom at Mitt Romney's election night party at the Boston Convention Center and - if the results hold - bringing an effective end to Mr. Romney's presidential hopes.
"Essentially, Barack Obama is re-elected," the host said.
A tour around the room, still only half full, found people in various stages of mourning.
John Kubik, a donor from Orlando, Fla., pecked away at his iPhone, sending a text message to a friend with the news: "They just called Ohio for Obama."
Asked how he felt, Mr. Kubik pulled no punches. "Horrible," he said. "I've despised Obama from the election. He's an arrogant Communist."
He added: "I felt he would win. I felt it would be closer."
Romney staff members, meanwhile, huddled in the back of the room, talking in hushed tones and turning their backs when photographers tried to snap their wrung-out expressions. They had always known the race would be tough, they said, but they had at least expected it to be close. "Iowa by 10," moaned one, wondering how Mr. Romney had lost the state by such a large margin.
At one point, Karl Rove appeared on Fox News and said that the call was premature. A half-hearted cheer went up in the room. But moments later, Mr. Romney's press pool - a small group of reporters that follows all of his movements - arrived at the party.
The staff had moved the reporters from the Westin, where Mr. Romney was waiting with his family, to the ballroom. The implication: Mr. Romney is getting ready to give a speech, and it's not likely to be the victory one he had hoped.
- Ashley Parker
11:28 P.M. | The Crowd Goes Wild
CHICAGO - When NBC projected President Obama had been re-elected at 10:12 p.m. Central, the convention floor here at McCormick Place exploded. It is bedlam here.
- Helene Cooper
11:25 P.M. | Obama Re-elected, Networks Project
President Obama has won re-election to a second term, according to projections by several television networks.
The president's official Twitter account quickly posted a message: "This happened because of you. Thank you."
CBS News, CNN and NBC News all projected that Mr. Obama would defeat Mitt Romney after concluding that he would win the necessary 270 electoral votes.
The decision gives Mr. Obama another four years to put in place policies that he had argued would continue to move the country along to economic recovery.
Mr. Romney and Republicans had implored the country to change course, saying that the president had failed to turn the economy around quickly enough.
The president's victory was hard-scrabble and nowhere near as easy as it appeared to be four years ago. But an investment of hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising and voter turnout efforts gave him the win.
Mr. Romney's campaign closed strong, coming extremely close in the final weeks, after a listless debate performance by the president and an increase in Mr. Romney's favorable ratings among independent voters.
- Michael D. Shear
11:23 P.M. | Celebration at Warren Headquarters
BOSTON - The Warren campaign victory party - no doubt one of the biggest and happiest redoubts of Democratic supporters in the country Tuesday night - exploded with cheers and shouts of joy when Mr. Obama was projected the winner by television networks.
"Yes we can!" they chanted, "Yes we can!"
Several supporters of Elizabeth Warren, among thousands gathered in a ballroom at the Fairmont Copley Plaza hotel, started dancing.
- Katharine Q. Seelye
11:16 P.M. | Kaine Wins in Virginia Senate Race
Tim Kaine, the Democratic former governor of Virginia and the chairman of the Democratic National Committee under President Obama, was elected on Tuesday to the United States Senate.
George Allen, the former Republican senator from the state, conceded to Mr. Kaine after one of the most closely watched and negative Senate races, according to multiple news reports.
Mr. Allen had hoped to reclaim the seat he once held in the Senate. He lost the seat in 2006 to the Democrat Jim Webb. Mr. Webb decided to retire after one term, paving the way for Mr. Kaine's campaign.
From the beginning, Mr. Allen portrayed Mr. Kaine as a liberal who is close to Mr. Obama and would raise taxes if he got a chance to serve in the Senate. In the last weeks of the campaign, Mr. Allen also accused Mr. Kaine of supporting a Congressional deal to cut defense spending, hoping that would scare voters in parts of the state where many military voters live.
Mr. Kaine portrayed Mr. Allen as out of step with the burgeoning suburban communities in Northern Virginia, especially when it comes to issues of importance to women.
The race was a marquee one from the start, in part because of Mr. Kaine's closeness to the president and the assumption that the race would be very close.
It stayed true to form for much of the year, with polls suggesting repeatedly that the race was virtually tied. It quickly became one of the most expensive races in the country, with third-party groups pouring money into the state, especially on behalf of Mr. Allen.
But in the end, Mr. Kaine won in a state that is rapidly changing. The suburbs near Washington are becoming much less white and tend to vote Democratic. That helped Mr. Kaine and hurt Mr. Allen's chances of redemption.
Mr. Allen's fall from grace began six years ago, after he called a young man of Indian descent "macaca." A video of the comment went viral and helped to doom his re-election campaign. Mr. Webb won by a narrow margin.
At the time, Mr. Allen vowed to bide his time, and he spent the next six years planning his attempt to reclaim his seat. On Tuesday, that effort failed.
- Michael D. Shear
11:13 P.M. | West Coast Returns Cheer Chicago Crowd
CHICAGO - The West Coast returns begin to come in, and as CNN shows President Obama surging ahead of Mr. Romney in the Electoral College tally the crowd here goes wild.
Was this a surprise? Not even close, but that's how highly strung and nervous people are. California, Washington State and Hawaii go into the blue column, eliciting a standing ovation.
But still, no projection yet from the big three: Virginia, Florida and those Buckeyes in Ohio.
- Helene Cooper
11:12 P.M. | Networks Call North Carolina for Romney
- Graphics Desk
11:11 P.M. | McCaskill Wins Missouri Senate Race
Claire McCaskill, once considered the most endangered incumbent in the Senate, won re-election Tuesday, beating the Republican Representative Todd Akin, who sank his campaign when he said women who were victims of "legitimate rape" would not get pregnant.
Republicans had considered Ms. McCaskill's seat in their pocket earlier this year as they mapped out a path to control of the Senate. Missouri was trending Republican, and her votes for President Obama's health care law and stimulus plan were considered insurmountable obstacles to a second term.
Then came Mr. Akin, the most conservative of three candidates vying in a Republican primary to compete with Ms. McCaskill in the general election. Republicans in Washington considered him the weakest of the three, a poor fund-raiser prone to voicing positions too far to the right even for conservative Missouri. But his conservatism helped him secure the nomination, especially when Ms. McCaskill ran a last-minute round of ads declaring him too conservative, ads that featured diatribes against President Obama that were clearly appealing to the Republican primary electorate.
Just weeks after his victory, Mr. Akin uttered a now-infamous explanation for his opposition to abortion even in the case of rape: "If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down," he said.
In the ensuing uproar, the National Republican Senatorial Committee begged him to leave the race, vowing to not help finance his campaign. American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, the deep-pocketed Republican groups co-founded by Karl Rove, declared they would not finance his run either.
But backed by Christian conservatives, Mr. Akin stayed in the race, running on little money but a conviction that Missouri Republicans would rally around him as a bulwark of opposition to President Obama. They didn't.
With more than a third of the state reporting, Ms. McCaskill was cruising to victory, 11 percentage points ahead of her rival.
- Jonathan Weisman
10:53 P.M. | Ohio's Vote Share Over Time
Absentee votes were reported first, and they broke heavily Democratic. Key cities still out include Cleveland and Cincinnati.
- Graphics Desk
10:48 P.M. | Deep Red States Go to Romney by Large Margins
The differences between national polls, which often showed a very tight race for the popular vote, and polls of swing states, where President Obama usually maintained an advantage, were a source of intrigue this year. It could be that Mitt Romney's performance in strongly red-leaning states, which were sparsely polled this year, accounts for much of the difference, allowing him to rack up votes without helping himself in the Electoral College. Read more on FiveThirtyEight ...
- Nate Silver
10:48 P.M. | Voter Portraits: Sheridan Township, Iowa
"I don't know if Romney's the man either, but I'm going to give him a chance. In four years Obama should have been able to make something happen, and it's just gotten worse."
Name: Dennis Wilkening
Age: 45-64
Party: Independent
Supporting: Mitt Romney
Location: Sheridan Township, Iowa
Occupation: Corn and soy farmer
Concerned About: Economy
- Mark Makela
10:44 P.M. | At Obama Headquarters, All Eyes on Ohio
CHICAGO - The Obama campaign election night rally is showing a video - Road to November 6 - that seems particularly apt right now as the nervous crowd waits for results from the swing state to end all swing states.
"Ohio, I still believe in you!" a full-throated President Obama is yelling into the microphone on the screen during one of his umpteen trips to the Buckeye State this year. In the background, soaring music is playing. "And I need you to keep believing in me!"
The crowd is rapt, every eye on the screen. The tension is fierce. Everyone keeps saying Mr. Obama is up in Ohio, and the wide belief in the crowd is that if the president wins Ohio, he wins the presidency.
But the networks still have not called Ohio.
"This is a great time to pray," Bishop Vashti McKenzie, of the A.M.E. Church, says from the podium.
- Helene Cooper
10:40 P.M. | Exit Polls: Independents in New Hampshire
Exit polls show that New Hampshire voters who identify as independents favored President Obama, but much less than in 2008.
- Graphics Desk
10:35 P.M. | Key Ohio Counties
- Graphics Desk
10:17 P.M. | Warren Wins in Massachusetts
BOSTON - Elizabeth Warren, a darling of the left, won a hard-fought race in Massachusetts for the Senate on Tuesday, according to network projections, recapturing for the Democrats the seat held for almost half a century by Edward M. Kennedy.
The networks began calling the race for Ms. Warren shortly before 10 p.m., first CBS and then CNN and NBC. Whoops went up in the hotel ballroom here where Ms. Warren was holding her victory party.
The Senate seat had slipped into Republican hands when Scott P. Brown, a state legislator, won it in a special election in 2010 after Mr. Kennedy's death. Taking it back was a Democratic priority.
Ms. Warren, 63, a professor at Harvard Law School, will become the first woman to win a Senate seat in Massachusetts. Her victory was fueled by a forceful appeal to female voters, who supported her in lopsided numbers, while men overwhelmingly backed Mr. Brown.
She cast herself as a fighter for the middle class and a champion of women's causes, particularly equal pay for equal work, health insurance coverage for birth control and abortion rights.
It was a message that resonated with Elizabeth Lear, 46, a book reviewer in Waltham, who said she voted for Ms. Warren because "she cares about the financial concerns of everybody and most importantly about women's reproductive rights, the freedom to choose."
And, Ms. Lear added, "I feel she's pretty scrappy and I really like that about her."
Mr. Brown cast Ms. Warren as a partisan and inflexible ideologue who would march in lockstep with the Democratic Party.
The combined spending on the race totaled more than $68 million, making it the most expensive Senate race in the country in this election cycle and one of the most expensive ever. With the help of progressive groups that bolstered her candidacy early, Ms. Warren raised a stunning $39 million, which put her among the top five most successful Senate fund-raisers of all time. The money was all the more remarkable considering that Ms. Warren was a first-time, and untested, candidate.
"We raised money from more donors than any Senate campaign in the history of the United States," Ms. Warren said in a statement about an hour after the polls closed Tuesday. She added, "We knocked on more doors and made more phone calls than any candidate in the history of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts."
- Katharine Q. Seelye
10:07 P.M. | In Boston, From Upbeat to Anxious
BOSTON - As of about 30 minutes ago, when television screens showed Mr. Romney jump from a 100,000-vote deficit in Florida to a 12,000-vote lead, the mood outside the ballroom at the Boston Convention Center where Mr. Romney is holding his party suddenly ticked up.
People cheered, breaking off their conversations. But there was little exuberance.
"I still think it's a tossup," said Jeff Dusault, who is in the recycling business.
Michelle McCarthy, a mother of three, said she felt hopeful, but "you're on the edge."
A friend, a freelance writer who did not want to give her name, said, "I want to see Virginia, and then we'll start celebrating."
The dress code is Big Night, with women in cocktail dresses and men in suits. Guests sipped Sam Adams and nibbled R-monogramed chocolates as they watched the television monitors tuned to Fox News above the large central bar.
Inside the ballroom, where the floor was about two-thirds filled, Senator Rob Portman of Ohio, one of Mr. Romney's most loyal surrogates, addressed guests by phone, his image on large monitors. After he recited figures for various Ohio counties in a voice that sounded a bit downbeat, he signed off with, "Thank you for letting me be a part of this amazing journey." There was only the smallest ripple of applause.
The cover band launched into Hall & Oates's "You Make My Dreams Come True."
But as more state results rolled in, the mood in the ballroom at Mr. Romney's victory party slowly began shifting from optimistic to anxious.
"It doesn't look good," said an attendee. His wife shook her hand back and forth, in so-so gesture.
Earlier, the half-full ballroom had stood dead silent as Fox News called Michigan - Mr. Romney's native state, where his late father, George, was a three-term governor - for President Obama.
At 10 p.m., the music stopped and the volume returned to Fox News, the network of choice here. The anchors called New Hampshire and Pennsylvania for Mr. Obama.
One or two people in the audience booed, lightly.
There did not appear to be enough energy for anything more.
- Trip Gabriel and Ashley Parker
10:04 P.M. | A Soggy Viewing Party in Chicago
CHICAGO - Early results flashed across a giant screen at the edge of a plaza as a crowd of mostly Obama supporters, many huddled under umbrellas, gathered for what was expected to be a long and rainy election night.
The outdoor viewing party, sponsored by CNN, was staged just a couple of miles from President Obama's indoor election night event, held at the McCormick Place convention center downtown.
But for some, this soggy communal gathering was a meager replacement for the grandeur of Mr. Obama's last election party, which packed Grant Park with thousands of supporters four years ago.
"There was a lot of love in the atmosphere," remembered Tiana McEntee, 36, who attended the outdoor celebration in 2008.
On Tuesday night, Ms. McEntee and her family sat in lawn chairs, wrapped in winter coats and blankets, barely talking. "Everybody is just concerned now," she said, adding that she expected the crowd to grow larger as the night went on. "There's a little nervousness right now."
Others who felt as if they had missed out on the 2008 celebration were just happy to be there and eager for their own lasting experience.
"It's a historic event," said Joseph Hill, 28, who drove from a western suburb of Chicago to stand in the crowd. "I wanted to be in the city, downtown, to absorb it."
- Steven Yaccino
9:55 P.M. | Voter Portraits: Cincinnati
"Romney said we can create lots of jobs, but he sent a lot of jobs overseas, made a lot of money off that."
Name: Reggie England
Age: 18-29
Party: Democrat
Supporting: Barack Obama
Location: Cincinnati
Occupation: Master barber
Concerned About: Economic Inequality
- Mark Makela
9:54 P.M. | Alabama Republicans Celebrate Second Amendment
HOOVER, Ala. - At the Alabama Republican Party festivities on Tuesday night, the top raffle prize is a Glock pistol. Guests are encouraged to bring firearms. And gunfire can be heard over the television coverage of the election.
Here in the reddest of red states, the Republican Party is gathering at a shooting range and weapons store in this Birmingham suburb. While state parties in other states gather in hotel ballrooms, Alabamians are packing into the Hoover Tactical Firearms.
The location was chosen for its 52,000-square-foot facility, said Bill Armistead, the party chairman. But it is also a gesture of support for the Second Amendment.
"It makes total sense being here," said George Singleton, a longtime Republican from Birmingham. "Republican or Democrat - but especially Republican - most people in Alabama support gun ownership."
Attendees could bring guns, but not ammunition. Extra security was hired. And the range dropped its prices for the night to $13. "It's going to be very, very safe," said Mr. Armistead, who brought a Glock and a .38-caliber pistol. "We're checking everyone's guns as they come in."
About 400 people - only a handful of them armed - attended the celebration, which was hosted by a former Miss Alabama, Amie Beth Dickinson Shaver. Most gathered around televisions and picked at snack food. But a few ventured onto the shooting range until it closed at 8 p.m.
"There's no other way my parents could have gotten me to come to this," said Andrew Rogers, 14, wearing a Romney T-shirt as he left the shooting range with a target full of holes. "This definitely makes politics more fun."
- Robbie Brown
9:49 P.M. | Mood Swings in Chicago
CHICAGO - All night the crowd gathered here for Obama election night rally has been jamming to the campaign's familiar musical playlist - Al Green, Jennifer Hudson, Brooks and Dunn. But the mood has veered crazily back and forth.
The early cheers come when the networks called Michigan for President Obama. The Florida vote count, which has shown the president inching up to tie Mr. Romney, elicits cautious clapping. And then the networks call Pennsylvania for the president and and the crowd goes wild.
But then things quiet quickly, when one of the monitors shows the race remains undecided. The big three - Ohio, Florida, Virginia - remain too close to call.
- Helene Cooper
9:51 P.M. | Polls Close in Iowa and Nevada at 10 p.m. Eastern
Polls close in Iowa and Nevadaat 10 p.m. Eastern. Both states were considered battlegrounds through much of the campaign, but Nevada has been leaning Democratic in the final stretch of the race, despite having the nation's highest rates of unemployment and foreclosures.
- The New York Times
9:49 P.M. | Obama Wins Wisconsin, Networks Project
President Obama has won Wisconsin, according to several television networks, ending hopes by Mitt Romney's campaign of an upset in the state.
Fox News, NBC News and CBS News each said Mr. Obama had won the state.
Mr. Obama had been leading in the state for much of the campaign. But Republicans were hopeful in the last days that the race was tightening and that Mr. Romney might have a chance there.
Both candidates and their surrogates scheduled late trips to the state, each hoping to sway the last undecided voters and to motivate their supporters.
Republicans had put faith in the fact that they had won a recall battle last year over whether to end the term of the Republican governor, Scott Walker, early. Democratic efforts to oust the governor lost that battle. Also boosting Republicans' hopes was the presence of Representative Paul D. Ryan, a native son, on the ticket.
But Mr. Obama's victory in the state means that Mr. Romney was unable to capitalize on the same Republican fervor in the state that helped Mr. Walker.
- Michael D. Shear
9:30 P.M. | The Florida Bellwether
In every presidential election since 1960, the candidate who prevailed in Florida's Hillsborough County, home to Tampa, has also prevailed in Florida. There is no guarantee that the pattern will hold in 2012, but the Tampa region is critical in carrying the Sunshine State (which is a reason the Republican Party held its national convention there this year). Read more on FiveThirtyEight ...
- Micah Cohen
9:24 P.M. | Growth in Non-Cuban Hispanics Helps Obama in Florida
Florida has a significant Cuban-American population, and those voters tend be more Republican-leaning than other Hispanics. In this year's exit poll in Florida, 50 percent of Cuban-American voters said they voted for Mitt Romney, 47 percent for Barack Obama. Mr. Obama had a two-thirds advantage with non-Cuban Hispanics in the exit poll, however. Read more on FiveThirtyEight...
- Nate Silver
9:25 P.M. | Obama Wins Pennsylvania, Networks Project
President Obama has won Pennsylvania, according to three television networks, despite a strong, late push by Mitt Romney's campaign to claim the state amid polls that showed the race tightening.
Fox News, CBS News and NBC News all said that Mr. Obama had won the state, a big prize that carries 20 electoral votes.
In the waning days of the campaign, Mr. Romney visited the Keystone State, and his campaign and its allies poured millions of dollars into television ads there.
The Obama campaign mocked the effort, saying that it was a fool's errand and that Mr. Obama would win there. Even some Republicans worried that the party often tries to win Pennsylvania, without any luck.
The president's victory in Pennsylvania puts added pressure on Mr. Romney to win in Ohio. Some Democrats said last week that Mr. Romney's campaign was turning to Pennsylvania because it saw Ohio slipping away.
Without Pennsylvania's electoral votes, Mr. Romney needs Ohio's 18 electoral votes to get to 270, both sides say.
- Michael D. Shear
9:25 P.M. | Voter Portraits: Sun City Center, Fla.
"I'm a Republican and that's the way I've always been and that's all I know really. Don't see any reason to change anything now."
Name: Gene Gardner
Age: 65+
Party: Republican
Supporting: Mitt Romney
Location: Sun City Center, Fla.
Occupation: Retired school principal
Concerned About: Economy
- Brian Blanco
9:21 P.M. | Obama Wins Michigan, A.P. Reports
President Obama has defeated Mitt Romney in the state where the Republican candidate was born and where his father served as governor, The Associated Press said.
Mr. Romney had spent plenty of time in Michigan during the early part of the campaign, declaring himself to be especially fond of the state where he grew up.
But the race between himself and Mr. Obama did not last long in Michigan, where polls showed the Democrat leading for months.
Mr. Obama's campaign hammered voters with ads about Mr. Romney's opposition to the bailout of the automobile industry, and exit poll surveys suggested that the ads took their toll on support for the Republican candidate.
That may sting for Mr. Romney. Michigan was the state where his father was governor. The elder Mr. Romney also ran an auto company in Detroit, a fact that Mr. Romney often cited in trying to rebut the charges by Mr. Obama.
Toward the end of the campaign, some strategists for Mr. Romney suggested that the president might be vulnerable in Michigan, where polls showed the races tightening.
But in the end, Mr. Obama won the state, adding its 16 electoral votes to his total.
- Michael D. Shear
9:07 P.M. | Senate Race Update: Indiana
The race is considered a tossup, after comments during a debate hurt Richard Mourdock, the Tea Party favorite who defeated the six-term Senator Richard G. Lugar in the Republican primary.
- The New York Times
8:57 P.M. | No Big Surprises Yet as More States Are Called
President Obama won the states of Maryland and Maine, according to The Associated Press. The two are locations along the Eastern Seaboard that his campaign expected to win.
Meanwhile, Mitt Romney has won three Southern states: Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama, The A.P. reports. All three are part of the base of states that Republicans have come to expect will be in their column.
- Michael D. Shear
8:56 P.M. | Slide Show: Backstage at Obama's Election Night Event
Members of the news media arrived in Chicago at the McCormick Place Lakeside Center where President Obama's election night event will be held Tuesday. Go to Slide Show »
- Damon Winter
8:44 P.M. | Exit Polls: Blaming Bush
One of the central arguments of the 2012 presidential election has been who should be blamed for the country's economic situation.
Nearly four years after George W. Bush departed office, a majority of voters still believe he is the answer to that question.
Mitt Romney repeatedly argued that President Obama should bear the burden of an economic recovery that has been tepid at best.
Mr. Obama strenuously argued that the country's economic struggles were a result of the disastrous situation Mr. Bush left him. He said Mr. Bush and the Republicans "drove the country into a ditch."
And the president said again and again that Mr. Romney's policies would take the country back to the ones that Mr. Bush followed.
Preliminary exit poll results suggest that Mr. Obama's argument has carried the day with more voters. Half of all voters said that Mr. Bush was more to blame for current economic problems, while only 4 in 10 blamed President Obama.
As expected, Democrats were far more likely to blame Mr. Bush for the country's problems. Republicans were more likely to blame Mr. Obama for the economic woes.
But independent voters - a key group - said they, too, believed Mr. Bush deserved more of the blame for the country's woes, suggesting that Mr. Obama's arguments have been more successful.
Among independent voters, half said that Mr. Bush should be blamed for the problems. Less than 4 in 10 said that Mr. Obama deserved that blame.
The same holds true for moderate voters. Two-fifths of voters identify themselves as moderates. Among these voters, a clear majority (6 in 10) blame Mr. Bush for economic problems, while only 3 in 10 blame Mr. Obama.
- Michael D. Shear
8:35 P.M. | At a Polling Place, an Oasis of Nonpolitical Talk
PERRY, Iowa - Election Day for a reporter, particularly in a swing state, can be an overwhelming mix of political operatives telling you how great they're turning out the vote, repetitive advertisements choking the airwaves and the fear that you are missing some huge voter issue.
After a long day here, I have discovered that there is a safe house of sorts where you can get away from all of this and just be around people who are quietly chatting with one another: a polling place.
As much as polling places are where Americans come to have their voices heard, most people - perhaps out of respect for the process, fear of being thrown out for trying to persuade another voter, or just fatigue after the monthslong election - say nothing about politics while waiting.
In an hour that I sat in the lobby of a Masonic lodge here where votes were being cast, I heard nothing about whether Bain Capital had shipped jobs overseas, 47 percent, "You Didn't Build That" or the first debate.
I didn't even hear the names Obama or Romney.
Instead, old friends reconnected and asked about each others' spouses. A woman talked with a friend about a new program her company was planning to put in place. And one man confided with a friend that he had just been suspended from work for being late too many times.
As nice as it was inside the polling place, I couldn't forget that I was in a swing state. And as it was getting closer to the polls closing at 10 p.m. Eastern, I thought it was a good time to check in with an analyst here to get some last-minute thoughts on what would affect the state's vote.
So from the parking lot of the polling place, I called Dennis J. Goldford, a professor of political science at Drake University in Des Moines.
Mr. Goldford has been studying how Iowans vote since the 1980s and said there were three things that would most likely determine whether the state goes for Obama or Romney.
Not surprisingly, the first factor was how independents break. In 2008, he said, they went for Obama and it was unlikely they would do so this time because there was far less enthusiasm toward him.
To make up that difference, Mr. Goldford said, Obama has to have a larger turnout of Democrats than Republicans. The Obama campaign in Iowa, he said, was more organized than Romney's, so it was conceivable that the Obama campaign could turn out more voters.
The second issue, Mr. Goldford said, was the impact of down-ballot votes at the state level on same-sex marriage. The issue tends to galvanize conservatives, he said, and if many decide to vote based solely on that issue, it will most likely help Mr. Romney as it did President Bush in 2004.
Last, Mr. Goldford said it would come down to the accuracy of the polls. Mr. Obama had been polling well in the final days of the campaign, but Mr. Goldford said that Mr. Obama had not broken through the 50 percent mark. This left Mr. Goldford to believe that the electorate had not cemented its view.
"I would rather have Obama's numbers coming into today, but it is still very close, there are two outs in the ninth inning and it's 2-1 Obama," he said.
- Michael S. Schmidt
8:33 P.M. | Video: First-Time Voters Reflect
- The New York Times
8:20 P.M. | No Surprises as Obama Wins Several Blue States
President Obama has won a series of unsurprising victories in states that his campaign was counting on as he builds toward 270 electoral votes.
The president won Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Illinois, Connecticut, Delaware and the District of Columbia. All are deeply blue states.
- Michael D. Shear
8:17 P.M. | Swing State Exit Polls Show Party ID Edge for Democrats
One source of debate this year was the charge that polls "oversampled" Democrats, meaning that they had more voters who identified as Democratic in the surveys than some conservatives expected would actually turn out to vote. So far, however, Democrats also have an edge in the party identification numbers in the exit polls. More on FiveThirtyEight.
- Nate Silver
8:17 P.M. | Exit Polls: Broad Support for Auto Bailout in Ohio
If President Obama wins the state of Ohio, it could be his bailout of the auto industry - which is very popular there - that helped pave the way.
The federal government's aid to United States automakers wins broad support from Ohio voters, according to early exit poll results. About 6 in 10 of the voters say they approve of it. Just over a third disapprove.
That provides some help for Mr. Obama in the state, with about three in four voters who support the auto industry bailout backing his candidacy. Mr. Romney is supported by the overwhelming majority of those who disapprove of the bailout.
Mr. Romney's campaign has long complained that the news media and the Democrats have misrepresented his position on the auto bailout. In an opinion article in The New York Times, he argued for a managed bankruptcy that would help the companies restructure.
But in the article - and later - Mr. Romney also opposed government funds at the beginning of the bankruptcy process, a position that critics said would have forced the companies into bankruptcy.
- Dalia Sussman and Michael D. Shear
8:07 P.M. | Voting Winding Down, Parties Heating Up
As the polls began to close in Atlanta, where African-Americans make up about 54 percent of the city's population, the postelection parties were just beginning.
Students at traditionally black colleges like Morehouse and Spelman were heading to celebrate what they hoped would be a victory party for President Obama.
At the Indigo Bar near the Old Fourth Ward, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s old neighborhood, early party-goers posed for pictures in front of cutouts of the president and first lady. The Fox Sports Grill was hosting a "Yes We Did" party with a red carpet for supporters to stroll and a wall of photos of Mr. Obama with African-American celebrities. The V.I.P. reservation list for the election party at Halo, a midtown nightclub that promised "hookahs and bottles," was filled before the day was out.
And $20 bought a ticket to the Presidential Prosperity Party at Paschal's, where leaders of the civil rights movement often met to discuss strategy. The party Tuesday featured a couture fashion show inspired by Michelle Obama.
Of course, not everyone would be spending the evening with a crowd. With less certainty that Mr. Obama would win this election, many Obama supporters in Atlanta weren't sure they were in the mood to party.
"The first time around was very emotional in a very specific way. This feels entirely different," said Jamillah Simmons, 39, who works as a makeup artist. "There's just more at stake in a way for African-Americans."
- Kim Severson
8:05 P.M. | A.P. Reports: Romney Wins Indiana, Oklahoma and South Carolina
Mitt Romney has won the states of Indiana and South Carolina, The Associated Press said, two conservative-leaning states that his campaign had expected would be in his column.
Together, the states add another 20 electoral votes to Mr. Romney's total.
Mr. Romney has also won Oklahoma, which has seven electoral votes, The Associated Press reported.
- Michael D. Shear
7:56 P.M. | Digital Coverage for Latinos in English and Spanish
A quick glance of what some Spanish-language news outlets and news Web sites dedicated to creating content for Latinos in English are doing with election coverage online:
NBC Latino leads its election coverage with a live "social blog" that includes user-generated photos and short blog posts from staff members on topics like first-time voters, whether Latinos could tip the scales in the race between Elizabeth Warren and Senator Scott P. Brown in Massachusetts, and, of course, Ohio.
CNN en Español led its Web site with a slideshow of Election Day photos and a "minute by minute" article updated with election results, state by state, as projected by CNN.
MundoFox, the newest addition to the Spanish-language broadcast set, did not dedicate all of its home page to election coverage but offered a microsite for users that included a live stream of its broadcast, a Facebook widget for user comments, and a series of interactive graphics including a map with election results and an explanation of the American voting system.
Fox News Latino, the English-language site for Latinos, included a series of articles related to the election including how voters were voting after Hurricane Sandy. The site also carried a large yellow banner advertisement promoting an analysis of the election results in Spanish at 9 p.m. Eastern with Rick Sanchez, the journalist who was fired from CNNin 2010 for calling the comedian Jon Stewart a bigot.
HuffPost Latino Voices led its election coverage with a series of political cartoons by Lalo Alcaraz, a Mexican illustrator, academic and radio host.
- Tanzina Vega
7:55 P.M. | With Voters Still in Line, Virginia to Delay Reporting
With some voters in Virginia still standing in line after the polls closed at 7 p.m. - and therefore still able to vote - the state announced that it would delay reporting the results so as not to influence voters.
"In consultation with officials from both the Republican and Democratic Party, the Virginia State Board of Elections has agreed to pause reporting until 8:00 p.m. to ensure voters are not unduly influenced by preliminary results," the board said in a statement. "Results will commence shortly thereafter."
- Michael Cooper
7:43 P.M. | Voter Portraits: Durham, N.C.
"I had cancer in '06, and as a business owner now, I cannot get health insurance. I was shocked at first of this news. Then while in chemo talking to others, my story was one of many."
Name: Terri Klosterman
Age: 45-64
Party: Democrat
Supporting: Barack Obama
Location: Durham, N.C.
Occupation: Hairdresser
Concerned About: The lack of affordable health care
- Travis Dove
7:39 P.M. | Packing the Polls in Massachusetts
BOSTON - For those trying to read the tea leaves in the highly competitive Massachusetts Senate race, turnout may provide a clue.
So many people have jammed the polling stations that officials here are predicting a record turnout in Massachusetts of 73 percent - higher, even, than the 3.1 million people who voted in the 2008 presidential race.
Generally, Democrats benefit from higher turnout in a state like Massachusetts, where they outnumber Republicans, 3 to1. If more people are coming to the polls, the reasoning goes, more of them are likely to be Democrats.
But with high turnout comes long lines, and on a cold autumnal night like this one, a long line can discourage people who are not dedicated voters. Voting at some spots took more than an hour.
This is why Elizabeth Warren, the Democratic challenger, who had nothing on her public schedule Tuesday, ended up making a mad dash to at least eight polling places as the day wore on. Senator Scott P. Brown, the Republican incumbent, visited numerous sites as well.
"As the sun goes down and it gets colder, we've got to try to keep people in line," said Doug Rubin, a senior adviser to the Warren campaign.
They do this by deploying volunteers to serve hot coffee to voters as they stand in line. They will also send elected officials and other local notables to polling places to chat with voters and encourage them to stay.
No one wants to lose an election because their voters got to the polls, saw long lines, then turned around and went home.
- Katharine Q. Seelye
7:36 P.M. | Video: Brown vs. Warren
The Massachusetts Senate is one of the hardest fought and certainly most expensive Senate races in the country.
- The New York Times
7:34 P.M. | Romney Wins Kentucky, Obama Takes Vermont
Mitt Romney has won Kentucky's eight electoral votes and President Obama has won Vermont's three electoral votes, according to The Associated Press, an unsurprising start to a night of accumulations.
Mr. Romney's victory in Kentucky was anything but a surprise, and early returns showed him with a wide, double-digit lead over the president in the conservative state.
The same goes for Vermont, a deeply Democratic state that everyone in both campaigns expected to go in the president's column.
- Michael D. Shear
7:25 P.M. | Exit Polls: A Portrait of Virginia Voters
If the nation is just about evenly divided about who should be president - and it seems to be - the state of Virginia is a microcosm of the country.
Preliminary exit polls from the state show a tied race and an electorate whose characteristics closely mirror those in the rest of the country.
Early exit polls in Virginia, one of the most watched battleground states, show that more than 6 in 10 voters say that the economy is the most important issue facing the country. Far fewer cite health care and foreign policy issues as important issues.
When it comes to the economy, more than 4 in 10 report that unemployment is the biggest economic problem facing people like them, with rising prices being the next biggest problem.
Mitt Romney rates somewhat better on being able to handle the economy. And voters are split on whether Mr. Obama or former President George W. Bush is to blame for the current economic problems.
Turning to the national economy, about a third rate it as excellent or good. Looking to the future, voters in Virginia are more positive: more than 4 in 10 say the national economy is improving and a third say it is getting worse.
Virginia voters are split when it comes to their own financial situation. Compared with four years ago, about one third said their family's situation was "worse today," another third saying it was "about the same."
Over all, Virginia voters see Mr. Obama's policies favoring the middle class and poor, and Mr. Romney's policies favoring the rich followed by the middle class. The contrast becomes more striking when looking at voter preference.
Among Mr. Obama's supporters, 8 in 10 say his policies favor the middle class while 9 of 10 say Mr. Romney's policies favor the rich.
Virginians are divided on the 2010 health care law. Those saying some or all of the law should be repealed have the edge over those preferring that the law be expanded or left as it is.
Mr. Obama is seen as better able to handle Medicare..
Virginia voters are split on taxes. Almost half say taxes should be increased only on those with incomes over $250,000, and another third said taxes should not increase for anyone. Three-quarters of Mr. Obama's supporters said that taxes should be increased only on those with incomes over $250,000, while about two-thirds of Mr. Romney supporters favor no increases for anyone.
Feelings about the Obama administration align with voter preference. Early exit polls suggest overwhelming majorities of Romney supporters are dissatisfied or angry, while 6 in 10 Obama supporters are enthusiastic and another third are satisfied.
Ms. Streicher is a senior vice president at Citi and a polling analyst for the Times.
- Michael D. Shear and Janet L. Streicher
7:23 P.M. | Video: State of the Art
The math behind the Electoral College, as illustrated in M&Ms.
- Christoph Niemann
7:16 P.M. | Exit Polls: Government Trying to Do Too Much
A central theme of Mitt Romney's campaign was the need for government to play a lesser role - and private business a greater role - in the life of the country, from repealing the postcrash financial regulations to overturning President Obama's signature legislative achievement, the national health care law.
Preliminary exit polls show that the Republican argument has made inroads with voters since the dark days of 2008, when voters elected Mr. Obama amid a severe economic crisis.
In a change from 2008, when just over half of voters said that government should do more to solve problems, more voters now say that government is doing too many things better left to businesses and individuals.
Voters' partisanship has helped fuel these views: A broad majority of Democrats said they favored more government and a large majority of Republicans disagreed.
What helps tip the scales? Independents voters, most of whom said government was doing too much.
- Nicholas Confessore
7:06 P.M. | Voter Portraits: Athens, Ohio
"I watched the debates, the first and third. There was misinformation of things and things were taken out of context. It seemed like Obama was doing anything he could to make Romney look bad."
Name: Megan Dean
Age: 18-29
Party: Republican
Supporting: Mitt Romney
Location: Athens, Ohio
Occupation: Student
Concerned About: Employment
- Mark Makela
7:02 P.M. | Exit Polls: A Closer Look at Taxes
There were few differences between President Obama and Mitt Romney more stark then their proposals on taxes, with Mr. Obama proposing to raise them on wealthier Americans to help close the deficit and Mr. Romney seeking reductions in overall tax rates at every level, along with the elimination of never-specified loopholes.
Broadly speaking, most voters are wary of raising taxes to lower the nation's budget deficit: When asked if taxes in general should be raised to help cut the deficit, more than three-fifths of voters oppose this idea.
But when asked if taxes should be increased only on income over $250,000 - a proposal similar to one of Mr. Obama's - almost half of all voters said they were supportive.
Exit polls suggest that Mr. Obama's arguments about tax fairness may explain some of the difference: A majority of voters say the U.S. economy favors the wealthy, and nearly two-thirds of these voters support raising taxes on income over $250,000.
Voters' own income - and self-interest - do not appear to have much of an effect on their opinions about tax fairness. All income groups are about even in their support.
- Nicholas Confessore
6:56 P.M. | A Polling Place Party
BOW, N.H. - By Tuesday evening, the community center here felt more like a block party than a polling place. Voters streamed in, many with their children, stopping to catch up with their neighbors or fill out a free raffle ticket for the local gardening club.
"Is everybody registered?" Selectwoman Colleen Hunter said to a pair of teenage girls, taking them under her wing as if she were a party host introducing new guests to old ones. "Do you have an ID with you?"
Frank Jones, a teacher and part-time police officer here, chatted with friends outside the polls. After years of voting Republican - including for John McCain in 2008 - he had recently registered as a Democrat, and he spoke effusively about President Obama.
"If you were to ask me, am I better off than I was four years ago, I have to say, absolutely," Mr. Jones said. "I think we're a stronger nation. Obama managed to make significant progress. He inherited a mess."
Tom McCoo, a state worker who votes independently, said he had also voted for Mr. Obama, in part because he preferred the president's stance on women's issues to that of his challenger, Mitt Romney. "I have four daughters," Mr. McCoo said. "Their right to choose is important to me. That was one of my biggest concerns."
Inside, Sheila Labounty, an independent voter who works for the state's pharmacy board, said she was anxious about the outcome of the race. "I'm glad it's going to be over," she said. "I think it's a tight race all around - I'm hoping Romney comes out on top."
Ms. Labounty made her choice, she said, in part because of concerns about the national debt. "If it's going on the way it is now, they'll have to start a new program to teach us all Chinese," she said. "And then we'll be even more in deficit."
And at seven years of age, Ali Sargent was over the moon about having voted with her mother, Sandy.
"When I put the voting thing in the chomper machine," she said, grinning at her mother, "that was fun!"
- Jess Bidgood
6:57 P.M. | Exit Polls: A Portrait of Ohio Voters
Early exit poll data in Ohio suggest that voters for President Obama have very different perceptions of the state of the national economy compared with those who supported Mitt Romney
Ohio voters who supported Mr. Obama are about evenly split on whether the economy is in good or excellent shape compared with those who think the economy is not so good or is poor. But Mr. Romney's voters almost unanimously say the national economy is not so good or poor.
Looking to the future, some two-thirds of Mr. Obama's voters say the national economy is getting better and about 4 in 10 say their family's finances are better today than four years ago.
Those who backed Mr. Romney see things differently. Close to two-thirds of Mr. Romney's voters say the economy is getting worse, and over half say their family's financial situation is worse than four years ago.
Who is to blame for the current economic situation? About three-quarters of Mr. Romney's supporters say it is Mr. Obama; some 90 percent of those who preferred Mr. Obama say it is former President George W. Bush.
Voters who choose Mr. Obama see health care reform, Medicare and the legality of abortion very differently from those who support Mr. Romney.
Over three-quarters of Mr. Romney's voters would like to see the 2010 health care law either repealed in part or in total. Almost all of them think that Mr. Romney would better at handling Medicare. Voters who preferred Mr. Obama say the opposite. Some three-quarters of them say they think the health care law should be left alone or expanded; almost all of them say Mr. Obama would handle Medicare better.
Abortion is also an issue that separates the two groups of voters. Over three-quarters of Obama voters said abortion should be legal in most or all cases. Some 6 in 10 of Mr. Romney's supporters said the opposite - that it should be illegal in most or all cases. This preliminary exit poll data show, however, that among Mr. Romney's voters, about a third have views similar to those who backed Mr. Obama in that abortion should be legal in all or most cases.
- Barry M. Feinberg
6:44 P.M. | Video: Instagrams From the Campaign's Final Days
Ashley Parker narrates a tour through her Instagrams from the final days of the Romney campaign.
- The New York Times
6:40 P.M. | Exit Polls: A Narrow Majority for Obama Job Approval
Mitt Romney's campaign repeatedly sought to undermine President Obama's handling of the economy and other issues during his four years in office. Preliminary exit poll results suggest that the campaign failed to convince a majority of voters.
Early results show a narrow majority of voters approve of the way Mr. Obama is handling his job as president. Similarly, about half of all voters express positive views of the Obama administration over all.
Top strategists to Mr. Romney believed throughout the campaign that struggling Americans would become angry at the president and would take out that anger on Election Day.
But among those who have already voted, more of those with negative views of the Obama administration said they were merely dissatisfied but not angry (3 in 10). Only 2 in 10 said they were outright angry. (Those with positive views were split evenly between the enthusiastic and the merely satisfied.)
Nearly two-thirds of all voters say that Mr. Obama's response to Hurricane Sandy was a factor in their vote for president. Two-fifths of all voters said that it was an important factor.
Slightly more voters trust Mr. Obama to handle an international crisis than trust Mr. Romney. A majority said Mr. Obama would better handle the issue of Medicare than would Mr. Romney. Regarding the economy and the deficit, however, a narrow majority said Mr. Romney would be better.
- Michael D. Shear
6:35 P.M. | One Last Campaign News Conference
Just hours before the polls closed, Mitt Romney came back on his private plane to chat with his traveling press corps one final time. He was by turns nostalgic, confident and at peace. Here is the complete exchange of Mr. Romney's 50th news conference - and his last one as a candidate:
Q: How did it feel to see your name on the ballot?
ROMNEY: That was quite a moment. We've been working for this a long, long time, and to be on the ballot for the president of the United States Is very humbling. It's a great honor, and I hope that I have the chance to serve.
Q: Are you thinking of your father?
ROMNEY: You know, I think about my dad from time to time and my mom. I sure wish they were around to be a part of this. It's one of the inevitable parts of life that we lose the people we care most about, and I hope they're able to watch in their own way.
Q: Governor, what does it feel like getting off the plane in Pennsylvania and seeing that, for someone who has no idea what you're going through, what does it feel like to be you today?
ROMNEY: You know intellectually I've felt we're going to win this and have felt that for some time, but emotionally just getting off the plane and seeing those people standing there - we didn't tell them we were coming, we didn't notify them when we'd arrive - just seeing people there cheering as they were connected emotionally with me and I not only think we're going to win intellectually, I feel it as well.
Q: What is your assessment of your campaign? Are you proud of every moment out there? Do you have any regrets? Is there an argument that you wish you could have made better?
ROMNEY: You know I'm very proud of the campaign that we've run, to tell you the truth. No campaign is perfect. I'm sure like any campaign, people can point to mistakes. But that's the mark of anything that's produced by human beings. Our team has been very solid. We have not had the kind of infighting that's reported to have occurred in other campaigns. We've worked well together, our campaign team. And we've gotten our message across. I am very pleased. I feel we have put it all on the field. We left nothing in the locker room. We fought to the very end. And I think that's why we will be successful.
Q: Do you have two speeches written for tonight?
ROMNEY: I just finished writing a victory speech. It's about 1,118 words. And, uh, I'm sure it will change before I'm finished, because I haven't passed it around to my family and friends and advisers to get their reaction, but I've only written one speech at this point.
Q: Looking back over the last two years, how has this experience changed you as a person?
ROMNEY: You come away with a much greater appreciation for the depth of character of the American people. Despite our great differences in location and background, we have some characteristics of greatness that inspire and give you confidence that the future can be brighter than the past.
Q: But what about you? How has it changed you personally? Did you surprise yourself in any way over the last two years?
ROMNEY: I expected to be more tired given the number of events and the hours. And I think I got energy from the people that I spent time with, whether at the rope line or the rallies. You know when you have 10,000 people cheering you, you get a real boost from it. And so I have not been tired by the process. And frankly have enjoyed it a good deal. It's very exciting. I think the general election campaign is particularly invigorating as you see people come together and support the effort.
Q: What's it been like to campaign with Ryan? What difference has he made?
ROMNEY: Oh, it's fun to be with Paul. It's too bad that we have to divide to be able to hit all of the places we want to go to. Likewise with Ann. She's off on her own day after day. But being with Paul is a real plus. I think we both enjoyed that a great deal."
Q: What are you most looking forward to doing as a noncandidate?
ROMNEY: You know, assuming I win, my mind will immediately focus on the transition, the work that has to be done, the gathering of the people to carry out the work that we have. And I can't imagine that I'll be able to unwind. I think instead it's winding tighter. So I don't look postelection to be a time of regrouping. Instead it's a time of forward focus. And the prospect of losing, I don't give that a lot of thought. I know it's possible and, because there's nothing certain in politics, but I have of course a family and a life that are important to me, win or lose.
Q: I heard you were thinking about getting a puppy?
ROMNEY: If, assuming I win, one of the benefits would be to get anotherWeimaraner.
[Starts to walk away, then turns back around]
ROMNEY: Thanks you, guys. ... I thought you had bigger seats back here.
Q: Don't you wish you had spent more time back here?
ROMNEY: I know what the result of that would have been. More things to regret. [Laughs]
- Ashley Parker
6:33 P.M. | Exit Polls: Most Voters Decided Before Debates
The first debate between President Obama and Mitt Romney is widely believed to have been a turning point in the presidential contest.
Mr. Obama delivered what his aides now concede was an uninspired performance.
But the debate - along with three more face-offs, including the vice-presidential candidates, and millions spent on campaign ads in the final month - may have come after most of the country had already made up their mind about who to vote for, according to preliminary exit poll results.
A wide majority of voters - about 8 in 10 - say they decided which candidate to support before October. The first debate between the two presidential candidates took place on Oct. 3.
Indeed, about 7 in 10 made up their minds well in advance - even before September, when the campaigns are said to really kick into high gear. Nearly 1 in 10 said they decided in September and another 2 in 10 said they made up their minds in October or in the last week.
That suggests that in the final weeks, the campaigns were increasingly fighting over a smaller and smaller number of potential supporters in the country.
- Michael D. Shear and Dalia Sussman
6:29 P.M. | Exit Polls: Romney's Policies Would Not Favor the Poor
Sometimes in politics, there are moments that stick.
In February, just after winning the Florida Republican primary, Mitt Romney said on CNN: "I'm not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I'll fix it."
The campaign argued - with some justification - that the broader context of his comments were immediately ignored. But it didn't matter - Democrats pounced, saying the comments were further evidence that Mr. Romney's policies would benefit the rich alone.
Now, preliminary exit poll results suggest that the comment helped shape opinions about the Republican nominee.In the surveys, a tiny percentage said they believed that Mr. Romney's policies would favor "the poor."
That result was probably also affected by the millions of dollars in negative ads that Mr. Obama spent accusing Mr. Romney of being a corporate raider who shipped jobs overseas.
But it is striking that 10 months after the "very poor" comment, voters seem to remember.
- Michael D. Shear
6:26 P.M. | A Full Day at School for Malia and Sasha
CHICAGO-Malia and Sasha Obama didn't let Election Day interfere with their schoolwork.
The White House says the first daughters flew into Chicago, along with their grandmother Marian, to join their parents - having put in their time at school Tuesday first.
The Obama family will have dinner together alone. Afterward, they will be joined by the first lady Michelle Obama's brother Craig Robinson and his family, and the president's sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, and her family.
Then they will presumably watch election returns. Well, the White House didn't say that, but what else would they do?
- Helene Cooper
6:19 P.M. | Voter Portraits: Cary, N.C.
"I have a strong desire to get back into the work force. I'm not happy being unemployed. I have value to give and going back to the biblical principle, you need to work. And I want to work."
Name: Bob Murray
Age: 45-64
Party: Republican
Supporting: Mitt Romney
Location: Cary, N.C.
Occupation: Unemployed
Concerned About: Unemployment
- Travis Dove
6:17 P.M. | The Caucus Click: Romney and Ryan Thank Volunteers
- Stephen Crowley
6:14 P.M. | In Missouri, a Tough Choice
CHESTERFIELD, Mo. - Patty Fogertey represents the hope and concern for both candidates in the Missouri Senate race.
Ms. Fogertey, 58, left the St. Louis County Library here on Tuesday saying she decisively cast her vote for Mitt Romney because she wanted "less government, less socialism," a repeal "of some of Obamacare - not all - and less regulation."
But when it came time to check the box for either the incumbent Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill or her Republican challenger, Representative Todd Akin, she hesitated.
"That was tough," she said.
Speaking of Mr. Akin, she said, "He's maybe too extreme in some of his beliefs in order to represent the people."
At the same time, however, Ms. Fogertey said, "I have a lot of issues with Claire McCaskill."
"I think that she has taken financial advantage of her position," she said.
One of the most promising paths to victory for Mr. Akin, who upended his lead in this race in August with his infamous "legitimate rape" comment, is if Romney supporters automatically check his name down the ballot. Mr. Romney has polled well ahead of President Obama in Missouri.
But Ms. McCaskill has sought to inject in Missouri voters just the kind of hesitation that Ms. Fogertey expressed. Time and again, Ms. McCaskill has said that Mr. Akin was "too extreme" for Missouri voters, with the hope that some of those who favored Mr. Romney would split the ticket and vote for her.
Soon, we will know which strategy was most effective.
In Ms. Fogertey's case, she went with Mr. Akin.
- John Eligon
6:06 P.M. | Ryan Pops by a 'Victory Center'
HENRICO COUNTY, Va. - Have you wondered what happens at a campaign field office on Election Day? It's as brutally efficient as the three-sentence script used by volunteers to call identified Republicans or Republican-leaning independents from a "Victory Center" here, where Representative Paul D. Ryan paid a surprise visit.
After identifying themselves as calling from the Republican Party of Virginia, volunteers, reading a single question, "Have you voted in today's election?"
If the answer is yes, the scripted response is: "Fantastic! Thanks for your support."
If the answer is "no, not planning on voting," the volunteer says: "This election could come down to the wire. I'd really encourage you to vote sometime today."
In the event the voter is an Obama supporter, the script is simply blank, suggesting either speechlessness or the need to not waste time and move to the next call.
Mr. Ryan, who scheduled his visit to this crucial state only late Monday, stayed for less than 10 minutes in the windowless, all-business office. In truth, his remarks also had a bit of a formulaic feel.
"I don't want to take too much of your time because we've got a lot of work to do," Mr. Ryan told about 40 volunteers, including teenagers from Benedictine College Preparatory, a Roman Catholic secondary school.
"We've got to run for the tape," he said, adopting the voice of a coach he has used at recent rallies. "We've got to leave it all on the field."
He told the volunteers that a Republican victory was important because it would confer "a mandate to fix the country's problems."
"Thank you for the hard work, for turning this thing around, getting our country on the right track," he added.
"This is a great effort, keep it up, go at 'em and let's wake up tomorrow knowing we did everything we could."
A young man shouted, "Help us get rid of Biden!''
Mr. Ryan did not directly respond. He thanked the volunteers once again. "Let's get it done," he said. "I don't want to take any more of your time."
And with that he posed for a few pictures, returned to his motorcade and headed back to the Richmond airport for his final campaign flight of 2012 to Boston.
- Trip Gabriel
6:05 P.M. | In New Hampshire, 'Disillusioned' With the Ads
PEMBROKE, N.H. - For some voters here, the walk to the polls was a weary one, an anticlimactic coda to a campaign that has flooded airwaves, telephone lines and mailboxes with relentless advertising.
"Thank God the ads are over," said Cody Favata, a 20-year-old independent voter. "It's nice to have the freedom to vote, but those ads can really get to you."
"They don't really talk about their own ideals," said his friend, Sean Bonin, 18.
"You just learn how to trash talk - that's not good," Mr. Favata agreed.
The negativity had also worn on Barbara Nobrega, a retiree in this town of nearly 7,000, leaving her unenthused about her choice for president.
"I was disillusioned with all the political ads," Ms. Nobrega said. "I thought they were dishonest, biased and out of context."
Ms. Nobrega had voted for Mitt Romney for president, but she was not particularly happy about it. "I chose him as the lesser of two evils," Ms. Nobrega said. "I preferred Ron Paul. I did not believe he was trying to please anyone - both of these candidates," she said, referring to Mr. Romney and President Obama, "are going to say anything to get a vote."
Jack Lewis, who runs a towing company here, was equally ambivalent as he left the elementary school that served as a polling place. "Totally confused," he said, of his mind-set. "I'm voting for which is worse - I don't think Obama has got business going like he should have. Unemployment's terrible."
Although Mr. Lewis hinted that he had voted for Mr. Romney, he had choice words for him, too. "I just don't trust the man," Mr. Lewis said. "He's for big business, not small business."
- Jess Bidgood
6:03 P.M. | The Caucus Click: Decked Out for Romney
- Brian Blanco
6:01 P.M. | Exit Polls: State by State, Economy Varies
The nation's economy was a focus of the presidential campaign. But the race between Mitt Romney and President Obama played out state by state, where the strength of the economy varied.
Preliminary exit poll results suggest that voters were affected by the economic situation where they live.
Iowa, New Hampshire and Virginia all have unemployment levels under 6 percent, well below the national unemployment average of 7.9 percent, while Nevada is facing the highest unemployment in the country, at 11.8 percent.
Florida's unemployment is still a high 8.7 percent, and 1 in every 318 housing units in Florida was in foreclosure in September, the highest rate in the country, according to RealtyTrac, which follows foreclosure activity.
Despite these conditions, about 4 in 10 voters in both Florida and Nevada expressed some optimism, saying the nation's economy was getting better, while about 3 in 10 said it was getting worse or staying the same.
In Iowa, more voters cited rising prices as their biggest economic problem, over unemployment and the housing market, while in Virginia, more voters said that unemployment was the biggest economic problem. In Florida, unemployment and rising prices vied for the top economic problem, according to early exit poll results.
Voters were divided over which candidate could better handle the economy, with Mr. Romney having a slight edge in Florida and Virginia. In Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire and Wisconsin, voters were nearly evenly divided over whether Mr. Romney or Mr. Obama would better handle the economy.
In closely watched Ohio, where the unemployment rate has fallen to 7 percent, nearly 4 in 10 voters said the economy was getting better. And in Ohio, voters were essentially divided whether Mr. Obama or Mr. Romney was the candidate better able to handle the nation's economy.
- Allison Kopicki and Michael D. Shear
5:52 P.M. | Exit Polls: What Voters Want From the President
The presidential candidates clashed on the economy, health care, the federal budget deficit and foreign policy. The economy was cited as the top issue by most voters.
But the electorate is more divided on which candidate quality mattered most to them in deciding how to vote for president, with about 3 in 10 saying they wanted someone with a vision for the future and about as many looking for a candidate who shares their values.
President Obama spent months during the summer airing negative commercials about Mitt Romney, suggesting that the Republican candidate does not share the values of the middle class.
Early results in exit polls find Mr. Obama with an edge on empathy, with somewhat more voters saying he is more in touch with people like them. And a plurality of voters say his policies generally favor the middle class, while more than half say Mr. Romney's policies favor the rich.
About 2 in 10 say they want someone who cares about them, while about as many are looking most for a strong leader. That plays to the case that Mr. Romney tried to make, repeatedly suggesting that the president had failed to lead while in office.
Mr. Romney most often made that case on foreign policy, accusing the president of a listless, rudderless approach to foreign affairs.
- Allison Kopicki and Michael D. Shear
5:53 P.M. | New Faces on Tonight's Broadcast Coverage
Dozens of news and opinion Web sites will offer essentially live coverage on election night, some with TV-like newscasts and others with live blogs.
The New York Times will stream live video on its home page throughout the night. But just as in past elections, the largest audiences are expected to flock to the big three broadcast networks, ABC, CBS and NBC, and the big three cable news networks, Fox News, MSNBC and CNN.
The cable networks have been live all day. The broadcasters will kick off live coverage at 7 p.m. Eastern and will keep going until at least 2 a.m.
Four years ago, Brian Williams was the anchor on NBC, Charles Gibson on ABC and Katie Couric on CBS. Mr. Williams is back for his second presidential election night as anchor, but Mr. Gibson, who retired three years ago, will not; heading the coverage instead will be the pair who sat alongside him in 2008, Diane Sawyer and George Stephanopoulos. Ms. Couric, now of ABC, will join them from time to time with social media reaction. On CBS, Scott Pelley will anchor his first presidential election night.
It is also the first time for Rachel Maddow, who will be the co-host with Chris Matthews on MSNBC, and Bret Baier and Megyn Kelly, the co-hosts on Fox News. On PBS, Gwen Ifill and Judy Woodruff will make up national television's first two-woman anchor team on election night.
A pack of smaller channels - like CNBC, Fox Business, Bloomberg, TV One and HDNet - will also have hours of live election talk.
Comedy Central will have special live editions of "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report" from 11 p.m. to midnight.
More media coverage on Media Decoder
- Brian Stelter
5:45 P.M. | Exit Polls: Economy the Key Issue
President Obama and Mitt Romney each framed his case for being president as an argument about confronting the nation's economic struggles.
That seems to have been the right message, according to voters, who said the economy is the No. 1 issue on their minds.
Of those selecting the economy as their top issue, most - 4 in 10 - said that unemployment was the biggest economic problem, flowed closely by prices - 1 in 3 voters.
Mr. Romney had argued for months that voters would blame Mr. Obama for unemployment that had remained over 8 percent for much of the president's term. The rate dropped to 7.8 percent in September and stayed at 7.9 percent in October.
Voters express a mixed view of the state of the economy over all. While three-quarters of voters rate the national economy as not so good or poor, only 3 in 10 say the economy is getting worse, and 4 in 10 say it is getting better.
Half of all voters said that President George W. Bush was more to blame for current economic problems, while only 4 in 10 blame President Obama.
Voters give a narrow edge to Governor Romney when asked which candidate would better handle the economy.
One-third of voters said they felt their own family's financial situation had deteriorated. This is slightly better than in 2008, when 42 percent of voters said their family's financial situation was worse than it was four years prior.
A majority of voters said they felt that the United States economic system generally favors the wealthy. Only 4 in 10 said it is fair to most Americans.
- Michael D. Shear and David Jones
5:38 P.M. | Voter Portraits: Cleveland
My brother is gay. People are going to look stupid in 40 years. People should be able to live their life without others interfering.
Name: Gretchen Klaber
Age: 18-29
Party: Independent
Supporting: President Obama
Location: Cleveland
Occupation: Student at Ohio University
Concerned About: Gay Rights
- Mark Makela
5:34 P.M. | Exit Polls: Majority Says No Repeal of Obamacare
The Republican position on health care - led by Mitt Romney and embraced by nearly all the members of the party leadership - is to repeal the entire health care law passed by President Obama and the Democrats.
But that is not the opinion of the majority of voters, according to preliminary exit poll results. The survey shows that just a quarter of the people who voted in the election want to repeal all of Mr. Obama's law.
About the same amount want to repeal only some of the law. And the rest want to leave the law as it is or expand it.
Republicans have argued for years that the health care law would be an albatross around Mr. Obama's neck as he seeks re-election. They said the law's broad scope would be seen by voters as job-killing regulations.
But the exit poll results back up claims by Democrats that some provisions in the law are very popular, and that voters would react negatively to the Republican push to repeal it.
- Michael D. Shear
5:08 P.M. | Four-Hour Waits Reported in Virginia
In Prince William County in Virginia, where Mitt Romney and President Obama are battling for votes, voters are waiting in lines of up to four hours long, election officials said.
Betty Weimer, the general registrar for the county, said that voters were waiting for three and a half to four hours at a precinct in the county's eastern end.
"If they are in line at 7, they can vote," she said.
Ms. Weimer said that scene was being repeated across the state, although she had not compiled the numbers to know whether turnout would be greater than 2008 or not.
"We have some precincts that have some very long lines," she said.
- Michael D. Shear
5:07 P.M. | Five Senate Races to Watch
If you have followed the battle for the Senate for even a few minutes this election cycle, you probably know that Elizabeth Warren and Senator Scott P. Brown are locked in a tight race in Massachusetts, that comparing Senator Claire McCaskill to a dog appeared not to be additive to Representative Todd Akin's bid to unseat her in Missouri and perhaps have pondered with the rest of the United States Senate which party, if elected, Angus King of Maine would choose to caucus with.
But below we have highlighted five races that may not have been given as much attention but that deserve a little look-see as we await returns.
Arizona
Republicans assumed, with good reason, that the retirement of Senator Jon Kyl would mean a loss of a senior lawmaker for Arizona, but not of a seat for their party in the Senate. But a tough Republican primary left their nominee, Representative Jeff Flake, a well-known and well-established Republican, broke, bruised and in need of more help than his party expected to give. Democrats in the meantime got the best candidate they could have hoped for in Richard H. Carmona, a former surgeon general in the Bush administration, a Vietnam war hero and a Hispanic well known around the state. Mr. Carmona has occasionally closed in on Mr. Flake, though Republicans still count this in their column. A victory by Mr. Carmona seems unlikely but, both sides say, not impossible. This race also offered perhaps the most comic ad war, when Mr. Carmona released a television ad that featured glowing remarks from Mr. Kyl and Senator John McCain, delivered during Mr. Carmona's 2002 confirmation hearing. Neither Mr. Kyl nor Mr. McCain, who have endorsed Mr. Flake, were amused.
Indiana
Oh Indiana, what a story you have provided this year. First the state treasurer, Richard Mourdock, picked off the longtime and respected Senator Richard G. Lugar in a Republican primary, and seemed poised to coast to victory in this usually reliably Republican state. Democrats maintained hope that Mr. Mourdock's Tea Party imprimatur and fondness for saying that compromise means Democrats doing what Republicans want, might end up hurting him. Instead, he was dinged during a recent debate when he said that "when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen." Representative Joe Donnelly, a Democrat, who has run this campaign as a moderate and does not support abortion rights, saw a door opening after that debate, and his party helped him push on it. Mr. Donnelly may now be well on his way to crossing the Rotunda.
Montana
A third-party candidate has turned this always-a-question-mark race into the ultimate nailbiter. Senator Jon Tester, a Democrat and a rancher, managed to narrowly win his 2006 race in a state as he worked his just-folks image and occasional voting independence into a strong brand. Even though President Obama is a significant liability for him this year, he imagined that ticket splitters would pull the lever for Mitt Romney but then choose him over his Republican opponent, Representative Denny Rehberg. But that calculation did not factor in Dan Cox of the Libertarian Party, who has not made a major dent in the polls but could be a factor in a razor-thin margin.
Nebraska
Republicans were convinced they could pick up a seat here when Senator Ben Nelson, the two-term Democratic incumbent, decided not to run again, and for months that is exactly how it looked. Democrats recruited Bob Kerrey, the state's former governor and two-term senator who returned to his native Nebraska after a decade in New York City and scrambled to put together a campaign without so much as a place to hang his hat. Mr. Kerrey, however, did not get the opponent he wanted in State Senator Deb Fischer, who became the Republican nominee after winning a three-way primary. Nebraska has gotten a lot more conservative since Mr. Kerrey last served, and his double-digit deficit in the polls all fall seemed to presage defeat. However in the last few weeks, Mr. Kerrey has seemed to be gaining ground and landed the big endorsement by a former senator, Chuck Hagel, a Republican and fellow wounded Vietnam War veteran, who overlapped with Mr. Kerrey in the Senate. Mr. Kerrey's surge may be too little too late, but he is within the margin of error in some polls, which makes this a race to watch.
Wisconsin
The retirement of Senator Herb Kohl, a four-term Democrat, excited Republicans and Democrats equally, because each side knew a strong candidate in a presidential year would have a shot at a seat. Republicans were particularly emboldened by the failed effort to recall Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, which they believed was a vote of confidence for their party. What's more, they got the candidate they wanted in Tommy Thompson, the state's former four-term governor. But Mr. Thompson has struggled against Representative Tammy Baldwin, the Democratic candidate, who would be the first openly gay senator should she be elected. Mr. Thompson has been dogged by his lobbyist past, and Ms. Baldwin appears to be benefiting from Democrats coalescing. This is a pure toss-up, tied strongly to partisan turnout.
- Jennifer Steinhauer
5:04 P.M. | In Romney Office, 'Clear Eyes' Slogan Remains
BEDFORD, N.H. - Slogan-gate continues even as the final hours of the presidential campaign wind down.
Signs all over the walls of the Romney Victory office here use the famous slogan of NBC drama "Friday Night Lights." In red, white and blue ink, the signs taped up around the office read: "Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose," the phrase, echoed by the heroic Coach Taylor to his underdog team before a football game.
It's an inspiring message for a volunteer operation that needs some last-minute inspiration as supporters face polls that place Mr. Romney with a slight disadvantage in the battleground state of New Hampshire. The only problem is that "Friday Night Lights" creator Peter Berg sent a terse note Mr. Romney last month accusing him of plagiarizing the slogan and asking him to stop using it on campaign materials. "Your politics and campaign are clearly not aligned with the themes we portrayed in our series," Mr. Berg wrote.
He said the only comparison between Mr. Romney and "Friday Night Lights" was in the wealthy, smooth-talking car salesman character Buddy Garrity "who turned his back on American car manufacturers selling imported cars from Japan," Mr. Berg wrote.
Regardless of who wins on Tuesday, Mr. Berg can rest assured that the signs will finally come down this week.
Below is a full copy of the letter, first published on The Hollywood Reporter:
Governor Romney:
I created the TV show "Friday Night Lights" and came up with the phrase "Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Can't Lose."
I was not thrilled when I saw that you have plagiarized this expression to support your campaign by using it on posters, your Facebook page and as part of your stump speeches. Your politics and campaign are clearly not aligned with the themes we portrayed in our series.
The only relevant comparison that I see between your campaign and "Friday Night Lights" is in the character of Buddy Garrity - who turned his back on American car manufacturers selling imported cars from Japan. Your use of the expression falsely and inappropriately associates "Friday Night Lights" with the Romney/Ryan campaign. Mitt, we all wish you and your family all the best. We are grateful for your support of our beloved show, but we are not in any way affiliated with you or your campaign. Please come up with your own campaign slogan
Sincerely
Peter Berg
- Amy Chozick
4:46 P.M. | Chilly Temperatures and Long Lines in Virginia
FAIRFAX, Va. - In Northern Virginia, voters suffered through frosty temperatures, computer glitches and unusually long lines to cast their ballots. Both Republicans and Democrats shared one sentiment: relief that the long campaign was finally over.
"Commercials, campaign signs, five calls a day at home - I'm just glad it's all over," Lori Recher, a Democratic supporter, said after casting her ballot at an elementary school in Fairfax with her son in tow.
Fairfax County favored Mr. Obama overwhelmingly in the 2008 election and helped propel him to a key victory statewide. Democrats were eager for a repeat Tuesday, but Romney organizers saw a chance to steal a win as they pointed to polls showing a statewide race that was very close.
"For us to be this close in this area really says something," Monica Cameron, a precinct leader for the Romney campaign in Northern Virginia, said as she staffed a table outside Mantua Elementary School in Fairfax. Standing beside an American flag and a table draped in red, Ms. Cameron offered voters coffee and glazed doughnuts - but only after they had voted so as not to be accused of trading votes for doughnuts.
A computer glitch at some precincts in the region forced delays of several hours, and some would-be voters who showed up at the polls before 7 a.m. gave up and left in frustration, only to return later in the day once the computer problems were fixed. Many voters opted to use paper ballots because they said it was quicker.
"We've just been trying to calm people through the long wait," said Rod Bubeck, who coordinated the voting at the Mantua site. "It's working out."
By midmorning, the wait time was down from about two hours to 5 or 10 minutes, he said.
Tram Nguyen, associate director for Virginia New Majority, a liberal advocacy group that sent members to monitor polling stations, said it received ''numerous complaints across the state" about precincts failing to provide the required provisional ballots to residents who were not found on registration lists.
The group was also examining several isolated complaints of possible voter intimidation.
In the Richmond area, a heckler who Ms. Nguyen said appeared to be aligned with the Tea Party heckled voters for about an hour, making derogatory comments as they entered a polling place in a primarily black neighborhood, she said.
In Fairfax County, Ms. Nguyen said that her group received a complaint that a group of people outside a polling place in the Lorton area approached an elderly registered voter of Asian descent and told her, erroneously, that she needed to show her "naturalization papers" at the voting place under a new state law.
"She got so disturbed by this that she just got in her car and left without voting," Ms. Nguyen said.
- Eric Lichtblau
4:46 P.M. | House Races to Watch
Waiting, waiting, waiting on the White House? Suspense making you want to cry? Why don't you spend a few minutes pondering some of the most exciting House races of 2012
Thanks to the powerful force of gerrymandering, the vast majority of the hundreds of races around the country are anticlimactic, with the party registration numbers in each Congressional district dictating the outcome. Republicans appear poised to hold their majority in the House and may even pick up a few seats, although Democrats are desperately hoping that states like California will deliver enough to give them a modest gain.
Many races have mirrored the fight for the presidency - tight, exciting and riddled with tough advertisements. While there are more than 10 competitive races, some of them even closer than the ones we have listed list here, these House races are 10 worth watching.
California's 36th District
For eight terms, Representative Mary Bono Mack, the Republican incumbent, has won in this largely blue state, and redistricting seemed to favor another good outcome for her. But she found herself in a scrappy fight against the Democrat, Dr. Raul Ruiz, an emergency room physician. Latinos make up nearly a third of the district's voters, and Ms. Bono Mack, one of the most moderate Republicans in the House, may have boo-booed when she said on the campaign trail that she would reach out to Latinos "after the election." Twist: If she loses, and her husband, Representative Connie Mack of Florida,fails in his Senate bid, they will be a married Congressional couple out of work.
Colorado's 6th District
As goes this district, so likely goes the presidential candidate in this western bellwether state. Representative Mike Coffman, a favorite of the Tea Party movement, is known for his colorful statements, including calling into question President Obama's American-ness, and his path to a third term narrowed after political mapmakers redrew his overwhelmingly Republican district to include near-equal amounts of registered Republican, Democratic and independent voters. His Democratic rival, Joe Miklosi, a state lawmaker, has struggled to raise money for his own campaign and has had to rely on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee to keep afloat.
Florida's 18th District
Representative Allen B. West is one of the few nationally known freshman Republicans, a former Army officer who in 2010 became one of only two black Republicans to be elected to the House since Reconstruction. A Tea Party favorite who works the talk-show circuit and is a fund-raising powerhouse, he is in a too-close-to-call contest with a wealthy construction executive, Patrick Murphy, and Democrats would love to see Mr. West go. This race has also featured some of the nastiest ads, in a year with a high bar for that.
Iowa's 3rd District
This race was the war of the nice guys. Iowa lost a seat after the 2010 census, and two veteran incumbents - Representatives Leonard L. Boswell, a Democrat, and Tom Latham, a Republican - found themselves facing off in a new district made up of a nearly equal number of Republican, Democratic and independent voters. The cash advantage went to Mr. Latham, who received a ton of fund-raising help from his B.F.F., the House speaker John A. Boehner. But more of the district is currently held by Mr. Boswell, and Mr. Obama enjoys a narrow edge in the state.
Kentucky's 6th District
Republicans have long sought to remove Representative Ben Chandler, first elected in 2004, but it seemed that he would escape the liability of President Obama at the top of the ticket. Mr. Chandler, a member of the Blue Dog Coalition who voted against Mr. Obama's health care law, gained a slight edge through redistricting and could still protect the seat he has held since 2004. But in the last few weeks, Democrats have been forced to spend money to defend Mr. Chandler against Andy Barr, a lawyer, who came back for more after losing to Mr. Chandler in 2010 by just 648 votes, and who Republicans now believe is going to have his day.
Massachusetts's 6th District
So, an openly gay Republican member of the House from Massachusetts? Get ready, as it could happen. Representative John F. Tierney, an eight-term Democrat, should have cruised to re-election, but he has been dogged with nagging questions about his in-laws' illegal offshore gambling enterprise. His opponent is the former State Senator Richard Tisei, an openly gay Republican who supports abortion rights, and polling shows Mr. Tisei heading into the last month of his campaign with a strong lead.
New York's 27th District
There are many close races in New York, and a few involving freshmen, but the first-term incumbent Representative Kathy Hochul is considered among the most vulnerable Democrats in the country. Ms. Hochul, a former county clerk, won her seat in a closely watched special election in a conservative district in the Buffalo area last year in a race that was viewed nationally as a referendum on a Republican proposal in Washington to overhaul Medicare. This year, redistricting has given her an even more Republican district than the one she had, and her well-known Republican opponent, Chris Collins, the former Erie County executive, has gotten a lot of help from his party.
Pennsylvania 12th District
Redistricting hurt Democrats in this state but nowhere more than here, where a member-on-member primary put a dent in their prevailing incumbent, Mark Critz who toppled Jason Altmire's moderate independence with his labor muscle in that primary. Republicans believe that they now have the Democratic opponent they want to face their candidate, Keith Rothfus, a lawyer and Tea Party favorite who lost by two percentage points to Mr. Altmire in 2010. The question will be: can Mr. Critz's labor fans outman Mr. Rothfus's in get out the vote operations and deliver him another victory, or will Mr. Rothfus succeed in painting him as too liberal for this new district.
Tennessee's 4th District
You should not even be reading about this race. Representative Scott DesJarlais, the Republican incumbent, was as safe as one can get. Then it was revealed that the anti-abortion Mr. DesJarlais appeared to have pressured a mistress to terminate a pregnancy. Things got less optimal for Mr. DesJarlais when Lloyd Daugherty, chairman of the Tennessee Conservative Union, said that Mr. DesJarlais, a doctor, should find a new line of work, saying: "He got elected on the same issue that he obviously does not have the same personal commitment to. It's the hypocrisy." It is still way uphill for the Democrat in the race, State Senator Eric Stewart, but watch it.
Utah's 4th District
Representative Jim Matheson, one of the last remaining Blue Dogs, is used to winning in a district and state where the Republican nominee for president always prevails. But this time, Mr. Matheson is in a battle against Mayor Mia Love of Saratoga Springs, who is looking to become the first black woman to join the House of Representatives as a Republican. Ms. Love is sure to have big coattails from Mitt Romney to ride, and her party is giving her strong support, but incumbency is not without its benefits, even in this district.
All New York Times House Race Ratings
- Jennifer Steinhauer
4:41 P.M. | Free Beer and a Few Hiccups in Milwaukee
MILWAUKEE - When the biggest problem is a bar handing out free beers, you know Election Day is going well.
Officials in Wisconsin, who are predicting a 70 percent turnout for their hotly contested state, said on Tuesday afternoon that voting had so far gone relatively smoothly, with few disputes or broken machines.
In fact, the state's Government Accountability Board took time to chastise Badger State businesses that have offered free or discounted refreshments - including a cold pint of brew - to anyone sporting an official "I Voted!" sticker.
"While this has not been a widespread problem, it is illegal under Wisconsin law, and businesses should not do it," election officials said in a brief statement.
There have been a few hiccups. In Milwaukee, a handful of precincts ran out of ballots or experienced equipment malfunctions, including one jam-up caused by an "I Voted!" sticker that slipped into the machinery. Most of the problems were fixed within an hour.
At two polling sites here, observers were asked to leave the premises after ignoring directions from local inspectors. The problems stemmed from technicalities, like standing too close to a voting table, rather than any evidence of intimidation or registration challenges, said Neil V. Albrecht, executive director of Milwaukee's election commission.
Mr. Albrecht said that Milwaukee's polling stations received "a significant volume of voter turnout" on Tuesday morning, and the city could be on track for a record. But rain and snow are expected across the region in the final hours of voting, which may discourage some residents.
Milwaukee's mayor, Tom Barrett, stopped by the city's French Immersion School after lunch, "just checking to make sure everything's moving smoothly," as he told a poll worker. The site had briefly run out of ballots toward the end of the morning rush; the inspector said that more arrived after a 30-minute delay. "That's a half-hour too long," the mayor said. "We need to call that in more quickly."
Still, with observers from opposing political groups seated near one another at polling stations, tensions did arise. Some suburban residents traveled into predominantly African-American areas of Milwaukee to serve as observers. At the French school, when confusion broke out in the morning over proper placement of some ballots, tempers flared and local lawyers arrived to sort out matters, according to an observer at the site.
By noon, the polling station was peaceful once again.
- Michael Grynbaum
4:38 P.M. | Voter Portraits: Cary, N.C.
"The last four years have scared me to death. I want a president that's proud to be an American."
Name: Dick Harlow
Age: 45-64
Party: Republican
Supporting: Mitt Romney
Location: Cary, N.C.
Occupation: Management (Broadcasting)
Concerned About: The economy
- Travis Dove
4:21 P.M. | Optimism Fills a Romney "Victory Office" in New Hampshire
BEDFORD, N.H. - "Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Can't Lose," read several signs hung up around the Romney Victory office, the same slogan used by the inspirational Coach Taylor in the NBC drama about Texas football, "Friday Night Lights." Volunteers noshed on sandwiches and potato chips as they cranked out last-minute calls. Stacks of empty Dunkin' Donuts boxes and cartons of coffee lay on folding tables. Fox News played on a big-screen television in the background.
If there was one sentiment across the office, aside from the obvious, "Vote for Mitt," it was to heck with political polls.
Romney volunteers said on-the-ground enthusiasm trumped recent polls that mostly show the battleground of New Hampshire slightly favoring President Obama. "I don't believe the polls," said Dana Lydstone, 61 and a small business owner. "No one I've talked to has even thought about going one way or the other. And no one screams that they're voting for Obama."
(Highlighting the last-minute rush and partisan sensitivity in this part of the state, Mr. Lydstone and other volunteers joked with this Times reporter that interrupting their calls to conduct interviews was part of a "liberal media" plan to distract voter outreach.)
Mr. Lydstone said he had never been involved in a political campaign before, but he said he felt as if this is the most important election of his lifetime.
"The president wants to fundamentally change the country, to take us in a socialist type of direction," he said on a quick break from cranking out calls. "I was one of those people who thought when he got elected that he had a dynamic opportunity to do something good and he went in the opposite direction," he said of Mr. Obama.
A nearby volunteer from Londonderry, N.H., agreed. "Our base is much more enthusiastic this year than they were four years ago," he said. "The polls are wrong."
Dylan Stanford, a 22-year-old volunteer, predicted that Mr. Romney would win nationally with 274 electoral votes and would win New Hampshire by two percentage points. "All the polls in 2004 showed Kerry up by four points in Ohio and then the magic happened and Bush pulled it off by two," Mr. Stanford said. He added: "Polling is an inexact science. You can find a poll anywhere that makes you feel good."
But ultimately, Mr. Stanford said, it's not about getting out the vote but that "this election comes down to who has more people stay at home."
- Amy Chozick
4:17 P.M. | What Will Swing the Swing States?
Go to feature »
- The New York Times
4:06 P.M. | One Immigrant's Barrier to Voting: Citizenship
WEST DES MOINES, Iowa - As Jesus Castro stood behind the counter of his small grocery store here and began to talk about the election, he took out a small red box that almost instantly answered the question of why he would not vote yet again this year.
The words "Civics Flash Cards" were printed across the front of the box. Below those words was the seal of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services.
"I try and study when I'm at work but then someone comes up to the counter and I have to put them down," he said in an interview in Spanish.
Mr. Castro, 47, has never voted in his life.
He never voted before he left Mexico in 1983.
And despite the hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes he said he has paid and the three children he has had here, he said he had not participated in any of the eight presidential elections that have occurred since he came because he is not a citizen.
"I want to vote because I want to help Mexicans and Hispanics," he said.
Mr. Castro, who said he had a Green Card, can't vote because he has not taken the civics test, which is part of the process of becoming a citizen.
Although he can't vote, he had a stack of Obama pamphlets in Spanish at the counter.
He said that the Obama campaign had made a lot of effort to reach out to Hispanics. And, like many of his friends, he believes that President Obama understands the needs of Hispanics.
"Obama's doing more for Latinos," he said. "He's fighting for health care. He is thinking of all the people who come here, who pay taxes like me."
Mr. Castro said that he had a difficult time relating to Mr. Romney because he was so much wealthier than him. And Mr. Castro said he was offended by the fact that Mr. Romeny's father, who was born in Mexico to American parents, did not consider himself Mexican.
"If you are born in a country, you are a citizen of that country," he said. "Why wouldn't he want to call himself Mexican. My kids who were born in the United States are American citizens. He is lying about his roots."
Mr. Castro said that he planned take the civics test before the next election and finally cast his first vote at the age of 51.
"But I have always been in this situation," he said.
- Michael S. Schmidt
4:09 P.M. | At Empire State, Red if It's Mitt, Blue if It's Obama
In November 1932, a bright searchlight atop the Empire State Building signified that Franklin D. Roosevelt had been elected president of the United States.
Eighty years later, CNN's taking the idea a big step further, lighting up the building in red and blue as the presidential election results come in.
On Tuesday night, according to the cable news channel, a "meter" running up the building's spire will show the electoral votes that President Obama and Mitt Romney are projected to win. The gimmick will be televised on CNN from time to time via a camera on an nearby rooftop. NBC similarly showed the electoral vote count on the side of Rockefeller Center in 2008, and will do so again this year.
For decades the Empire State Building has been lit in different colors depending on the occasion. It's been used to recognize holidays, charitable events, corporate anniversaries and other events.
The partnership with CNN is an opportunity to show off a new lighting system that will allow the building's facade and mast to change colors in real time. "When CNN projects a winner of the presidential election, the tower lights of the Empire State Building will change color to all-blue or to all-red," the channel said in a news release.
- Brian Stelter
3:55 P.M. | Voter Portraits: Durham, N.C.
"They talk about the rich and the middle class. What about the poor people? Don't nobody say nothing about the poor people. And I consider myself as being a poor person."
Name: Jimmy Mitchell
Age: 45-64
Party: Democrat
Supporting: Barack Obama
Location: Durham, N.C.
Occupation: Retired
Concerned About: Medicaid and Medicare
- Travis Dove
3:54 P.M. | Democrats Look to Mobilize Hispanic Voters in Colorado
DENVER - Colorado's Hispanic vote will almost certainly be critically important in determining which candidate wins the coveted swing state.
With polls leading up to Election Day showing President Obama and Mitt Romney in a dead heat here, Democrats were especially hopeful that Colorado's sizable Latino demographic, about 20 percent of the state's total population, would turn out en masse at the polls on Tuesday.
"I would say at the beginning of the election season there was a lot more apathy," said Liz Hamel, lead organizer for Rights For All People, a local immigrant rights group that has been working with other local organizations to mobilize the Hispanic vote in and around Denver.
"A lot of folks were skeptical about the voting process. But now towards the end, we're seeing a lot more excitement. And a lot of the groups on the ground are connecting the issues being discussed by the candidates with Latinos," she said.
Efforts to reach Colorado's Hispanic voters have intensified during the last few days, especially in the city of Aurora, which has a growing Latino population. Matt Inzeo, spokesman for the Colorado Democratic Party, said he was hopeful that implicit support for the president would translate at the polls on Tuesday.
At Barnum Elementary School, in a primarily Hispanic area of Denver dotted with taquerias and Mexican restaurants, a sprinkle of voters came to cast their ballots during lunchtime.
"I'm for Obama. I think he connects more with lower-income people," said a 29-year-old housekeeper, Elaine, who did not want to give her last name.
Elaine said this was her first time voting, and that she had been motivated by Mr. Obama's support for health care reform in particular.
"He hasn't had time to finish the job," she added. "He hasn't had time to finish making that change he talked about."
She flashed a smile. "It feels good to vote," she said. "I feel like I'm a big girl now."
- Dan Frosch
3:54 P.M. | An Unexpected Crowd for Romney
MOON TOWNSHIP, Pa. - Mitt Romney landed here at Pittsburgh International Airport Tuesday afternoon to an unfamiliar sight: More than a thousand supporters who had spontaneously gathered to greet his arrival, lining the decks of a parking garage that overlooked the airport hangar.
Though Mr. Romney's campaign almost always sends out a press release with the details of all of his flights, Election Day was the first time any real crowd had turned out to watch him land and walk off his plane.
A visibly touched Mr. Romney walked over to the chain-link fence separating him from the voters, and paused for several moments, waving to the crowd as they cheered and waved back. He then offered a thumbs up, and later placed his right hand over his heart - an appreciative gesture he also did after the first presidential debate.
Asked how the impromptu crowd made him feel, Mr. Romney turned back to a group of reporters and said: "Well, that's when you know you're going to win."
- Ashley Parker
3:52 P.M. | Judge in Texas Extends Voting Time
A state district judge in Galveston County signed an order Tuesday extending the voting time by two hours, in response to widespread delays earlier in the morning at polling sites, county officials said.
Judge John Ellisor of the 122nd Judicial District Court ruled that county residents could cast their ballots until 8:54 p.m. instead of 7 p.m. Those who are in line by 7 p.m. will have their votes counted in the traditional fashion, but those who show up between 7:01 p.m. and 8:54 p.m. will vote by provisional ballot, officials said.
"I think it's the right thing to do," said the county's top elected official, County Judge Mark Henry. "We would have liked for it to have gone perfectly and flawlessly, but that's not always possible when you've got so much technology involved."
County election officials said that some of the 45 polling sites were unable to begin accepting votes at 7 a.m., and experienced a delay of up to an hour before they were fully operational. The problems stemmed for the most part from poll workers failing to allow enough time to set up the electronic voting machines and the process of preparing the machines taking longer than anticipated, county officials said.
Local Democratic leaders accused county officials overseeing the election of disenfranchising voters and failing to properly plan and prepare. Lloyd Criss, the chairman of the Galveston County Democratic Party, said it was possible that a couple thousand people were unable to vote in the morning because of the problems, and left the polling sites because they had to get to work.
"How do we know who they were, and how do we get a hold of them to let them know time was extended?" Mr. Criss said. "It's just a mess. It's a mess. I'm irritated about it."
Mr. Criss said that he was considering filing a lawsuit against the county clerk, Dwight D. Sullivan, whose office oversees the administration of the election. Mr. Criss said at one polling site he visited, there were about 150 people in line at 7 a.m., and he watched many of them leave and head to their cars after waiting.
He added: "I asked them, 'Did you vote?' And they said, 'No, I couldn't, I have to go to work.' They're working-class people. They were minorities. Hispanics, blacks, some whites. It happened all over the county. It didn't just happen in one precinct."
"Whether it's on purpose or incompetence, the end result is people were disenfranchised, and I am really upset about it," he said.
- Manny Fernandez
3:49 P.M. | An Undecided Voter in Florida
MIAMI - Standing in line to vote, Debbie Gomberg gave no hint of her power. She is that mythical creature in the United States - the undecided voter - a class of person that is so rare, so elusive, that, when the people waiting next to her heard the news, they gasped.
"I'm one of those people," Ms. Gomberg said, almost under her breath as she bided her time in line in Miami's southern reaches.
"There's pros and cons to both parties," she said, referring to her mental back-and-forth between Mitt Romney and President Obama. "I think Romney is a business man who will be able to be more helpful to bring the economy where it needs to be. But his social policies ." She trailed off.
In a swing state that has been bombarded with political ads, Ms. Gomberg's indecision is unusual. At this point, political positions in Miami-Dade County, which voted for Mr. Obama in 2008, are sharply drawn. This year, the race for president here will be closer and an Obama victory is far from a given.
But back to Ms. Gomberg, who is 56 and is the director of safety for a management company. As soon as her neighbors in line (who are also her neighbors in real life), realized she still did not know what bubble to mark on the ballot, they made their pitch.
"You're a mother, do you feel that good about the state of things," asked Bonnie Williamson, 59, a Romney supporter. "He's a socialist," she said of Mr. Obama. "I'm scared to death."
"He's going to redistribute the wealth," said her husband, Tom Williamson, 64. The Williamsons mentioned, with foreboding, the film "2016: Obama's America."
"But things change," Ms. Gomberg said.
A short while later, it was over.
"Bonnie told me to vote my heart," she said, about her neighbor. "So I did. I voted for Obama," Ms. Gomberg said. "It was really a toss-up." Her husband, she said, is voting for Mr. Romney, so, in the end, there will a balance, of sorts. "I think this race will be very close."
- Lizette Alvarez
3:38 P.M. | Voting Machine Fixed After Reports of Malfunction
A Pennsylvania voting machine that appeared to automatically switch a vote for Barack Obama to one for Mitt Romney was fixed after the malfunction and is now working normally, an official said.
A video widely circulated on the Internet appeared to show a voter trying three times to select the option for Mr. Obama on the machine's screen, and being automatically redirected each time to Mr. Romney.
Ron Ruman, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Department of State, which oversees elections, said the machine, in Perry County, central Pennsylvania, was found to be malfunctioning when one voter tried to use it. It malfunctioned only once, for just one voter, and was then recalibrated and made available to other voters, Mr. Ruman said.
"It was brought to the attention of election officials who turned the machine off and recalibrated it," Mr. Ruman said.
"It happened one time," he said. "It has been returned to service."
- Jon Hurdle
3:36 P.M. | Video: A Face More Careworn
The photojournalist Damon Winter reflects on covering President Obama's two campaigns.
- The New York Times
3:30 P.M. | Ohio Voters Are Ready to Exit the Spotlight
CINCINNATI - Whatever else the election outcome will mean, voters in battleground states like Ohio confessed on Tuesday that they felt relieved at the prospect of an end to a campaign that has felt the longest in places like this. A halt to all those political phone calls around the dinner hour each night, to the daily piles of direct mail, to the constant commercials that seem, by now, to fill every momentary pause on local television.
"We haven't had the ringer turned on on the telephone since July," said Matt Fleger, a firefighter, as he emerged from a voting place in Wyoming, Ohio, just north of Cincinnati. The flood of attention, these voters said, had been both the blessing and the curse of being in a state the presidential candidates need the most.
In many cases, voters here said they felt fortunate to have had so much attention, and said they felt both better educated about the issues than they otherwise might have been and more obliged than ever - given all the focus on Ohio - to turn up to vote. Still, after all this, at least one voter here compared casting her ballot to finally getting a hot shower, washing off all the layers the long campaign had left behind.
Though George Tscheinr, 91, complained that his household received "10 calls a night, at least" and that the whole system "was crooked anymore," he still dutifully appeared at a library branch in Westwood to cast his vote for Mitt Romney. And though Robert Robinson, 47, said he thought it was wrong than any one set of voters should seem to matter more than others, he made sure to appear before noon to vote for President Obama, who he said had done a good job despite very trying economic circumstances.
As he headed to his truck, Mr. Fleger, the firefighter, declined to say whom he had chosen for president. But he said he was a longtime Republican voter and a member of a labor union - qualities that made him a central target on both sides and ensured that the piles of campaign leaflets mailed to him have been huge.
"When it comes down to it, I have found both candidates frustrating," said Mr. Fleger, 38, who said his family has had to cut expenses for home repairs and entertainment to get through the economic downturn and carry two mortgages when one house failed to sell. "These politicians can't speak with a message that most Americans can relate to. Everything is so extreme. Americans know what it's like to scale back. But with these people, if you want to scale back defense spending, you're called a hippie. And if you want to cut human services, you're accused of starving the poor. I wish someone would talk about things in the middle so we could solve something."
- Monica Davey
3:25 P.M. | Voter Portraits: Byers, Colo.
"I'm a pull-myself-up-by-my-bootstraps kind of person. I don't want people telling me what to do and how to do it. I find the Democrat Party is about bigger government making your choices for you."
Name: Kathy Morris
Age: 45-64
Party: Republican
Supporting: Mitt Romney
Location: Byers, Colo.
Occupation: Registered Nurse
Concerned About: Unemployment
- Matthew Staver
3:23 P.M. | A Few Hiccups Before Finally Casting a Ballot
LAS VEGAS - Naiby Almaguer voted in an American election for the first time Tuesday. It was not entirely without glitches.
An immigrant from Cuba, Ms. Almaguer, 30, works as a housekeeper at the Bellagio. She became a citizen in 2009.
A week ago, she had surgery. Her doctor ordered her not to drive, so to get to the polls, she called the Latino organization Mi Familia Vota, which has been working in Las Vegas to register voters.
A volunteer from the organization picked her up at her apartment on Tuesday morning and drove her to the polls. But they went to the wrong place.
It turned out that Ms. Almaguer had registered to vote at her old address. Sofia Sanchez, the Mi Familiar Vota volunteer, drove Ms. Almaguer across town.
"I'm excited because it's my first time," said Ms. Almaguer after she cast her ballot at Valley High School. "I hope Obama wins. I like Obama. He's a nice guy. He's not such a bad president."
- Stephanie Saul
3:13 P.M. | Judge Orders G.O.P. Watchers Inside Polling Places
PHILADELPHIA - A judge here ordered that all Republican poll watchers be allowed into polling places, after reports that they were being excluded from some locations by Democrats.
The district attorney's office said early Tuesday afternoon that Judge John M. Younge issued the order allowing all "certified minority inspectors" access to polling places. The judge said sheriff's deputies would be sent out to enforce the order.
In heavily Democratic Philadelphia, "minority inspectors" is code for Republicans who may not have had any presence as poll watchers in previous years. With the addition of some G.O.P. watchers this year, they may not be recognized by established Democrats who have been staffing the polling places for years.
Tasha Jamerson, a spokeswoman for the Philadelphia district attorney's office, said in the early afternoon that her office had received 11 calls complaining that G.O.P. poll watchers had been excluded from some polling places.
Meanwhile, some voters are finding their names are not on voter lists when they show up to vote, according to the Committee of Seventy, a nonpartisan election watchdog for Philadelphia.
The Committee said it had received "numerous reports" of the problem, which it said seems to apply to any voters whose registrations were processed after Oct. 23. "An issue seems to be whether these new, late-processed registrations made it to the polling place on time for Election Day," the organization said in a statement.
Ms. Jamerson of the district attorney's office said registered voters whose names do not appear on the voter rolls would be allowed to cast provisional ballots. But the Committee of Seventy said it is hearing of some polling places where judges are declining to allow voters to vote provisionally, and has alerted the city commissioners.
The committee also reported that both voting machines at one polling place had broken down. Voters are being told to cast provisional ballots but at least 30 have just walked away, the group said.
Ms. Jamerson dismissed media reports that Black Panthers had been intimidating voters at some polling places. She said the district attorney's office had received 30 phone calls by 10 a.m. alleging such intimidation but that officials had found only one member of the militant group at a polling place, and that person was holding the door for voters, she said.
- Jon Hurdle
3:18 P.M. | Interactive Graphic: 512 Paths to the White House
Explore the routes through the electoral battleground and plot victory for either side. Go to feature »
- The New York Times
3:09 P.M. | A Closer Look at Virginia
If Mitt Romney loses Virginia tonight - and perhaps the presidency with it - Republicans might be wondering, what in the world happened?
The answer might be as simple as the drastic changes that have taken place in Loudoun and Prince William Counties, two suburban counties that once were mostly rural and mostly white and mostly conservative.
They are not anymore.
The changes are documented in two maps published by The New York Times that track the changes in voting and demographics. They provide what may be the clearest evidence of the challenge that Republicans like Mr. Romney face in the future.
In 2000, George W. Bush won Loudoun County by 15 percentage points over Al Gore. Eight years later, Barack Obama won the same county by eight percentage points over John McCain, a 23-point swing in less than a decade.
A fluke? In next-door Prince William County, Mr. Bush won by eight percentage points over Mr. Gore. In the 2008 election, it was one of Mr. Obama's best counties. He defeated Mr. McCain by 16 percentage points, a 24-point turnaround.
What happened?
The second map tells part of the story. In the years between the two elections, Loudoun and Prince William Counties were drawn into the Washington orbit, growing dramatically and becoming less rural. And in striking fashion, they became far less white.
Take Prince William: From 2000 to 2010, the county's population grew by nearly 50 percent. But nearly all of that population growth was among minorities. The number of African-Americans increased by about 50 percent while the number of Hispanics and Asians jumped by almost 200 percent each.
What had been a sleepy county that had once fought over development around Civil War battlefields now is a place gripped by the national debate about illegal immigration.
In Loudoun County, the changes are similar, but even more significant. For years, Loudoun had been home to the horse-riding set, but by the end of the decade, thousands of town homes had sprung up along its eastern edge, filled with government workers willing to fight the traffic into Washington.
The population of Loudoun almost doubled from 2000 to 2010. And minorities drove that growth. The number of Hispanics in Loudoun grew by nearly 300 percent. The number of Asians in the county increased by even more - 400 percent.
The demographic shifts alone do not necessarily guarantee victory for Democrats. But the trends are unmistakable, especially among Hispanic voters, who have tended to vote for the Democratic Party in huge numbers in the past several years.
If Mr. Romney manages to make inroads in Prince William and Loudoun today, he may win Virginia and the presidency. But if not, there's a good chance that the state's 13 electoral votes will go to President Obama.
Unfortunately for Republicans, that would be a sign of things to come, and a warning that once-reliable parts of the country are beginning to change.
- Michael D. Shear
2:41 P.M. | Voter Portraits: Lake Anna, Va.
"I have 15 guns, I just like shooting. I've also got a boat that sucks a lot of gas and I'm enjoying life right."
Name: Gene Wilson
Age: 50-64
Party: Independent
Supporting: Mitt Romney
Location: Lake Anna, Va.
Occupation: Cosmetic car repair and refinishing
Concerned About: Gun Ownership
- Kirsten Luce
1:59 P.M. | Wisconsin Votes to Leave Endless Election Season Behind
APPLETON, Wis. - Inside St. Bernard Catholic Church, voting seemed a festive occasion. Christmas lights lined the lobby wall above voting booths and winter snowflake decorations dangled from the wood-planked ceiling.
By midday on Tuesday, a line stretched out the door as people waited to cast their ballots. "Four years ago there was a line to the street," said Medith Phillips, the head election official for the polling site, where more than 2,500 voters were registered.
As in years past, voters had started arriving outside the church at 6:30 a.m., said Ms. Phillips, adding that nearly 500 early absentee votes in her wards may contribute to smaller lines this year. Still, she darted around the room helping a dozen other volunteers answer questions as voters trickled through.
No one seemed to mind the delay.
Wisconsin voters have endured a double dose of television attack ads and campaign calls in recent months - not just from the presidential race, but from a nail-biting senate contest that only got nastier as Election Day neared.
"I don't think the sleaze is any greater," said John Stroebel, 40, who took the day off to vote with his wife and then go out for lunch to celebrate what they hoped would be an Obama victory. "I just think the volume has been getting louder."
Factor in the divisive recall election that failed to unseat Gov. Scott Walker in June, and Wisconsin voters seemed relieved to finally put election season - and the onslaught of partisan messages that has clogged their airwaves for most of the year - in the past.
"I can't wait until tomorrow and watch a full show without seeing a political ad," said a Green Bay resident, Amy Thurber, 42, who has been recording television programs and skipping over the commercial breaks.
In Appleton, others were just happy to finally cast their ballot.
Leaving the polling site, Carrie Huth, 18, an Obama supporter, smiled as she thanked the people who stopped to congratulate her on her first trip to the voting booth.
Her mother, Dorothy, seemed calmed to have finally picked a candidate after dithering for weeks. On the drive over to the polling site, she was still undecided - torn between her belief in fiscally conservative principles and dislike of the direction the Republican Party leans on social issues. "For me, it wasn't an easy choice," she said, declining to reveal her final decision as she returned to the car.
- Steven Yaccino
2:28 P.M. | Biden Votes and Hints at 2016
There was no misty-eyed nostalgia for Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. as he emerged from a polling booth in Greenville, Del., on Tuesday morning.
Just weeks shy of 70, Mr. Biden grinned when a pool reporter, Mike Memoli from the Tribune Company, asked if this was his last time voting for himself.
"No, I don't think so," Mr. Biden replied. Naturally, the remark immediately reignited speculation about his 2016 ambitions.
But Mr. Biden was still focused on the 2012 race when he arrived at his polling place, Alexis I. duPont High School, just after 7 a.m. The vice president waited in line for about 11 minutes - declining an offer to cut from a woman in front, according to the pool report. Once he got into the booth, it only took him 20 seconds.
Mr. Biden's political career is longer, by far, than that of anyone else on either presidential ticket: he was 29 when he won his first U.S. Senate election. Today's vote felt as good as that first one, he told the pool reporter.
"I tell you what, you know, every time I do it - this is the eighth time that I've run statewide in the state of Delaware - it's always a kick, it really is, to see people out here," Mr. Biden said.
Then Mr. Biden headed to the airport, got on his plane and made an unannounced stop in Cleveland - landing within sight of Mitt Romney, who was waiting on the tarmac to hold an event with Representative Paul D. Ryan in Ohio - where he dropped in for coffee and conversation with the mostly black clientele at the Landmark Diner.
- Sarah Wheaton
1:57 P.M. | Obama Congratulates Romney on 'Spirited Campaign'
CHICAGO - President Obama took a moment from the relentless pounding his campaign has been dishing out to congratulate his Republican rival, Mitt Romney, on Tuesday, as the two men began their final countdown to finding out which one of them will be sitting in the Oval Office next year.
During a stop at a local campaign office to thank volunteers, Mr. Obama gave Mr. Romney "congratulations on a spirited campaign."
"I know that his supporters are just as engaged and just as enthusiastic and working just as hard today," the president said. "We feel confident we've got the votes to win, but it's going to depend ultimately on whether those votes turn out."
Mr. Obama spent the morning making calls to volunteers to thank them. Because he already voted early two weeks ago - the better to set an example since his campaign has been depending heavily on early vote turnout among supporters - Mr. Obama couldn't take advantage of the traditional Election Day photo-op of the president going to his polling location to cast his ballot.
He did plan, however, to take part in another tradition, the Election Day basketball game, which he and friends have played on the day of each one of his elections.
The president was surrounding himself with friends, familiar faces and old campaign hands from his 2008 glory days. On this Election Day in Chicago, Team Obama was uniformly presenting a picture of cautious optimism. They all seem to think the president is going to win. But none of them is sure enough about it to avoid offering a caveat that Mr. Romney could pull it off somehow, even during private conversations with the news media.
- Helene Cooper
1:46 P.M. | Obama Mural Covered After Image Appears on Twitter
A judge in Philadelphia ordered poll workers to cover up a mural depicting President Obama at a school on Tuesday, after a photograph posted on Twitter, showing voting machines set up in front of the president's image, spread rapidly across the social network.
Valerie Caras, the communications director for the Republican Party of Pennsylvania, drew attention to the image, taken by one of the party's volunteer election monitors at the polling place for Philadelphia's 5th Ward, 18th Division, inside the Benjamin Franklin Elementary School.
PHOTO: talk about #demshenanigans and electioneering in the polling place. HUGE Obama mural in Philly polling place-35W http://t.co/3Rs4P8hF
- Valerie Caras (@ValerieCaras)6 Nov 12
Just an hour later, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee, Tim Miller, posted an image on his Twitter feed, showing the order to have the mural covered, which was issued by Judge John Milton Younge, a Democrat.
Update: Election Judge in PA has ordered Obama mural in polling place covered up. Order here -> http://t.co/bcCgpNbo
- Tim Miller (@Timodc)6 Nov 12
The mural appeared to pay tribute to President Obama's 2008 campaign, featuring the words "hope" and "change" on either side of his image, and a quote from a speech he gave during the Democratic primary campaign that year, on Feb. 5, 2008, in which he said: "Change will not come if we wait for some other person or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek."
- Robert Mackey
1:44 P.M. | Voter Portraits: Athens, Ohio
"There's too wide a gap between rich and poor. Obama has more compassion for poor people."
Name: Emily Lai
Age: Over 65
Party: Democrat
Supporting: President Obama
Location: Athens, Ohio
Occupation: International grocery store owner
Concerned About: Economic inequality
- Mark Makela
1:41 p.m. | For Romney Camp, Enthusiasm and Exhaustion, With One Exception, Age 7
CLEVELAND - Hours after the polls opened, Stuart Stevens was on the attack.
Mr. Stevens, Mitt Romney's senior strategist, prowled the aisles of Mr. Romney's private plane, Nerf gun in hand, aiming it at unsuspecting reporters. Then, something out the window caught his attention.
Peering out on the tarmac here, where Mr. Romney had just landed - one of two last-minute stops on the final day of the election - Mr. Stevens observed the vice president's plane, Air Force Two, also idling on the runway.
"I thought they said that it was panic that we were campaigning today," Mr. Stevens deadpanned.
Just after noon on Election Day, the mood on the Romney campaign was lighthearted, and even upbeat. Mr. Romney was joined on his final swing by Bob White, a close confidant whom he jokingly calls his "wing man"; Garrett Jackson, his personal assistant; Kevin Madden, a senior adviser; Rick Gorka, the campaign's traveling press secretary; and his oldest son, Tagg, as well Tagg's oldest son, Joe.
Mr. Romney's aides seemed relaxed if exhausted. Mr. Madden told reporters that he had hardly slept; the campaign had arrived back at their hotel late Monday night after a huge rally in New Hampshire, and he'd had to get up in the predawn dark for a TV appearance. Mr. Gorka wandered to the back of the plane holding a "Gorka doll" - a miniature replica of himself that a member of the campaign's finance team had ordered after Mr. Gorka had a foul-mouthed explosion in Poland, during Mr. Romney's foreign trip.
Both Mr. Madden and Mr. Gorka said they were eschewing Twitter for the day. Nothing good, they joked, could come from monitoring tweets on Election Day.
Upon landing in Ohio, Mr. Romney waited on his plane until his running mate, Representative Paul D. Ryan, arrived on his plane - "The Flying Badger." Mr. Ryan boarded Mr. Romney's cabin to applause.
And then the two men were off, heading to a "Victory Center" - basically a campaign phone bank and office where volunteers are trying to turn out every last voter - to greet supporters.
Meanwhile, Mr. Ryan's three young kids - Liza, Charlie and Sam - filed off their plane and onto the tarmac, where they were joined by a coterie of cousins and Mr. Ryan's wife, Janna, to toss around a football.
By the time Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan headed to grab lunch at Wendy's, most of the Ryan clan had tired of football. But Mr. Ryan's youngest son, Sam, 7, was still giddy with energy.
From the window of the room where the traveling press corps was waiting, he could be seen below, running around - and around - in circles.
- Ashley Parker
1:12 P.M. | The First 'Social Media Election'?
Is this the first "social media Election Day"? Judging by the number of posts and photos being uploaded to Twitter, Instagram and other platforms, it certainly looks that way.
Depending on how you slice it, about half of the top-10 trending topics on Twitter at the moment are election-related (one is a promoted hashtag, #VoteObama; Halo 4 and the Cypher Kids Club have also made appearances). The Times asked readers to let us know about their election day experiences with the tag #tellNYT (specify where you voted, what you saw and how it felt) and early reports are flowing in. (We are sharing a selection on the nytimes.com homepage.)
Some are noting long waits and some chaotic conditions, often in frigid weather:
In bitter cold line for 2 hours: Carroll Gardens Library, district 47. But nothing worse then this in PA bit.ly/XgoLrO#TellNYT
- Giovanna Chesler (@g6pictures) November 6, 2012
#Voted in #parkslope this morning. Totally chaotic! Long lines & confusing form for voters who recently changed voter reg to #NYC#TellNYT
- Chloe Lena (@chloelenas) November 6, 2012
Quiet & cold outside Prov.RI poll but crowded inside w/ roughly 100 ppl waiting. A-L took 2-3x longr than M-Z.#tellNYTtwitter.com/tyson987654321
- Tyson Smith (@tyson987654321) November 6, 2012
Others avoided waiting in line altogether by voting early.
I #voted weeks ago. No standing in line, no anxiety getting to the polls. #earlyvoting could have/will change/d election outcomes. #TellNYT
- Kenny Walker (@kennycwalker) November 6, 2012
Still others made sure to get up bright and early.
My voting station was in the basement of my building. I voted in my pajamas at 6:00 AM and then went back to sleep. (BRG) #tellNYT
- Vergara & Grant (@patandben) November 6, 2012
On Instagram, where we asked users to use the hashtag #NYTelection - a selection can be found here - photos are showing a combination of long lines, elaborate signage, first-time voters, and, in some cases, individual ballots. (Readers should take care on that last category, since, as a a report by ProPublica notes, it is illegal to share your ballot or photograph inside a polling station in some states, including Hawaii, Colorado and Michigan.)
- Dan Saltzstein
12:59 P.M. | Showing ID in New Hampshire
MANCHESTER, N.H. - Frank Dubisz, a 72-year-old registered Independent, played a joke on his polling administrator when he cast his ballot for Mr. Obama at the Bishop Leo E. O'Neil Youth Center near downtown Manchester.
When the administrator, a neighbor he's known for years, asked for his photo identification, he thumbed through a giant wad of cards in his wallet, finally settling on his Sam's Club membership card. "She said 'That's good!'" he said. "It's one thing if she didn't know me, but I've voted in this ward for 50 years."
Stephen B. Stepanek, a conservative state representative seeking re-election to New Hampshire's Hillsborough District 6, stood outside his polling location in Manchester's Ninth Ward. He wore a button that said "NObama" and held a Romney-Ryan sign. He said the state's new law that requires voters to present photo identification or sign a sworn statement is "a great thing and a long time coming."
According to his local survey, at least 40 to 50 homes in Manchester have residents listed as registered voters who no longer live in the state. "I know a guy who hasn't lived in this district in 35 years and he's still registered," Mr. Stepanek said. "You need a photo ID to cash a check. You should need one to vote."
When asked about the Obama campaign's concerns that the law could scare away voters who hadn't previously participated in the political process, Mr. Stefanik said, "That's just an excuse because they're scared they're going to run out of Democrats."
Barbara E. Shaw, a Democrat seeking her seventh term as a state representative for Hillsborough District 16, voted against the law. "If there was evidence of fraud, it'd be different," she said. "There are always people who will try to do something sneaky but most people just want to vote."
- Amy Chozick
12:58 P.M. | Voter Portraits: Lexington, Va.
"I don't think people should have to lose their homes because they can't afford health care."
Name: Dr. Avtar Robert Moore
Age: Over 65
Party: Democrat
Supporting: President Obama
Location: Lexington, Va.
Occupation: Doctor of osteopathic medicine
Concerned About: Affordable health care
- Kirsten Luce
12:26 P.M. | 'Sick of Fighting'
KENSINGTON, N.H. - This 2,200-person town is a bucolic enclave, nestled just north of the Massachusetts border. It is a swing town, in a swing county, in a swing state. As Lee Veader headed to the polls on Tuesday morning, he was hoping the day would bring relief from what he said was the most acidic election he can remember, with partisanship as rife in his own social circles as it has been on cable television.
"There's really people that we're close with that are willing to let politics end relationships - we're talking friends that you've been friends with for years that all of a sudden can't get past not sharing the same viewpoint," said Mr. Veader, a registered Republican who lives here and works in sales. "People really feel strongly how they stand nowadays. It's not as gray as it used to be - because of that, it just gets personal."
Mr. Veader, who voted for Mitt Romney for president, said he had tried to be quiet about his choice so as not to provoke tension - which has been exacerbated, he said, by people's ability to share their political views over social media. "With everyone having access to Facebook, Twitter, they're saying things I don't think they'll be able to take back."
Alia Elwy, a 19-year-old student at the University of New Hampshire, said social media had given her pause over the course of the campaign, too. Ms. Elwy said she had been shocked by what she described as racist comments by acquaintances and classmates here about the election posted to Facebook. "I never really realized how much racism there was here," she said. "They're just repeating the same things - Obama is a terrorist, he's in cahoots with Al Qaeda - things are so out there, they don't even make sense."
"I'm glad it's over. I'm sick of fighting, I'm sick of political ads, phone calls, all these things," added Ms. Elwy, who voted for President Obama.
Diane Chigas, an independent voter, also planned to vote for Mr. Obama as she rushed into the polling place here on her lunch break from her job as a receptionist at a law firm. It is the Affordable Care Act, she said, that came to the fore of her mind as she made her decision. "I had to work through two years of chemo so I wouldn't lose my insurance," said Ms. Chigas, "I'm not a pre-existing condition. I'm a person."
Beverly Clarke, a 62-year-old volunteer at a local food pantry, said she was excited to vote for Mr. Romney. Health care costs, she said, have eroded the middle class, and she has been frustrated by high property taxes and tight budgets here. "We don't have streetlights, sidewalks, we have part-time fire and police," said Ms. Clarke, who is a registered Republican. "I really think he could pare down some of these tax issues," she said of Mr. Romney. "He will put things into their proper perspectives - give things back to the states to run."
Dennis Carroll, a retired small-business owner, said he had tired of Mr. Obama's rhetoric on taxes and was planning to vote for Mr. Romney. "He's doing class warfare. I'm not a rich guy, but they pay their fair share. How much more does he want them to pay?" Mr. Carroll asked.
Mr. Carroll said he was also distrustful of Mr. Obama's record on foreign policy: "I don't feel safe with this guy. He bows down to everybody, he doesn't rule with strength."
"My husband's being very kind," said his wife, Jo, suggesting that Mr. Carroll had used stronger language at home.
Inside the polling place, the election moderator, Harold Bragg, stuck ballots into a wooden box and steeled himself for the task of counting them all by hand later this evening. "It's been very busy, we have yet to see a break this morning," Mr. Bragg said. "I'd say we're doing three to one what we normally do."
- Jess Bidgood
12:25 P.M. | 'A New Hampshire Citizen First'
MANCHESTER, N.H. - At Bishop Leo E. O'Neil Youth Center near downtown with its rows of government-subsidized housing and redbrick buildings, Eric Thoman, a 51-year-old former software engineer on disability, stood outside holding a Romney-Ryan sign. Mr. Thoman, a registered independent, voted for Mitt Romney because, he said, he felt that President Obama had expanded the role of the federal government.
"I'm a New Hampshire citizen first, and a Manchester citizen before that," Mr. Thoman said. "Limited government is good government."
- Amy Chozick
12:18 P.M. | A First-Time Voter
CHERRY HILLS VILLAGE, Colo. - The excitement of voting for the first time nearly overwhelmed Lorena Cantarovici, an immigrant from Buenos Aires who became an American citizen three years ago.
Ms. Cantarovici, who owns a Denver-area empanada restaurant, beamed as she emerged from Cherry Hills Village Elementary School after casting her first vote in an American presidential election.
"It felt fantastic. After 11 years of fighting to become a citizen and all the complications, it is very important for me to participate right now," she gushed. "The United States is asking for my vote. It's incredible!"
Ms. Cantarovici left Argentina 11 years ago and landed in Denver through a friend, hoping for better economic opportunity. And she credited President Obama's economic and immigration policies with allowing her restaurant to flourish and enabling her to become a citizen. In return, he got her vote.
The difference between voting in Argentina and the United States was not lost on Ms. Cantarovici as she marveled at how extensive and organized the electoral process seemed to her.
"Here, the campaign process is fantastic. Just seeing the future presidents debate is great. It's so great," she said. "In Argentina, you go more for who your family votes for. If you come from a family that is Peronista, you are Peronista too."
And despite the large numbers of Coloradans who decided to vote early, there was no way Ms. Cantarovici was going to miss out on the experience of experiencing the polls in person.
"I was waiting for today. Everyone was telling me, 'You can go and vote before,'" she said, laughing. "'No, I want to vote the day you need to go and vote!'"
- Dan Frosch
12:12 P.M. | Lines in Milwaukee
MILWAUKEE - In Milwaukee's northern neighborhoods, an African-American enclave where President Obama enjoys wide support, some residents said they had waited as long as 90 minutes to vote, longer than any other election in their lives.
At Rufus King High School, several hundred residents were lined up by 6:45 a.m., 15 minutes before the polls opened. By 8:30 a.m. at Washington Park Library, nearly 100 would-be voters stood, grim-faced, in a line that circled the glass lobby and then snaked all the way up a staircase. "I should've voted early," one woman said, shaking her head. "This is ridiculous."
High turnout accounted for most of the long lines, although there were scattered reports of damaged voting machines, including a breakdown of the single machine at Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School, which led to some voters' leaving in frustration. The machine was back up after a half-hour wait.
"We figured we'd wait till everybody went to work, but looks like a lot of people are out of work," said Donnie Beene, 63, as he gestured toward the dozens of people lined up on the sidewalk in front of Atkinson Library, near West Capitol Drive. A few passing motorists shouted out to friends in line, leading the voters in a chant of "O-ba-ma!"
As she left the library's polling place, Hazel Johnson said it had taken her 90 minutes to cast her ballot. "I've never waited that long," she said. The library, she said, was far too small a site for a smooth operation, and at one point an ambulance had to be called because a man with diabetes fainted. But she said she did not see any problems or irregularities. "And I was looking!" she added, with a laugh.
Mr. Beene, at the back of the line, said that he originally had some doubts about giving Mr. Obama a second term. "That was until people started learning the truth" about Mr. Romney, Mr. Beene said. Drawing laughs from the crowd, he offered his definition of trickle-down economics: "Give to the rich, and hopefully we'll get some."
After voting at the Children's Outing Association on West Burleigh Street, Theresa Pelmore, 22, explained her vote for Mr. Obama this way: "I believe everybody deserves a second chance." Ms. Pelmore said that she had finished school, where she trained as a medical assistant, but that she had not been able to find work for nearly a year. "I don't know who I blame for that," she said. For the president, "it was hard, because he came in having to deal with what President Bush left behind."
Chris Mortorff, an observer for Mitt Romney's campaign and a law student in Chicago, made the hour-and-a-half drive to Milwaukee in the car he shares with his wife, who is nine months pregnant. "She said she wasn't having the baby today," Mr. Mortorff explained. In several hours at the polls, he said he had seen only one irregularity, when poll workers did not ask residents for a proof of address when they tried to register to vote. (In Wisconsin, residents can register on the day of the election.) The problem was quickly corrected, he said.
- Michael Grynbaum
11:59 A.M. | A Frustrated Voter in Westchester County
Randy Harter, 66, an artist and designer, voted in New Rochelle, in Westchester County, N.Y., at 6 a.m. and said his frustrating experience was symptomatic of incompetence in government. It was an issue that was on his mind because of what he described as an incompetent response to Hurricane Sandy in an area where thousands of houses still have no power more than a week after the storm struck.
He said he asked an election worker how to fill out a paper ballot he had never seen before and was told: "Just fill it out." When his ballot was inserted, the machine jammed, he said. A second worker came over and brought another machine, and it too jammed. He eventually was given an envelope in which to place a ballot that would be hand counted. The entire voting experience took 45 minutes, Mr. Harter said.
"Morons are running things, and nobody's in charge," he said afterward.
He said he voted for President Obama. "He inherited a government that's incompetent, and he's trying to fix it," Mr. Harter said.
- Joseph Berger
11:53 A.M. | Voting for Romney in Chicago
CHICAGO - Here in a heavily Democratic city in a heavily Democratic state, Ken Selvig, a resident of the South Loop, is voting against the grain. In a sea of blue, he is a flash of red: the elusive Chicagoan who is also a Romney supporter.
"You stay quiet about it," he said, only half joking. "It's not something you see much on the surface around Chicago, but there are a few of us."
While Mr. Selvig, 45, voted for Mitt Romney, it was not with an incredible amount of enthusiasm.
"It's not that I really, really like him," said Mr. Selvig, who works in the legal field. "I'm not gung ho about Romney. He's not like Reagan, funny and charismatic. But I just prefer him. It's not about being a nice guy. I'm sure Obama is a nice guy. This election is all about the economy."
He continued: "It was all hope and change last time. It's hope and change again, but in the opposite direction. I just think we need a change because of the state of the economy."
- Susan Saulny
11:48 A.M. | Voting in Philadelphia
PHILADELPHIA - Kristin Luebbert, 53, a seventh- and eighth-grade teacher in the Fairmount section of Philadelphia, said she voted for President Obama, as she did in 2008, because she believes Mitt Romney lacks specifics in his pitch to voters and isn't concerned about ordinary people.
"I don't think he really has a plan," she said. "I don't think he really does care about the little people."
Felicia Brown, 43, a respiratory therapist at a Philadelphia hospital, said she had been ready to produce identification to polling officials, but found it wasn't necessary.
A Pennsylvania law passed this year would have required voters to present official ID but was put on hold by a judge after opponents argued that it would have disenfranchised groups such as the elderly and the poor who do not have driver's licenses or other forms of officially approved ID.
Ms. Brown, speaking outside a polling place in West Philadelphia's Parkside neighborhood, said she voted a straight Democratic ticket because she believes that Mr. Obama needs another term to complete the work of his first four years. In previous elections, she said, she had voted for some Democrats and some Republicans among federal and state candidates for different offices, but backed all Democrats this time.
Ms. Brown said she would not vote for Mitt Romney because he had "contradicted himself" on some issues including health care, and she believes that he would lessen women's rights to abortion and family planning if elected president.
The economic crisis that confronted Mr. Obama when he came into office was "not his fault," Ms. Brown said, and he needs another term to put it right.
- Jon Hurdle
11:40 A.M. | Waiting to Vote in Colorado
COMMERCE CITY, Colo. - At a community center here on the outskirts of Denver, a line of people snaked through the lobby as the polls opened at 7 a.m., Tuesday morning.
Many Coloradans voted before Election Day - either by mailing in their ballots or voting in person at early-voting locations - but some people clearly wanted to cast their votes in person.
"I got here early because I didn't want stand in line," said Jimmy Gilbee, 59, who voted for President Obama, saying he thought the president should get four more years to implement his policies. "It was quick, and it was easy."
David Rolla, a 60-year-old retired teacher, said he decided to show up in person because he worried his vote would get miscounted if he mailed it in.
"Remember what happened in Florida," said Mr. Rolla, who also supported Mr. Obama. "I had to be here in person."
Here in Adams County, Mr. Obama won by about 30,000 votes in 2008. But Republicans were hoping to make inroads in the sprawl of politically mixed Denver suburbs along Colorado's front range.
According to numbers released Tuesday morning by the Colorado secretary of state, Scott Gessler, more than 1.8 million Coloradans had voted before Election Day.
Of that number, some 675,797 Republicans and 642,834 Democrats voted early, evidence, ostensibly, that Republicans have been pushing people to choose early.
More than half a million unaffiliated voters also cast their ballots early - perhaps the most critical number in a state where such voters make up a sizable slice of the electorate and have the power to turn elections.
"We feel very good about our position," said James Garcia, state director for the Romney campaign. "We've been leading the early vote throughout the entire way and the same with the mail in returns. That's a huge chunk of Colorado."
- Dan Frosch
11:18 A.M. | Rooting for 'Our Guy'
CHICAGO - Here in the heart of President Obama's hometown, where he is planning a huge victory party in a cavernous convention center tonight, is there any surprise that voters are cheering for one of their own?
Enthusiasm may have waned in other parts of the country since the president was swept into office on the promise of "hope and change" in 2008, but Chicago is still enchanted with the candidate some people lovingly refer to as "our guy."
And no one wants to see their guy lose.
"I'm just ready for the next phase of change," said Bianca Murray, 29, a South Sider who voted early this morning for Mr. Obama. "It didn't take four years to get our country into this economic state, and there's no way it would have taken only four years to fix it."
Ms. Murray thinks Mr. Obama actually has more support now than in 2008. "If anything, I think the ones who weren't with him the first time are now more on his side."
Why?
"It's personal now," she said. "The insults, the attacks, how much the middle class has to lose if Mitt Romney wins. People know they will feel pain, personal pain, if the other side wins."
Gabe Morton-Cook, 30, agreed. "I've been an Obama supporter all along," he said. "The last four years, his progress has been stifled by Congress and I'm confident that in the next four years, he can make the progress he's been wanting to."
For Ms. Murray, a hotel clerk, and Mr. Morton-Cook, a graphic designer, voting today was exciting. Their votes were cast enthusiastically, not simply out of obligation.
"Everybody I know has been pretty excited about this," Mr. Morton-Cook said. "And any election this close is bound to get people out to vote."
A reporter wondered if Mr. Morton-Cook and his friends had been unduly influenced by the amount of good feelings in Chicago for Mr. Obama.
"No," he said. "That can't explain it because I just moved here from Minnesota."
Ms. Murray said the high spirits locally might have influenced her vote. "Of course we want our guy to win," she said.
- Susan Saulny
11:15 A.M. | Bombarded by Robocalls
LAS VEGAS - As he left his polling place here today, Bob Cole, a retired casino security guard, said he was happy that the campaign was over.
A registered independent, Mr. Cole said he received about a dozen robocalls nightly during the campaign. One of them was from former President Bill Clinton, asking him to vote for someone in Michigan.
"I don't have anything to do with Michigan," Mr. Cole said.
Mr. Cole said he erased the messages nightly.
Despite being an independent, Mr. Cole said he voted a straight Democratic ticket.
- Stephanie Saul
10:47 A.M. | Ryan Votes in Janesville
JANESVILLE, Wis. - Representative Paul D. Ryan and his family arrived at the Hedberg Public Library at 8:40 Tuesday morning. Moving to the head of a line in a second-floor room, Mr. Ryan and his wife, Janna, waited for a poll worker to find their names in the registration book. As she flipped pages, Liza Ryan, 10, pointed to the entry and said, "Paul D. Ryan."
At a second table, the Ryans picked up their ballots, and Mr. Ryan shook hands with a few polling volunteers he knew.
"You know who this is, don't you?'' he asked his three children as he shook one man's hand.
"You keep in touch with Larry?'' Mr. Ryan said to another man.
The family moved to a line of folding tables to mark their ballots.
"Come on, Sam, let's do this together,'' Mr. Ryan said to his youngest child, 7, who increasingly enjoyed the campaign in recent days, flashing V-for-victory signs once his father finished a speech and stepping to the microphone at one event to say, "One more day!"
Mr. Ryan marked his ballot as Sam and Liza looked on. Mrs. Ryan voted with Charlie, 9, who has proved shyer on the trail, often ducking behind a barrier onstage while his father has introduced him.
Both voting-age Ryans fed their ballots into an Optech III-P Eagle machine. It sucked in the cardboard ballots, scanned them electronically and deposited the "paper trail" in a bin below, according to a poll worker.
After he stepped from the room, Mr. Ryan said: "I feel great today. It's a great tradition. It's Election Day. I'm very excited to be here. I've been voting here a long time."
"It felt good waking up in my hometown," he added. "It felt good coming to this neighborhood I grew up in. I went to junior high about 60 yards that way. So it's great to be here in my hometown. It's great to vote, and we're really excited."
Asked if he expected to win, Mr. Ryan said: "I think we are. I feel good about it."
- Trip Gabriel
10:26 A.M. | Looking to Turn Wisconsin Red
GREEN BAY, Wis. - It has been nearly three decades since Wisconsin voted for a Republican presidential candidate - not since Ronald Reagan in 1984 - but some voters here believe that could change this year.
If that historical trend is upended, it will be in part to the credit of a recent uptick in Republican enthusiasm in the state and a G.O.P. ground game that was honed while fending off a union-backed recall election that failed to oust Gov. Scott Walker, a conservative, just a few months ago.
"It just seems like the Republicans are so much more a force, stronger," said one woman who declined to give her name but said she voted for President Obama. "They've gotten their message out."
That recall election bitterly divided the state along partisan lines. And after a wave of Republicans victories in the State Legislature during the 2010 midterm elections, some here are wondering if conservative momentum in Wisconsin will be enough to help overthrow an Obama presidency.
Steven Steinbruecker, 40, a Republican supporter who has his own electronics repair business, did not hesitate when asked how well he thought Mitt Romney would do statewide. "I think Romney's going to run away with it," he said, citing the recall win and the vice-presidential candidate, Paul D. Ryan, a Wisconsin congressman, for his confidence in a more eager conservative electorate in the state this year. "I think 'excited' is the wrong term, but I think we're tired of Democrats."
John Seybold, 50, another Romney backer, said many people here would cast their vote for the former Massachusetts governor on Tuesday because they were discouraged about the direction the country is heading in - not only economically, but also morally. "It wasn't Adam and Steve, it was Adam and Eve," he said, apparently referring to Mr. Obama's support of same-sex marriage. "If you believe in God, you have to vote for Romney."
Even Obama supporters at one polling site in Green Bay said they had seriously considered supporting Mr. Romney until late into the campaign. Others said the end of the election and the torrent of get-out-the-vote efforts, whatever the outcome, could not come soon enough.
"I'll be glad when it's over with all the door-knocking and the phone calls," said Diane Basten, 70, a public school kindergarten teacher who backed Mr. Obama. "I would easily say we had at least 500 calls in the last month."
- Steven Yaccino
10:24 A.M. | After Prison, Hoping to Vote
LAS VEGAS - One hopeful voter here is Clyde Davis, an ex-offender who wants to cast his ballot today for President Obama. Mr. Davis said that he recently went to a grocery store to vote early but was told that his voting rights had been negated. Mr. Davis served time in prison for burglary.
Today, he is waiting for paperwork from the prison system that will permit him to vote. He's hoping the documents will be ready in time to cast his ballot.
"I felt terribly upset," Mr. Davis said. "I know every person's vote counts, and I was expecting to vote for the candidate that I saw would best suit America as far as the people were concerned. They just wouldn't let me vote."
Mr. Davis, 31, has been working with the American Civil Liberties Union and the Advancement Project to get the paperwork in order. He is one of at least 18 Nevadans who were turned away during early voting because of felony convictions and are now working with the two groups to have their rights restored.
The A.C.L.U. estimates that more than 165,000 ex-offenders in Nevada are not registered to vote, partly as a result of a complex system for restoring voting rights.
- Stephanie Saul
10:23 A.M. | Hoping to Seal the Deal
MANCHESTER, N.H. - The nondescript basement of an office park here buzzed with activity early Tuesday morning. The walls were covered with makeshift signs directing Obama campaign volunteers on how to get New Hampshire voters to the polls. Signs written in marker gave phone numbers for voters to call to schedule a ride to the nearest polling spot.
"We'd like to seal the deal with the voter," Russ Roy, a 58-year-old software engineer, told a group of canvassers before they hit the nearby streets. He gave them one last piece of advice: "We're being pushy, but we're being nice-pushy, O.K.?"
Mr. Roy had been volunteering for President Obama's re-election effort for four months. He supported John Edwards in the Democratic primary in 2008 (a "bad choice," he said) and decided to get involved because of the "divergence of choice" in this campaign. "I don't worship at Mr. Obama's feet," he said. "But for the most part he's done an enormous job at putting us back on track."
Obama volunteers said it was particularly important this year that voters who have not participated before understand the process. "We need to make it crystal clear that no one will be turned away, no one will be denied for lack of identification," Mr. Roy said. "We're going to dispel any fears people have."
- Amy Chozick
10:30 A.M. | Whiplash in Brown County
GREEN BAY, Wis. - Not far from the Fox River, flecks of snow began to fall as voters filtered into this city's bus station to cast their ballots early Tuesday morning.
While President Obama has led in statewide polls, Republican efforts to turn Wisconsin red this year may hinge on some northern areas of the state, including counties around Green Bay, that have shown a wide partisan swing in past elections.
When Norman Thurber, 49, arrived to vote on Tuesday, he still had not yet decided who he thought the next president should be. He had been wrestling with it for weeks, trying his best to avoid an onslaught of negative advertising while he made up his mind.
Life has not been easy since he voted for Mr. Obama in 2008. Mr. Thurber has been out of work since 2009, when his 20-year construction business collapsed with the housing market. "It's hard to find people who want to build houses," he said, describing how he went from being a licensed contractor to doing renovation work to being unemployed. "It's hard to find anyone who wants to invest in anything."
But he was also reluctant to back Mitt Romney, he said. "I feel like I'm being forced to choose between one of two devils," he said. "I don't think that either candidate has what it takes to get the country where it needs to be."
So he waited until the final possible moment to make up his mind. "I won't know until I walk in there and make a choice," he said.
Fewer places have seen more partisan whiplash in Wisconsin than here in Brown County, where the lawn signs appear to be equally divided between the two major political parties. In 2004, President George W. Bush beat John Kerry in the county by 10 percentage points. In 2008, the county flipped in Mr. Obama's favor by almost the same amount. In the years since, Republicans took it back when they elected Gov. Scott Walker in 2010 and rebuffed a union-backed attempt to recall the conservative governor this year, winning both of those elections with double-digit margins.
Armondo Diaz, 30, a forklift driver for a mail distribution company in town, said he was planning to vote for Mitt Romney until about a month ago. He changed his mind after the president displayed stronger performances in the final two debates, and said that he believed that Mr. Obama deserved a second chance.
"I think the economy wasn't fixable in four years no matter who was in there," he said. "Pretty much any president I vote for, I give a second term. I did the same for Bush."
- Steven Yaccino
Romney Returns to Iowa for One Last Shot at Victory
The Caucus Click: Autograph Seekers
Rocking the Vote, Meat Loaf Endorses Romney
Mourdock's Comments Pose Dilemma for Romney
Coming Later Today: Coverage of the Second Presidential Debate
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November 6, 2012 Tuesday
An Election Guide for Wall Street
BYLINE: BEN PROTESS and JESSICA SILVER-GREENBERG
SECTION: BUSINESS
LENGTH: 964 words
HIGHLIGHT: Wall Street is betting on a game-changing election. But the industry may not be so lucky, even if Mitt Romney wins. Financial analysts and lobbyists paint a murky picture of the campaign, with a Romney victory that is likely to produce both wins and losses for Wall Street.
Wall Street is betting on a game-changing election. But the industry may not be so lucky, even if Mitt Romney wins.
Analysts and lobbyists have painted a murky picture of the campaign. While a Romney administration could help banks and hedge funds, a Republican victory could bring uncertainty, too.
At the same time, a second term for President Obama might not be a doomsday situation. In many ways, the industry has already adjusted to the new regulatory environment, and the administration might rein in its fervor for change. An Obama victory might also allow Wall Street to pivot its focus to the "fiscal cliff," the dreaded package of tax increases and spending cuts slated to kick in on Jan. 1.
"The industry is probably not thrilled with an Obama win, but they know what they're getting," said Brian Gardner, a Washington research executive at KBW.
After taking a rhetorical and regulatory licking from the Obama administration, Wall Street has thrown its hopes and riches behind Mr. Romney. The industry has spared no expense to try to elect the former private equity executive, with Mr. Romney's top five donors hailing from the financial industry. Goldman Sachs and Bank of America lead the list, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
The spending spree stems, in part, from Wall Street's fraught relationship with Mr. Obama. After helping to usher in Mr. Obama's election four years ago, Goldman and other firms became disillusioned with the president's regulatory crackdown known as the Dodd-Frank Act. Some executives also find Mr. Obama disengaged, while others never forgave the president for his pejorative depiction of them as "fat cats."
"There's fatigue in the industry from being a target, and that will obviously color their views," said Kenneth E. Bentsen Jr., a former Democratic representative in Congress who is now a senior Wall Street lobbyist at the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association.
Wall Street will no doubt reap some benefits from a Romney presidency.
Mr. Romney will appoint new leaders at most financial regulatory agencies, including the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, an aggressive rule-writing bureau that has become the scorn of many bankers. Under Republican control, the agencies could also have a lighter touch, bringing fewer enforcement cases against big banks and hedge funds.
In a more significant move, a Romney administration is expected to pursue a makeover of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the new consumer watchdog born out of the Dodd-Frank overhaul. Republicans hope to wrestle control from a single director, Richard Cordray, and refashion the bureau into a bipartisan commission. Mr. Cordray, whose term extends through 2013, was appointed by Mr. Obama during a Congressional recess.
Sallie Mae, the largest student lender in the nation, could be another winner if Mr. Romney is elected. During the race, the Romney campaign hinted that it would allow private lenders back into the system for distributing federal loan money. A Republican administration, some analysts say, would also abandon proposed reforms that would allow students to discharge loan debt in bankruptcy.
The changes could similarly extend to Dodd-Frank, leading authorities to prolong public comment periods for unfinished rules. Under a Republican president, some provisions passed in the wake of the financial crisis could be tweaked. One of the more hotly contested areas was the swap-dealer designation, which requires that banks increase disclosures to trading partners and hold additional capital. Should Mr. Romney win, bank lobbyists say the industry will focus on taming these rules, which are still being hashed out at the trading commission.
"The Republicans would control the pen, which is tremendous power," Mr. Bentsen said.
Mr. Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts and a longtime executive at Bain Capital, has vowed to "repeal and replace" Dodd-Frank. While Mr. Romney has not explained what would take the place of the law, his promise has fed Wall Street's election fervor.
But Wall Street's wager on Mr. Romney, the analysts and lobbyists say, is hardly a sure bet. Even if tens of millions of dollars in donations from the financial industry help push Mr. Romney into the White House, the Senate is likely to remain in the hands of Democrats.
That political stranglehold would prevent Republicans from passing a sweeping overhaul of Dodd-Frank. Regulators could also scramble to finish the most contentious Dodd-Frank policies, including the Volcker Rule, during Mr. Obama's lame duck presidency to safeguard their work from Republican second-guessing.
In a recent report, Dan Alamariu of the Eurasia Group noted that "financial regulation is for Republicans what the Patriot Act was for Democrats in 2008: something disliked, but also something useful."
And Mr. Romney may not prove such a friendly face to Wall Street in some cases.
In the first presidential debate, Mr. Romney took aim at one of the few Dodd-Frank provisions that Wall Street actually supports - a plan to unwind the "systemically important" banks. He derided the plan as "the biggest kiss that's been given to New York banks I've ever seen."
Mr. Romney also promises to eject the Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, who is beloved by many on Wall Street. Some financiers worry that Mr. Romney would also install Thomas M. Hoenig, a former Fed official who favors breaking up the big banks, as chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
"The changes" that could come from a Republican victory, Mr. Gardner said, "are probably friendlier to community banks than the 'too big to fail' firms."
Fact-Checking Obama's 'Kiss' to Wall Street
With Election Nearing, Wall Street Ponders a Romney Presidency
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November 6, 2012 Tuesday
Election Night: Live-Blogging the Media Coverage
BYLINE: THE NEW YORK TIMES
SECTION: BUSINESS; media
LENGTH: 5825 words
HIGHLIGHT: The Media Decoder staff looks at the media coverage of the 2012 presidential election.
The Media Decoder staff looks at the media coverage of the 2012 presidential election.
00:50 AM | A Victory Less Sweet
On most cable stations and networks news, the aura from President Barack Obama's projected win lasted about 9 seconds. Almost immediately came the hard turn into the problems of governance, gave the moment a sour cast, especially compared with the delirium of four years ago. The tyranny of the new, the next, the things to come, is a requirement of news, but it can render any victory, even great big ones, small and less consequential.
- David Carr
00:37 AM | Running Against the Middle
Crowd at the Romney's election night party has turned against CNN. http://t.co/w0DZ1oQR Except Fox called the race first.
- david carr (@carr2n)7 Nov 12
- David Carr
00:10 AM | That Didn't Take Long
The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy.
- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)7 Nov 12
- David Carr
0:09 A.M. | Again, Audience for Live 'Daily Show' Leaves Happy
Jon Stewart timed his live edition of "The Daily Show" perfectly Tuesday night, with the presidential election called for President Obama by the networks in the middle of the show.
As Mr. Stewart announced the results to a clearly partisan Democratic audience (which erupted into a standing ovation), the top executives at Comedy Central sprung into action with a special promotion.
The network's "Key and Peele" show, which has gained fame for Jordan Peele's Obama impression (where his alter ego, Luther, played by Keegan-Michael Key, voices the president's supposed submerged rage), shot three different versions of promotions for its show Wednesday night - one for a win, one for a loss and one if the outcome was still in doubt.
Michele Ganeless, the president of Comedy Central, said the winning promo was cued up and ready to go and the network was able to insert it into the last commercial break in the show.
"The one where Obama lost was actually the funniest," Ms. Ganeless said.
And the network is likely to make all three available on its Web site. This is the second election where the projection of Mr. Obama winning the presidency fell during the hour when Mr. Stewart was performing his live show on Comedy Central.
- Bill Carter
0:02 A.M. | On Fox News, Karl Rove Second-Guesses Fox News on Ohio
Karl Rove was incredulous. His colleagues at the Fox News decision desk had called Ohio - and the election - for President Obama, a move he insisted just a few minutes earlier would be premature.
"We've got to be careful about calling this when we have 991 votes separating the candidates," he scolded them. "I'd be very cautious about intruding into this process."
Silence settled over the set.
"That's awkward," Megyn Kelly quipped. And she and her co-anchor, Bret Baier, offered to broker something of a compromise. They would interview the decision desk about why they made their call.
And so ensued the most bizarre on-air encounter of election night: a network anchor putting her colleagues on the spot, forcing them to defend their news judgment.
- Jeremy W. Peters
11:57 P.M. | The Tense Moments at ABC News Were Backstage
Just before 11 p.m., a pivotal hour for presidential election coverage, the power went out inside ABC's tricked-out studio above Times Square.
The lights around Diane Sawyer and George Stephanopoulos's desk flickered off. So did the lights that powered a huge video screen on the floor.
"Major technical failure," the ABC News president Ben Sherwood called it.
ABC covered up the blackout by having another anchor, Josh Elliott, interview voters in Times Square. Then Ms. Sawyer tossed to a commercial and the executives began troubleshooting.
"Tell our anchors what is happening," Mr. Sherwood said before asking an engineer, "What's the prognosis?" The engineer said he didn't know how many minutes the lights would stay off.
In the front row of the control room - which still had power - the director Jeff Winn tried to quiet his concerned colleagues: "Everybody calm down, O.K.? We're going to be O.K."
During the break the anchors moved over to the one corner of the studio that still had light and power. They stood there, talked about the electoral vote map, tossed to correspondents in the field, and hid their frustration whenever the cameras were pointed at them.
Around 11:15 p.m., when the full studio regained power, they slid back to the anchor desk with nary a mention of the dramatic failure behind the scenes.
There was plenty of chatter on Twitter about Ms. Sawyer, who viewers noticed was off her game. Ms. Sawyer repeatedly slurred her words, and on at least one occasion called Mr. Elliott by the wrong name.
Some people at ABC had an explanation: Ms. Sawyer was simply exhausted. The network had no official comment about the Twitter chatter, except to say that her successful anchoring during a prolonged blackout of her studio spoke for itself.
- Brian Stelter
11:44 PM | Compared to TV, Twitter Is a Silent Riot
The crescendo started shortly after 11:00 p.m., as the television networks started to call the election for President Obama. Predictably, Twitter was a blitz of all kinds of messages: celebratory, personal, coldly analytical, snarkily told-you-so.
But all that activity on the computer screen could not match the emotional response that was happening in the background of all the television networks, as the the crowds at Obama headquarters in Chicago began to cheer louder and louder in the background. Even Fox News, which called the election with dour faces and remarks that Romney was "a loser in this race," turned its cameras to the revelry in Chicago.
On television the sound of victory is contagious. So far, Twitter can't match that visceral impact.
- Ben Sisario
11:40 P.M. | Joanna Coles on the Meaning of the Election
The editor of Cosmopolitan, Joanna Coles, posted to Twitter on the news that the networks have projected that President Obama has been re-elected:
Single girls get to keep on having sex and healthcare @cosmopolitan#Election2012 @ppact
- joanna coles (@JoannaColes) November 7, 2012
And one reader added her response:
@JoannaColes @Cosmopolitan @PPact Not just single girls, all girls.
- Kim (@kimfugginjones)7 Nov 12
11:26 P.M. | 20 Million Tweets Later
With 20 million tweets, Election Day just became the most tweeted about event in US political history. #election2012
- Twitter Government (@gov)7 Nov 12
11:24 PM | Translating the Election
While all television networks have similar election tricks - interactive maps, social media embeds, panels of experts sitting behind laptops - the conversation throughout the night on Spanish-language television has, not surprisingly, taken its own turn and focused on the Latino voter and on Latino candidates.
Both Telemundo and Univision broadcasted a speech tonight by a Tea Party favorite, Ted Cruz, a Cuban-American Republican who won the Senate election in Texas. Univision had a correspondent on the ground with Joe Garcia, the Democratic candidate for Congress in Florida and another correspondent covering the Arizona race to oust Republican Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Telemundo had a correspondent on the ground at the victory rally for Senator Robert Menendez, a Democrat from New Jersey.
Telemundo also had correspondents in the "Democracy Plaza" in Rockefeller Center interviewing voters in Spanish about what issues were important to them and which candidates they voted for.
The conversation among pundits on Univision focused on issues like immigration and the power of the Latino vote in this election. Immigration, said Maria Elena Salinas, the co-anchor, "is an issue that is mobilizing many Hispanics."
- Tanzina Vega
11:21 PM | Political News at 11 O'Clock, Online
It used to be news lovers looking for election night updates tuned into the 11 o'clock news. But as local New York networks have switched coverage to updates on tomorrow's expected storm, print outlets are delivering their own 11 p.m. updates.
Washington Post pundits are chatting away on the Fix about results, and even looking forward to 2016. WSJ Live is keeping a steady stream of comments running. Politico has been delivering its own stream of frenetic news night coverage anchored by Jim VandeHei.
- Christine Haughney
11:03 PM | Al Gore Makes Declarative Statement About Florida
This happened... RT @algore: I am confident in saying that President Obama is going to carry the state of Florida tonight.
- Slate (@Slate)7 Nov 12
- David Carr
10:40 PM | Old-School Way of Reporting on the Election
While many print outlets focused on delivering colorful graphics and data from social media sites, one newspaper chain took their campaign back a few election cycles. Digital First Media hired freelance cartoonist Rob Tornoe to spend the day sketching political cartoons.
No candidate or pollster was spared from Mr. Tornoe's musings on Tuesday: Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, Linda McMahon and Nate Silver all made appearances in his cartoons.
Mr. Tornoe who lives in Delaware and typically creates cartoons for The Press of Atlantic City and The Philadelphia Inquirer said he was just working for Digital First Media's papers on Tuesday. The company which had to relocate from its downtown offices damaged by Hurricane Sandy was working out of The Associated Press's offices on Tuesday night.
Mr. Tornoe, 32, said that while cartoons may seem retro, they can be very relevant today.
"Cartoons do so well on social media because they're quick; they're punchy," he said. "It's taking what worked in the old days and using it online."
Mr. Torne started sketching just after 10 a.m. Tuesday morning and 12 hours later was onto his ninth cartoon. He planned to keep sketching until there was a victor.
"I'll pretty much stay until we know," he said.
Check out Rob's Twitter feed, and his election day cartoons can be found here.
Mitt Romney loses his home state. At least a couple of them anyway. My new toon: http://t.co/PmRtVsl4
- Rob Tornoe (@RobTornoe)7 Nov 12
- Christine Haughney
09:52 PM | So Far, No Stunt Tops 2008 Hologram
In 2008, CNN had an election night sensation when it broadcast scenes featuring a Princess Leia-like hologram of Will.i.am of Black Eyed Peas. It was corny, sure, but it did represent something of a leap forward in broadcast technology.
So far this year, nothing in the network news coverage has equaled that stunt. One early scene on CNN had a host walking in a virtual-reality legislative chamber. But for the most part the on-screen technology has been less retro-futuristic than iPad utilitarian, with lots of swiping, pinching and pulling of maps and voting tallies. Perhaps the most charming visual gimmick has been the Empire State Building's real-time display of CNN's projections in "Romney red" and "Obama blue."
Even Will.i.am seemed a little disappointed by the lack of progress:
.@andersoncooper .@cnn People keep tweeting me and asking me: "what are you guys going to do this year to top 2008 #hologram???"
- will.i.am (@iamwill) November 7, 2012
- Ben Sisario
10:21 P.M. | Texting the News
Among the many ways voters can get voting results tonight: text message.
Several media outlets are sending out texts when states are projected for President Obama and Mitt Romney. Others are pushing alerts to users of their news apps.
NBC's text alerts have lit up my phone almost exactly in sync with the television announcements about projections. People can sign up for the alerts by texting "ELEX" to the number 622639.
People can also sign up for alerts from CNN by texting the word "alerts" to the number 26688, and sign up for alerts from CBS by going here.
People can receive alerts from ABC by downloading the news organization's app. The ABC app uses geographic targeting so that it sends alerts for specific states.
- Brian Stelter
10:20 PM | It's the Scary Part for Everyone Right Now
A close national election is an odd weave of adrenaline and boredom. Nothing else like it.
- david carr (@carr2n)7 Nov 12
- David Carr
10:16 P.M. | Martha Stewart's Pizza Run
i was so nervous i went into town for a slice of pizza! 3 slices actually- second time i have done that in 12 yearsit was not delivered!
- Martha Stewart (@MarthaStewart) November 7, 2012
10:02 P.M. | Twitter Is Embedded in the Networks' Coverage
In 2008 Current TV went out on a limb and put Twitter messages on the screen. Back then most television viewers didn't know what Twitter was. But now they do - and the television networks are all taking advantage of that, promoting hashtags on the screen and tossing to correspondents for "social media updates."
ABC is giving particular prominence to the Twitter beat by giving it to Katie Couric. "The Twitter-verse is on fire, as you can imagine," Ms. Couric said in an update around 9:50 p.m. She summed up a few of the trending topics on Twitter, including "Stay in line," an admonition to viewers not to give up at polling places where there were long lines.
She also promoted this Tweet, from Mitt Romney's "Body Man":
Gov and @anndromney having a great time with the grandkids. http://t.co/YwbmwCpr
- Mitt's Body Man (@dgjackson)7 Nov 12
- Brian Stelter
9:57 P.M. | CNN Makes Room for News, During Commericals
CNN had an interesting screen treatment during a very long commercial break. They were showing Senate race results in the lower 20 percent of the screen then changed it to, in big letters, "Stand By for CNN Projection." When all the spots ended, CNN came back to call Pennsylvania for Obama.
- Stuart Elliott
09:51 PM | Brian Williams Calls Out Rogue Re-Tweets
A sign of the times: The NBC anchor Brian Williams felt he had to tell television viewers that a Twitter message attributed to NBC about the Massachusetts Senate race was not accurate. The message, which spread like wildfire on Twitter, claimed that Elizabeth Warren, the Democrat, had been projected to win.
Mr. Williams said: "To Twitter users, there's a rogue re-Tweet going around that we somehow called the Massachusetts Senate race. We did nothing of the sort; no one has; no one's going near it. It's too early yet."
NBC did, actually, call the race for Ms. Warren at 9:45 p.m.
- Brian Stelter
9:46 P.M. | 'Expert Analysis' From Current TV
"If you have a choice, you'd rather win the Electoral College"- @algore's "expert analysis" on pop vote. http://t.co/iKZHxxPG #Current2012
- Current TV (@current)7 Nov 12
09:39 PM | The State of the Election, So Far
CNN estimates are updated in real time on a rather breathtaking graphic template: The Empire State.. http://t.co/wnIUzf1J
- david carr (@carr2n)7 Nov 12
- David Carr
09:34 PM | Casting My Vote ... Into the Ether
Like a lot of people in New Jersey, I've been out of luck on power and heat.
In the past few days I've been part of the diaspora in search of warmth and light. I stayed in New York last night and looked nervously out the window today at the long lines at the Port Authority.
With New Jersey Transit trains mostly down, the buses there have been stretched in the extreme and there were rumors that it would take four hours to actually get on a bus. As it turned out, I was able to grab a ride with a friend and the power is back on, but I opted earlier to take New Jersey up on its offer of voting by fax or e-mail.
It was on odd mix of old school - I needed help to remember how to operate a fax machine - and newish technology - I mean, I just voted through a wire. (The e-mail route in my county involved scanning and creating PDF's and then sending the digital package off to a clerk's personal Hotmail account, which sort of freaked me out.)
But part of the ritual of participating in a national election is that you get to do something very local and very palpable, which is to go into a booth, draw the curtain, then pull a lever. The act of voting makes the act of watching later all the more exciting, because you have the fresh recollection that among all those numbers thrown around on television, at least one of those votes belongs to you.
It doesn't feel that way when you vote by fax. The machine hummed, the three pages zoomed through the machine and, one hopes, there was someone at the other end to notch my vote. But there was none of the solid clunk of pulling the big lever at the bottom of the booth to register my participation.
It wasn't the same. I am a reporter, but I am also an American, and one of the things that makes watching the results so riveting is that I played a very tiny, but very real role in the story of the day.
- David Carr
08:51 PM | A Wrong Call on Michigan
This election night's first award for making a wrong call goes to The Wall Street Journal.
At 9:04 p.m., the paper sent out an alert saying that Mitt Romney had won his native state of Michigan and credited The Associated Press with the story. At the same time, reporters were describing on Twitter the "dead silence" ringing through Romney headquarters that he had lost the state.
The Journal made a quick turnaround. By 9:10 p.m., it had corrected its error.
- Christine Haughney
09:14 PM | On Twitter, a Field Day for Comedians
Twitter is the ultimate one-liner medium, and the barrage of election coverage tonight is giving comedians plenty to ridicule. Here are a few early highlights, for this media-barraged Twitter user, at least:
Wow, CNN just brought out Hologram Tilda Swinton. This technology is really - oh wait, that's really her.
- Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt)7 Nov 12
The only upshot of Romney winning would be how upset it would make http://t.co/RGPCjQuH.
- Michael Ian Black (@michaelianblack)7 Nov 12
Rock the Vote! Or if you're middle-aged with a sentimental side, Easy Listen the Vote!
- Stephen Colbert (@StephenAtHome)6 Nov 12
BL +4, GN -2, LB -1.4, VW -6.9, SZ +.1, ZV +2.3, HJ +6, OP -3.4, KL (too close to call), TG 4, RY -4.3, WS -.2, BO +3.2, CV 2.1, RB 6.3
- Joshua Malina (@JoshMalina) November 7, 2012
- Ben Sisario
9:16 PM | Ghosts of Chads Past
Led by Van Jones, CNN is starting to collectively worry that there seems to be mayhem at some of the polls, Florida in particular. There's sort of a collective body memory of traumas past and polls are being held open longer there.
- David Carr
9:11 P.M. | Polls Are Still Open at Abercrombie & Fitch
On Election Night, "coattails" can also mean a marketer's trying to get noticed by using election language in ads. Abercrombie & Fitch, on its Web site and in e-mails, is asking consumers to "cast the hottest vote ever" and select which one of three T-shirts the retailer will offer for sale.
- Stuart Elliott
9:02 PM | Cosmo Weighs In on the Election
It's not just hefty news media outlets like The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post covering campaign results. There are priceless Tweets coming from @cosmopolitan.
"Remember if you're waiting in line when the polls close, STAY THERE. You will be able to vote!" and Election Day speculations like, "So do we think Malia and Sasha had to go to school today?"
But Cosmo's pick of the day for most devoted voter is a woman in labor who delayed her trip to the hospital until the polls opened. In the words of Cosmo: "This woman is our #election HERO. Seriously, this is the most bad-ass voting story you will hear all day - http://cosm.ag/6014pOca"
- Christine Haughney
9:01 P.M. | Broadway Star Watches the Returns
I can't decide if I'm gonna stress eat or throw up watching these returns.
- Audra McDonald (@AudraEqualityMc)7 Nov 12
08:54 PM | The End of Racial Hegemony?
From Gawker:
POLITICO Editor-in-Chief John Harris just predicted that Romney-Ryan will be the last time America sees a major-party ticket composed solely of of white men. If this had to be the last, at least it was very, very, very white.
- David Carr
08:52 PM | Politics Online, Entertainment on TV
MTV and BET have done some good election coverage on their Web sites, with BET taking a close look at the concerns of black voters and MTV News posting live reports from Chicago and Boston. MTV published items to help young voters, like explainers about the electoral college.
But turn to either channel on television, and - for the time being, at least - it's a world of "reality." That is, reality-TV escapism from the reality of the presidential election. MTV is currently in the midst of two hours of "Jersey Shore," with two more hours to come after a block of "Underemployed." BET is in the middle of several episodes of "Keyshia & Daniel: Family First," about the singer Keyshia Cole and her husband, Daniel Gibson.
A bug on the BET screen says election coverage is coming at 10. Until then, I'm watching funky wedding dances and a beach scene.
- Ben Sisario
08:42 PM | Social Media and Spanish Language Networks
Social media is critical to the election coverage of the two dueling Spanish-language networks Telemundo and Univision.
Telemundo is featuring Maria Celeste Arrarás, who is offering an analysis of social-media content and the comments that use the hashtag #yovote ("I voted") and #Decision2012. Users who text "Alerta" to 68636 will receive election updates on their mobile phones. (One early analysis of Facebook comments the network aired tonight showed 62 percent were negative for Mitt Romney and 53 percent were negative for Barack Obama.)
Univision will also use comments gathered from social media on air, including on an interactive map. The network asked viewers to use the hashtag #Destino2012, #Liberatuvoz ("Free your voice") and #suopinion ("your opinion") on Twitter. The network also offered voters the option to upload photos and videos of their voting experience, good or bad, to UnivisionNoticias.com or by using the Noticias mobile application.
Both networks will stream their election coverage live online.
- Tanzina Vega
8:43 P.M. | Exit Polling Finds ...
Exit polling indicates that voters overwhelmingly disapprove of being approached after voting by people asking a lot of questions.
- Andy Kindler (@AndyKindler)7 Nov 12
08:40 PM | Did Sandy Blow Obama Over the Finish Line?
On Fox News, Bill O'Reilly suggested that if Obama wins, it will be because of Hurricane Sandy. Pictures, not position papers, he suggested, are the key to winning elections, and seeing Obama arm-in-arm with Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey will have swayed the election.
- David Carr
08:36 PM | Lou Dobbs and the Politics of Collapse
"I'm talking about both the bond market, the equities market, the debt market of this country will collapse" if the budget crisis is not resolved and the country goes off the fiscal cliff, suggested Lou Dobbs on Fox Business News.
- David Carr
08:28 PM | In Search of the Elusive Hollywood Angle
[#x200f]
LIVE RIGHT NOW! Nikki Finke And Dominic Pattten Are Live-Snarking Election Night's TV Coverage - http://t.co/vsFza9Qr
- Nikki Finke (@NikkiFinke)7 Nov 12
Can't wait till the night ends, and Nikki types her trademark "TOLDJA!"
- David Carr
08:25 PM | Politico Goes Uptown
Politico, which has crept out of the niche of the Web and into television gradually, seems to getting quite comfortable in the medium. The set for its collaboration with C-Span is TV-fancy, almost network-like. It is festooned in nice lavender lighting and the Microsoft search engine Bing, which is sponsoring the coverage, gets prominently play.
Jim VandeHei, Politico's executive editor and co-founder, seems extremely comfortable in the role of on-air master of ceremonies, and there is plenty of inside baseball for wonks. And Mr. VandeHei is encouraging people to keep a smartphone or a computer handy to peer into the data stream available on the site.
"It is a great equalizer evening for non-journalists, because you are seeing exactly what we are seeing," Mr. Vanderhei told viewers. You, too, can be the wonk king of your own castle."
- David Carr
8:10 P.M. | A Marketing Moment
All the stunts (billboards, NBC/Democracy Plaza, CNN/Empire State Bldg) are reminders that election night is a big marketing moment for TV.
- Brian Stelter (@brianstelter)7 Nov 12
08:09 PM | What to Say, Before the Big News Breaks
What did news Web sites report as they kicked off their election night coverage? It certainly wasn't returns since some polls that were supposed to close still faced long lines of voters.
The Washington Post featured exit poll data on how the economy was the most important issue and prepped followers for a long night ahead.
Politico threw into the mix some lighthearted posts like how President Obama confessed to a New Hampshire radio station that he knew how to do the Gangnam-style dance move.
The Onion tried to bring a chuckle to readers who spent a long day cursing while waiting vote with its story, "Majestic Sounds of 'Goddamn Long Line' Ring Across America".
- Christine Haughney
7:54 P.M. | In the CNN Control Room
Seems @SamFeistCNN is settling in for a long long night. He's on his second diet orange Sunkist. http://t.co/XIGdH1ul
- Edie Emery (@edie_emery)6 Nov 12
07:51 PM | Digital Coverage for Latinos in English and Spanish
A quick glance of what some other Spanish language news outlets and news Web sites dedicated to creating content for Latinos in English are doing with election coverage online:
NBC Latino leads its election coverage with a live "social blog" that includes user-generated photos and short blog posts from staff members on topics like first-time voters, whether Latinos could tip the scales in the race between Elizabeth Warren and Scott Brown, and, of course, Ohio.
CNN en Español lead its Web site with a slideshow of election day photos and a "minute by minute" article updated with election results, state by state, as projected by CNN.
MundoFox, the newest addition to the Spanish language broadcast set, did not dedicate all of its homepage to election coverage but offered a microsite for users which included a live stream of its broadcast, a Facebook widget for user comments, and a series of interactive graphics including a map with election results and an explanation of the American voting system.
Fox News Latino, the English language site for Latinos, included a series of articles related to the election including how voters were voting after Hurricane Sandy. The site also carried a large yellow banner advertisement promoting an analysis of the election results in Spanish at 9 p.m. (Eastern time) with Rick Sanchez, the journalist who was fired from CNNin 2010 for calling the comedian Jon Stewart a bigot.
HuffPost Latino Voices led its election coverage with a series of political cartoons by Lalo Alcaraz, a Mexican illustrator, academic and radio host.
- Tanzina Vega
07:47 PM | Election Etymology
For the lexicologically inclined, the Oxford English Dictionary offers some interesting linguistic context. Who would have guessed that "election fever" dates (roughly) to the age of Benjamin Harrison and Grover Cleveland?
In case you missed it earler... OED Word of the Day: chad, n.2: http://t.co/CiOm6r7I #election2012
- The OED (@OEDonline)6 Nov 12
'Election fever' dates back to at least 1885, when it was recorded in @TheLancet. #election2012
- The OED (@OEDonline)6 Nov 12
Fancy an electoral treat? We record election cake, election bun, and election ale in the OED! #election2012
- The OED (@OEDonline)6 Nov 12
'Ballot' orig. referred to a coloured ball placed in a container to register a secret vote, as used in Venetian Republic. #election2012
- The OED (@OEDonline)6 Nov 12
The OED's first example of the word 'president' comes from the Wycliffite Bible, a1382. #election2012
- The OED (@OEDonline)6 Nov 12
- Ben Sisario
7:44 PM | Washington Post Decision Desk in Experienced Hands
Poynter is reporting that Len Downie, the former executive editor of The Washington Post, will be running the newspaper's decision desk, which is the epicenter of where the evening's calls on whether to project a winner will be made.
An e-mail sent by Arizona State University's Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, where Mr. Downie teaches, said he "will call the presidential and Senate elections in approximately 20 key states that will decide the presidency and control of the Senate."
- David Carr
06:52 PM | Univision and Telemundo
Univision began their evening election broadcast with anchors Jorge Ramos and Maria Elena Salinas in the network's Miami studios, and reports from the Obama campaign in Chicago and the Romney campaign in Boston.
Telemundo began their broadcast for the first time from NBC's "Democracy Plaza" in Rockefeller Center in New York City. The network's coverage, anchored by Jose Diaz-Balart, began the 6 p.m. broadcast with a report from a correspondent in Miami.
In a statement, Telemundo said they expected to be the first Spanish language network to present national exit polls.
- Tanzina Vega
6:38 P.M. | Lights Are On at Rockefeller Center
Rock Center all lit up for election night. Big crowd of tourists outside already, watching coverage on video screens. http://t.co/SecNLYA2
- Brian Stelter (@brianstelter)6 Nov 12
06:25 PM | Britney Spears Democracy
So happy to see all of u out voting today. Keep the spirit alive tmrw for my teens on X Factor... maybe I can get online & vote with u?
- Britney Spears (@britneyspears)6 Nov 12
- Ben Sisario
06:35 PM | Might Be a Long Night
[#x200f]@juliannagoldman t
Don't expect to hear from POTUS before midnight CT tonight, Robert Gibbs tells @BloombergTV "It's not going to be a fast night." #morecoffee
- juliannagoldman (@juliannagoldman)6 Nov 12
weets:
Don't expect to hear from POTUS before midnight CT tonight, Robert Gibbs tells @BloombergTV "It's not going to be a fast night." #morecoffee
- David Carr
06:20 PM | Cord Cutters in Real-Time Loop on Election
Wired points out that virtually all the networks will be streaming their coverage tonight, so even if lack an antenna or a cable bill, you can watch the great unfolding tonite. Plus Politico, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times will be streaming real time video throughout the night.
- David Carr
6:07 P.M. | What's CNN Got Planned?
scared to ask: what's cnn got planned for the election? lasers? flying robot dragons? Ninja elephants?
- Atrios (@Atrios)5 Nov 12
5:40 P.M. | New Faces on Tonight's Broadcast Coverage
Dozens of news and opinion Web sites will offer essentially live coverage on election night, some with TV-like newscasts and others with live blogs.
The New York Times will stream live video on its home page throughout the night. But just as in past elections, the largest audiences are expected to flock to the big three broadcast networks, ABC, CBS and NBC, and the big three cable news networks, Fox News, MSNBC and CNN.
The cable networks have been live all day. The broadcasters will kick off live coverage at 7 p.m. Eastern, and will keep going until at least 2 a.m.
Four years ago, Brian Williams was the anchor on NBC, Charles Gibson on ABC and Katie Couric on CBS. Mr. Williams is back for his second presidential election night as anchor, but Mr. Gibson, who retired three years ago, will not; heading the coverage instead will be the pair that sat alongside him in 2008, Diane Sawyer and George Stephanopoulos. Ms. Couric, now of ABC, will join them from time to time with social media reaction. On CBS, Scott Pelley will anchor his first presidential election night.
It's also the first time for Rachel Maddow, who will co-host with Chris Matthews on MSNBC, and Bret Baier and Megyn Kelly, the co-hosts on Fox News. On PBS, Gwen Ifill and Judy Woodruff will make up national television's first two-woman anchor team on election night.
A pack of smaller channels - like CNBC, Fox Business, Bloomberg, TV One, and HDNet - will also have hours of live election talk.
Comedy Central will have special live editions of "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report" from 11 p.m. to midnight.
- Brian Stelter
05:20 PM | A Popular Search: 'Who's Running for President?'
Were those $6 billion in campaign spending worth it? TechCrunch reports that searches for the most fundamental question have skyrocketed around the world:
Searches For 'Who Is Running For President?' Skyrocket. Wow. http://t.co/SR3mM2YS by @ferenstein
- TechCrunch (@TechCrunch)6 Nov 12
- Ben Sisario
5:28 P.M. | Media Focuses, and Focuses, on Voting Problems
During the day on Tuesday, when there was nothing to do but worry, bloggers and reporters heaped attention on purported problems at a handful of polling sites.
Mother Jones fretted about a "Romney-loving" voting machine in Perry County, Penn., that it said "changed a President Obama vote to one for Mitt Romney." Fox News extensively covered the existence of a mural of Mr. Obama at a polling site in Philadelphia, in possible violation of a law against campaign materials at such sites.
Both cases were arguably blown out of proportion by partisans on Twitter and Facebook who were hyper-sensitive to any voting irregularities. "Twitter is a panic machine," opined Ben Smith, the editor of the Web site Buzzfeed on Tuesday afternoon.
Talk about early voting irregularities, of course, lays the groundwork for later claims of fraud by the losing side in an election. The former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, for instance, said on MSNBC on Tuesday morning that the "only way" Mr. Obama can lose in Ohio "is if people are prevented from casting their ballots, either by voting machines that aren't functioning right or other forms of harassment."
The conservative Drudge Report quickly highlighted Mr. Dean's comment for its readers.
- Brian Stelter
4:24 | Just a Minute: Christine Haughney on News Competiton
Due to an error, the video has been removed.
David Carr and Christine Haughney discuss how news organizations will incorporate social media in their coverage of the election, and the increasingly competitive news landscape.
- The Editors
3:46 P.M. | At Empire State, Red if It's Mitt, Blue if It's Obama
In November 1932 a bright searchlight atop the Empire State Building signified that Franklin D. Roosevelt has been elected president of the United States.
Eighty years later CNN's taking the idea a big step further, lighting up the building in red and blue as the presidential election results come in.
On Tuesday night, according to the cable news channel, a "meter" running up the building's spire will visually show the electoral votes that President Obama and Mitt Romney are projected to win. The gimmick will be televised on CNN from time to time via a camera on an early rooftop. NBC similarly showed the electoral vote count on the side of Rockefeller Center in 2008, and will do so again this year.
For decades the Empire State Building has been lit in different colors depending on the occasion. It's been used to recognize holidays, charitable events, corporate anniversaries, and other milestones.
The partnership with CNN is an opportunity to show off a new lighting system that will allow the building's facade and mast to change colors in real-time. "When CNN projects a winner of the presidential election, the tower lights of the Empire State Building will change color to all-blue or to all-red," the channel said in a news release.
- Brian Stelter
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The New York Times Blogs
(The Lede)
November 6, 2012 Tuesday
Campaigns Turn to Stars to Get Out the Vote
BYLINE: ROBERT MACKEY
LENGTH: 375 words
HIGHLIGHT: In the final days of a close race, as the candidates made their final pitches at rallies in swing states, both campaigns tried to harness the star power of their most celebrated supporters.
In the final days of a close race, as the candidates made their final pitches at rallies in swing states, both campaigns tried to harness the star power of their most celebrated supporters.
At a late-night rally in New Hampshire on Monday, Mitt Romney's opening act was Kid Rock. Before his final song, "Born Free," the Michigan-born performer channeled the Romney campaign's one-word slogan, "Believe," asking the crowd: "I want to know, do you believe? I want to know if you believe that you still live in the greatest country in the world!"
Video of Kid Rock performing at a rally in support of Mitt Romney on Monday night in New Hampshire.
Earlier on Monday, President Obama appeared on stage with Jay-Z and Bruce Springsteen at a rally in Ohio. As The Ohio Capital Blog reported, Mr. Springsteen, channeling Woody Guthrie, played a ditty inspired by the Obama campaign slogan, "Forward."
Video from The Ohio Capital Blog of Bruce Springsteen performing at an Obama rally on Monday.
The same blog also captured video of Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, dancing during Jay-Z's performance.
Video from the Ohio Capital Blog of Senator Sherrod Brown enjoying a Jay-Z performance on Monday.
Hoping to bolster the enthusiasm of small-town voters in Ohio, the Romney campaign dispatched a local hero, Jack Nicklaus, to rally the troops on Monday at a breakfast meeting in Port Clinton. The golfer, recently described by Mr. Romney as "the greatest athlete of the 20th century," argued that the former Massachusetts governor would govern in a bipartisan fashion in his address at the Republican party headquarters in the town of 6,000.
Jack Nicklaus, speaking on behalf of Mitt Romney, on Monday in Port Clinton, Ohio.
Over the weekend, the Obama campaign unveiled a YouTube endorsement from the comedian Will Ferrell, who offered "to do anything to get you to vote on Nov. 6."
An ad for the Obama campaign featuring the comedian Will Ferrell.
Romney's Threat to Big Bird Sows Confusion Abroad, and Feeds It at Home
Election Monitoring in the Age of Social Media
How the Presidential Campaign Is Being Viewed Around the World
Two Narratives to Explain Unrest in One Bahraini Village
Iranian News Agency Claims Onion Report It Ran by Mistake Is Essentially True
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The New York Times Blogs
(DealBook)
November 6, 2012 Tuesday
Wall Street Offers a Second Career for Former Politicians
BYLINE: STEVEN M. DAVIDOFF
SECTION: BUSINESS
LENGTH: 1206 words
HIGHLIGHT: The winner of the presidential election will claim the White House, but the loser could find a lucrative job in high finance by providing advice on deals or arranging speaking engagements.
When you wake up on Wednesday morning and find out whether Mitt Romney or Barack Obama will be in the White House next year, don't pity the loser. He can always have a future career in high finance.
It's quite a lucrative one, too.
Take Tony Blair, the former British prime minister. In September, Mr. Blair was called to Claridge's hotel in London to mediate a renegotiation of the proposed acquisition of Xstrata by Glencore, according to British news reports. Mr. Blair, who negotiated peace in Northern Ireland, put his skills to good use, apparently earning himself roughly $1 million for three hours of work.
That's not a bad hourly rate, and it's in addition to the reported $4 million a year he is paid by JPMorgan Chase to be a senior adviser and "provide briefings on political trends." You'll be happy to know, by the way, that Mr. Blair was able to save the Xstrata deal. Wall Street likes former politicians for lots of reasons. Perhaps like Mr. Blair they are good negotiators or mediators when a deal needs to be done.
But another reason is that they are simply good with people.
Remember Dan Quayle? Since 2000, the former vice president has worked at the hedge fund Cerberus Capital Management, where he is now chairman of the advisory board. His pay is not disclosed, but it is probably well into the millions if not more. And what does Mr. Quayle do for this money?
According to his personal Web site, he "regularly travels throughout the U.S., Europe, and Asia to meet with the heads of investment banks, corporations, buyout shops, potential investors and other business leaders," among other things. In other words, he's a very well-paid schmoozer. In fairness, the former vice president states he also does things like advise Cerberus on the conduct of business by its portfolio companies.
Not only can vice presidents make money in finance by chatting up people, they can also build empires. Al Gore shows that you can use Wall Street to become superrich and do it in the name of a cause, all while building your own franchise. Mr. Gore is a co-founder and chairman of Generation Investment Management and a senior partner of the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. He's also a senior adviser to Google and a member of Apple's board, where he has options on about 98,000 Apple shares, according to the company's last proxy statement. Apple, by the way, is trading at about $580 a share. You do the math.
Mr. Gore's efforts are part of his mission to alert the world to global warming and embrace the environmental causes he firmly believes in. It's unclear what the former vice president does at Kleiner, but Generation Investment is focused on investing in sustainable companies. Mr. Gore closed the fund in 2008, having raised $5 billion. Whether this works is unclear because the fund's returns are not disclosed, but as of Sept. 30, the fund still had at least $3.6 billion. Mr. Gore has made millions building a finance empire based on his beliefs.
Sometimes it's not for a cause, but simply for the money. Mr. Gore's former boss, Bill Clinton, is most widely known in his post-presidential period for his work with the Clinton Global Initiative. But the former president has also made millions working in finance. Mr. Clinton was an adviser to Ronald W. Burkle's investment firm, the Yucaipa Companies, and made at least $15 million in that position.
Mr. Clinton's job was apparently to promote Yucaipa and enhance Mr. Burkle's reputation, and as Mr. Burkle put it to BusinessWeek after the two had a falling out, "When Clinton left the presidency he had to make money, and there were certain limits on how he could do it." Until March of this year, Mr. Clinton also served as a paid adviser to another private equity and financial consulting firm, Teneo Capital. It's no surprise that the former president recently said that private equity was "good work." It was for him.
Private equity is a favorite of prominent former politicians because it is often less public than investment banking or other finance jobs. Private equity firms like the connections former politicians bring for deal-making. Private equity is also an equal opportunity employer across both sides of the aisle. George H. W. Bush was involved with private equity after his term as president was up, serving as an adviser to the Carlyle Group until 2003. Carlyle is a bastion of political refugees. Frank Carlucci, a former secretary of defense, served as chairman, and former Secretary of State James A. Baker III has also been an adviser.
And if working for the industry as a deal maker, schmoozer, adviser or just as a name is a problem, a former politician can always find freelance opportunities in speaking to the finance industry.
President Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush, has largely stayed away from business ventures after leaving the White House. But he has taken to the speakers' circuit, where fees can run more than $100,000 a speech. Last week, the former president gave a speech at the Ritz-Carlton on Grand Cayman Island at the Cayman Alternative Investment Summit. The speech was closed to journalists and raised some eyebrows because the idea behind such a conference was to promote investing outside the United States. But according to the organization's Web site, Mr. Bush offered "his thoughts on eight years in the Oval Office, the challenges facing our nation in the 21st century, the power of freedom and the role of faith." I just want to say to the organizers that next year, I can talk about three of these four topics, at half the price.
Such $100,000 speaking engagements are mostly from finance organizations - after all, they are the ones with the money. One of Sarah Palin's first speeches following her tenure as governor of Alaska was in Hong Kong to the CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets meeting, a gathering of Asian investors that advertises itself as "Asia's premier investment conference." She was reportedly paid $100,000 for the speech. Bill Clinton and Al Gore have also addressed this conference, as well as Mike Tyson.
So what does this mean for Mr. Romney and Mr. Obama? Well, it's hard to see either one plunging knee-deep into Wall Street. Mr. Romney has already made his private equity money. As for Mr. Obama, it just doesn't seem to be in his DNA. This doesn't mean that either will pass up the occasional $100,000 speaking engagement.
I can't begrudge politicians making money after years of relatively low-paid public service. But at best, this is clearly a case of not asking where the money is coming from. The wholesale involvement of politicians in finance as opposed to, say, working at industrial America or advising the nation's educational and charitable institutions may be a serious misdirection of resources. More sinisterly, as Simon Johnson and James Kwak contend in their book "13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown" (Pantheon Books), a too cozy relationship between Wall Street and Washington was a direct cause of the financial crisis. Whether or not they are right, the ties remain surprisingly strong, making one wonder whether we are repeating the mistakes of the past.
An Election Guide for Wall Street
The Election Won't Solve All Puzzles
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USA TODAY
November 6, 2012 Tuesday
FINAL EDITION
Who's winning? Here's how you'll be able to tell;
Your hour-by-hour, state-by-state election guide
BYLINE: Richard Wolf, @richardjwolf, USA TODAY
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 1A
LENGTH: 2307 words
The political fortunes of Barack Obama and Mitt Romney could be determined today in little-known counties with names like Loudoun, Lucas and Larimer.
After 17 months and more than $2billion spent crisscrossing the nation in search of votes, the two presidential candidates, their staffs and an army of journalists and political junkies will huddle tonight over county maps and precinct reports to gauge the voters' verdict.
It won't be New York, Chicago or Los Angeles that decides the election. Instead, swing counties such as Virginia's Loudoun, Ohio's Lucas and Colorado's Larimer will play outsized roles in picking the next president. (More on those places below.)
Today, turnout among Democrats' and Republicans' base voters will begin to tell the tale of the 2012 election. Turnout was above 65% in 10 swing states in 2008 and 61.6% overall, slightly higher than 2004.
Then the TV networks and other news organizations will begin releasing the results of "exit polls" taken outside polling places, which will shed light on the choices made by men and women, whites and minorities, young and old, urban and rural. More so than in the past, that information is likely to spill out on Twitter and other social media outlets.
Once the polls close from east to west, the results from early voting -- representing as much as two-thirds of the vote in some states -- will become known. That will be followed by the gradual tabulation of Election Day votes, starting at 7 p.m. ET and continuing deep into the night.
All the clues will be important, because news organizations may be cautious in projecting state winners from a combination of exit polls, vote counts from key precincts, the number of votes outstanding and historical voting data. That's partially a result of the debacle of 2000, when TV networks prematurely proclaimed George W. Bush president long before that result became clear. In 2004, exit polls greatly overstated Democrat John Kerry's strength in his failed effort to unseat Bush.
Here's a guide to watching the returns tonight:
7 p.m. in Virginia Exurbs rule
There was a reason the president kept returning to Prince William County, a Washington, D.C., exurb, in the campaign's waning days. Together with neighboring Loudoun County, both just beyond reliably Democratic Fairfax, it offers the keys to the Old Dominion.
"They're exurbs, and they're diverse. The big breakthrough for Obama (in 2008) came when he won those counties," says Larry Sabato, who directs the University of Virginia's Center for Politics.
Other keys: Henrico and Chesterfield counties, around Richmond, and military-dependent Virginia Beach, the state's most populous city. Romney must run strong there; in 2008 Obama held his own, even against war hero John McCain.
As for demographics, Sabato will look primarily at gender and race. Obama almost surely will win among women and Romney among men, but whoever enjoys the greater gender gap will win. And the president must get close to 40% of the white vote to hold on, Sabato says.
Virginia most closely mirrored the national election four years ago, giving Obama 52.6% of the vote (he won 52.9% nationally). If one candidate is declared the winner in Virginia fairly early in the evening, Sabato says, "that candidate is very likely to win the election, because that means either Romney or Obama is running well ahead of expectations."
7:30 p.m. in Ohio Auto country
There's something different to watch here this year beyond the usual Democratic, Republican and bellwether counties: auto country.
Traditionally Democratic, the counties around Youngstown and Toledo could be even more so this year, and that would be welcome news for Obama. If the president polls 60% or more there, he could win the state, says University of Akron political science professor David Cohen.
Perhaps most telling will be Lucas County, which Cohen calls "ground zero" of the latest Ohio flap: Romney's last-minute ad implying that Chrysler, which runs a Jeep plant in Toledo, will ship jobs to China.
The state that most often determines the presidency also has several key swing counties: Look to Lake County east of Cleveland, where Obama visited Saturday, as well as Canton-based Stark County, both of which usually pick the winners.
Obama won the male vote here in 2008, exit polls showed -- something he's unlikely to repeat, so he needs a healthy majority of women, Cohen says. He also needs to crush Romney by more than 2-to-1 in Cuyahoga County (Cleveland), while a strong showing by Romney in Hamilton County (Cincinnati) could indicate the state is going Republican.
North Carolina A turnout battle
The African-American vote in North Carolina gave Obama one of his two most unlikely victories in 2008 (Indiana was the other). The question this year: Will blacks turn out in sufficient numbers to do it again?
Most polls suggest not, giving Romney one of his only clear swing-state advantages. Still, gains among Latino voters, plus the Obama campaign's vaunted get-out-the-vote effort, could make things close.
"Electing a black president made history. Re-electing a black president isn't the same thing," says David Rohde, a political science professor at Duke University.
He will look to the state's heavily minority counties such as Durham, where Duke is based, for signs that turnout is as strong or weaker than it was in 2008, when turnout increased over previous years by more than any other state.
8 p.m. in Florida Late night ahead?
If the election is close in the Sunshine State, as it usually is, the most important votes won't show up in either candidate's column as the results are tabulated.
They are the provisional ballots, those that election officials must certify later, and their number is expected to grow this year because of rules relating to address changes. Historically, Democrats have been twice as likely to cast provisional ballots.
"All eyes are going to be on them," University of Florida political science professor Daniel Smith says of the provisional votes. "And all the lawyers' eyes are going to be on them."
About half the state's voters have cast early ballots, and those should be tabulated fairly quickly after the polls close. Watch Hillsborough County in the Tampa Bay area for a clue to the election, Smith says -- its ethnic and racial diversity tipped 53% of its voters for Obama in 2008.
New Hampshire Manchester is key
The biggest city in the state closes its polls at 7 p.m., ahead of some others, and usually tallies results quickly. So shortly after all state polls close at 8 p.m., its results should be known.
Andy Smith, director of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center, says Obama needs at least 53% in Manchester to capture the state. Anything less could be overwhelmed by the small, rural counties that will report much later and tilt Romney's way. "Just watch Manchester. That's going to give you a really good idea," Smith says. "It sets the tone for the entire state."
Pennsylvania East meets west
Romney's late effort to steal the state from Obama's win column will hinge on turnout in two areas: east of the Susquehanna River in Philadelphia and its suburbs, where Obama should get a majority of at least 500,000, and northern and southwestern Pennsylvania, where Romney needs to pile up white, blue-collar votes.
But Pennsylvania also has eight swing counties in the east that could determine the election: Bucks, Montgomery, Chester and Delaware counties, which surround Philadelphia, will be watched closely, as will Lehigh, Northampton, Monroe and Berks, which include cities such as Allentown, Bethlehem and Reading.
Those counties have the largest number of independents, says Terry Madonna, director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa. The candidate who captures most of those counties could win the state, he says, "because you're winning the voters in the middle."
Michigan Two key swing counties
For years, political prognosticators looked to Macomb County north of Detroit, home of the "Reagan Democrats," as the key to Michigan politics. Now it's got competition from neighboring Oakland County.
Oakland gave 57% of its votes to Obama in 2008 and Macomb 53%. If Obama can just break even or come close this year in Macomb while holding Oakland, "then obviously Republicans are in bad shape," says political analyst Ed Sarpolus. "There's no way that Romney can win losing Oakland County." Another place to watch is Kent County, home of Grand Rapids, where the strong Republican base has been eroding.
This is another state where Obama needs to win big among blacks and union workers to compensate for a likely loss among whites. If Romney can get 55% among whites, Sarpolus says, he could have a good night.
9 p.m. in Colorado Watch the early vote
Some 70% of Colorado voters' ballots were cast before Election Day and will be counted quickly after the polls close. Ironically, however, this is one state where the result may hinge on the last votes to be counted -- late postmarks, slow precincts, provisional ballots. It's that close.
Both parties have their base counties where they should perform well; who does better depends on turnout, which topped 70% in 2008. Then there are the swing counties: Jefferson and Arapahoe around Denver, and Larimer on the Wyoming border, which includes Fort Collins.
Obama won all three counties in 2008 with 54%-55% of the vote, but this is a closer election. "You've got to watch what happens in those swing counties," says Floyd Ciruli, a Colorado pollster and political analyst.
The president will win women, Latinos and young people, Ciruli says, but the margins will be telling.
Wisconsin North by northwest
Milwaukee, Madison and Green Bay won't decide this election. Instead, look to the north and northwest. That area has been the bellwether of late. It went for Obama in 2008 but swung back to elect Republican Scott Walker governor in 2010 and help him survive a recall this past June.
"When Democrats win statewide, they normally win a majority of the counties in that area," says Charles Franklin, director of the Marquette University Law School Poll. "If that area looks mostly blue, that's great news for Obama. If it looks mostly red, that's a real warning, and probably good news for Romney."
Another wild card is Paul Ryan, the GOP candidate for vice president. His base in Rock County is usually Democratic turf -- Obama won it with 64% last time -- but Ryan's name is on the ballot twice as he seeks to retain his seat in Congress should the Romney-Ryan ticket lose.
Minnesota Ballot issues could help GOP
How this blue state nudged its way into the November discussion is a mystery to many. The answer might come from elsewhere on the ballot.
If Obama has trouble, it could indicate conservative enthusiasm for traditional marriage and tougher voter ID rules, questions that are being put to voters. "If they're passing, that's an early indication that it's a good night for Republicans," says Steven Schier, political science professor at Carleton College in Northfield, Minn.
Obama needs 60% or more in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area to compensate for Romney's advantage in the suburbs and exurbs, Schier says. "That's where Republicans really have to stop the Democrats," he says. Turnout in Minnesota in 2008 was 78%, the highest in the nation.
10 p.m. in Iowa Shades of 2008?
The early vote will be tabulated quickly after polls close, giving the first sign of where things stand. By all indications, it should show a Democratic lead of as much as 10 points.
Heavy turnout in Iowa's college towns, such as Ames, Cedar Falls and Iowa City, could be driving that lead, but whether that turnout matches 2008 remains to be seen. "There's some concern that younger voters are not going to turn out for Obama the way they did in 2008," says Steffen Schmidt, a political science professor at Iowa State University.
Several other races in Iowa could provide hints for the presidential race: Watch the retention battle over Judge David Wiggins, a gay marriage proponent; Iowa Senate Democratic leader Mike Gronstal's difficult re-election, and Christie Vilsack's uphill challenge to Republican Rep. Steve King for indications of Democratic strength or weakness, Schmidt says.
Nevada Las Vegas area dominates
One county dominates the political landscape here: Clark, home to Las Vegas and 70% of the state's voters. Obama led there by 120,000 votes in 2008, representing his entire margin statewide, and anything close to that would signal victory again.
Then comes Washoe County, home to Reno, and one of only two other counties Obama won four years ago. Romney needs to win there, says David Damore, associate professor of political science at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas.
Much will be known right after the polls close, because early voters make up roughly two-thirds of the state's voters, and those results will come in fast. "If Romney's not up in the early voting in Washoe, it's really tough for a Republican," Damore says.
If the election is as close as polls suggest, it might come down to absentee ballots that are still in the mail and tens of thousands of "provisional" ballots that won't be counted until after Election Day. In Ohio, they can't even be reviewed for 10 days.
"Even without hanging chads, we could be into December before we know the results," Rohde says.
Contributing: Martha T. Moore
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State poll closings
7 p.m. Eastern time
Ga., Ind.*, Ky.*, S.C., Vt.., Va.
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N.C., Ohio, W.Va.
8 p.m. ET
Ala., Conn., Del., D.C., Fla.*, Ill., Maine, Md., Mass., Miss., Mo., N.H.*, N.J., Okla., Pa., R.I., Tenn.*
8:30 p.m. ET
Ark.
9 p.m. ET
Ariz., Colo., Kan.*, La., Mich.*, Minn., Neb.*, N.M., N.Y., N.D.*, S.D.*, Texas*, Wis., Wyo.
10 p.m. ET
Iowa, Mont., Nev., Utah
11 p.m. ET
Hawaii, Calif., Idaho*, Ore.*, Wash.
1 a.m. Wednesday ET
Alaska*
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Washington Post Blogs
The Fact Checker
November 6, 2012 Tuesday 9:12 PM EST
Fact checking the 'final arguments';
Mitt Romney and Barack Obama are repeating some discredited claims as they barmstorm the country looking for votes.
BYLINE: Glenn Kessler
LENGTH: 1769 words
We had more or less thought we were done fact checking this election cycle when we handed out our Pinocchio awards over the weekend ... and then we saw the candidates' "closing argument" speeches.
So, one more time, here's a roundup of their factually challenged assertions.
Mitt Romney
Speech in Englewood, Colo., Nov. 3
"He was going to focus on creating jobs. Instead, he focused on creating Obamacare that killed jobs."
The health-care law has barely been implemented yet. Generally when Republicans describe it as a job-killer, they are referring to a Congressional Budget Office estimate that over the next decade the health-care law would reduce the number of overall workers in the United States by one-half of 1 percent, which translates to 800,000 people. But that's not the same as saying it would "kill" that many jobs.
In dry economic language, buried in a few paragraphs in a long report, the CBO essentially said that some people who are now in the workforce because they need health insurance would decide to stop working because the health-care law guarantees they would have access to health care. (As an example, think of someone who is 63, a couple of years before retirement, who is still in a job only because he or she is waiting to get on Medicare at age 65.)
The number might seem large - 800,000 - but the United States is a big country. One-half of 1 percent is basically a rounding error, especially when making a projection so far in the future.
"He said he was going to cut the federal deficit in half, but then he doubled it."
Obama has certainly failed to make much of a dent in the deficit, let alone cut it in half. But is it fair to say he doubled it? No.
The deficit for fiscal year 2008 was $438 billion. But the CBO's deficit estimate for fiscal year 2009 - made in January 2009, shortly before Obama even took office - was $1.2 trillion.
The final tally for the 2009 deficit was $1.4 trillion, or about 10 percent of the gross domestic product. For the fiscal year just ended, the deficit was $1.1 trillion, or about 7 percent of GDP.
"And, then, he said he would bring the unemployment rate down to 5.2 percent by now. And we just learned on Friday, it's 7.9 percent. It is 9 million jobs short of what he promised."
Republicans like to cite this "promise" by Obama, but it is not as simple as that.
Before Obama took the oath of office, two aides, Christina Romer, the nominee to head the Council of Economic Advisers, and Jared Bernstein, an incoming economic adviser to Vice President-elect Biden, wrote a 14-page report that attempted to assess the impact of a possible $775 billion stimulus package and how much of a difference it would make compared to doing nothing.
Thus, it was not an official government assessment or even an analysis of an actual plan that had passed Congress.
Page 4 of the report included a chart that showed that unemployment would peak at 8 percent in 2009, compared to 9 percent in 2010 if nothing was done. For 2012, the report suggested the unemployment rate would be 5.2 percent after stimulus. But the report also contained numerous caveats and warnings because, after all, it was merely a projection.
Still, the administration later cited the report in congressional testimony, giving it an official imprimatur. So, while Obama officials may not have "pledged" such a goal, it was certainly part of the administration's talking points.
In recent weeks, Romney has cited another "promise" regarding the growth of the economy. That figure is plucked from the White House's 2010 mid-session budget review - which predicted an unemployment rate of 7.7 percent in 2012.
"He raided $716 billion from Medicare to pay for his Obamacare."
As we have repeatedly explained, Medicare spending is not being reduced. It still goes up year after year, so spending on Medicare over that 10-year period would still be $7.8 trillion. (This claim actually earned a mention in our Pinocchios of the year.)
The $716 billion figure comes from the difference over 10 years between anticipated Medicare spending (what is known as "the baseline") and the changes the law makes to reduce spending. Moreover, the savings mostly are wrung from health-care providers, not Medicare beneficiaries, and generally did not involve traditional Medicare benefits. (It is worth noting that, given past practices, the Medicare actuary has doubted whether such cuts will ever come to pass.)
In fact, House Republicans adopted many of these same cuts in their own budget. (They argue they devote the savings to reforming Medicare, not funding a new entitlement.) Both parties agree that controls are needed on Medicare spending - that is the only way that the Medicare trust funds last longer - but they disagree over the best path forward.
"He also said he would lower health premiums by some $2,000 a family, but, instead, they've gone up by $3,000 a family."
Actually, in the 2008 campaign, Obama promised to lower health-care premiums by $2,500 - but even that came with a major asterisk: He was not saying premiums would fall by that amount, as Romney asserts, but that costs would be that much lower than anticipated. It was such an iffy pledge that it earned Obama Two Pinocchios from this column back in 2008.
But Romney earned Four Pinocchios for this claim because the math behind the supposed $3,000 increase was nonsensical. Our original column has the details: It starts with Bush's terms and then attributes health-cost increases to the new law, which has largely not been implemented.
Bonus quote:
"Together, we built names like Staples, Bright Horizons, and the Sports Authority - and helped create over 100,000 jobs."
In delivering the Republican response to Obama's weekly address on Saturday, Romney resurrected an old claim - that he helped create more than 100,000 jobs as a business executive.
As we have written before, this is an untenable figure. Bain was in the business of creating returns for investors, and any jobs that were created were just a happy coincidence. (Sometimes investments thrived when jobs were cut.)
Most of the jobs were created long after Bain's involvement had ended - and yet Romney throughout the campaign insisted he could not be held accountable for things that happened after he left Bain.
Barack Obama
Speech in Cincinnati, Nov. 4
"Today, our businesses have created nearly 5.5 million new jobs."
This is a cherry-picked figure, since it focuses only on the private sector - and then only since February 2010.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, total job creation - public and private - during Obama's presidency is only marginally positive or negative, depending on whether you start the count in January or February 2009. (The economy lost 818,000 jobs in January, though Obama only took office on the 20th.)
"We're less dependent on foreign oil than at any time in 20 years."
This is a trend that began before Obama became president - in 2005 - and it is also the result of declining consumption due to the the 2008 economic crisis, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
"After President Clinton, we had eight years in which we tried giving big tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans. We tried giving insurance companies and oil companies and Wall Street a free license to do whatever they pleased. And what we got was falling incomes, and record deficits, and the slowest job growth in 50 years, and an economic crisis that we're still cleaning our way out of."
This is an expansion of an assertion from one of Obama's ads that earned him Three Pinocchios. President Bill Clinton actually signed the laws that repealed the separation of commercial and investment banks and removed derivatives contracts from regulatory oversight.
Moreover, there is no evidence that the George W. Bush tax cuts led to the recession, but Obama here expands the critique to also include budget deficits, making it more accurate.
"Another $5 trillion tax cut that favors the wealthy - not change."
As we have repeatedly noted, the Romney tax plan is supposed to be revenue neutral - and Romney says he will start by removing tax breaks for the wealthy. But he has not provided details on how he would do that, and nonpartisan studies say that math does not add up.
"I won't turn Medicare into a voucher just to pay for another millionaire's tax cut."
Republicans have supported changing Medicare to a "premium support" model, but the savings is not intended to be used for a tax cut, but rather to reduce rising costs.
Bonus quote:
"The day after the attack, governor, I stood in the Rose Garden and I told the American people and the world that we are going to find out exactly what happened. That this was an act of terror and I also said that we're going to hunt down those who committed this crime."
Actually, this is an Obama quote from the second presidential debate. Readers may recall that the White House objected to our fact check, in which we said Obama did not call the attack on the U.S. mission a "terrorist attack" for at least 15 days and thus Romney's broader point in the debate was accurate. We stood by that ruling after looking at the evidence again.
Now CBS has suddenly released the full transcript of a 60 Minutes interview with Steve Kroft that was held shortly after that Rose Garden appearance.
KROFT: "Mr. President, this morning you went out of your way to avoid the use of the word terrorism in connection with the Libya attack. Do you believe that this was a terrorism attack?"
OBAMA: "Well it's too early to tell exactly how this came about, what group was involved, but obviously it was an attack on Americans. And we are going to be working with the Libyan government to make sure that we bring these folks to justice, one way or the other."
It is up to media critics to determine whether CBS erred in not releasing this earlier. But this new information certainly confirms our initial ruling that there is a world of difference between "terrorist attack" and "act of terror."
In retrospect, Obama's answer in the debate was even more disingenuous than we had originally suspected.
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November 6, 2012 Tuesday 8:12 PM EST
The 2012 Catch-22
BYLINE: Charles Lane
SECTION: Editorial; Pg. A17
LENGTH: 772 words
It was exhilarating - that night in July 2004, when a young Senate candidate from Illinois stood before a national television audience, invoked his improbable Kenyan-Kansan background, and called upon Americans to unite.
"There's not a liberal America and a conservative America," Barack Obama said. "There's the United States of America. . . . We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don't like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the red states. We coach Little League in the blue states and, yes, we've got some gay friends in the red states. . . . We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the Stars and Stripes, all of us defending the United States of America."
Those powerful words, and the powerful hope they expressed, helped propel Obama to the presidency and, ultimately, to his bitter reelection struggle against Mitt Romney.
In 2012, though, his language, and that of his Democratic surrogates, is different: "Romnesia," "Romney bet against America" and, in one television ad, "Mitt Romney - he's not one of us."
In 2004, Obama denounced "those who are preparing to divide us - the spin masters, the negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of 'anything goes.' " In this campaign, some of those people work for him.
What went wrong?
It's not, as his worst detractors on the right would have it, that Barack Obama is some kind of unusually sinister politician, who revealed his true nature after taking office. Nor is it sufficient to protest, as Obama's supporters do, that he had to respond in kind when faced with unprecedented GOP demonization.
The problem is simpler: Obama's 2004 speech, though undoubtedly sincere, was not true. Americans were deeply divided then, and they are, if anything, more deeply divided now.
Polarization has reached the point where party affiliation predicts a person's beliefs better than race, education, income, religiosity or gender, according to a remarkable study published in June by the Pew Research Center. More ominous, to anyone familiar with the political history of 19th-century America, is that party and ideology overlap heavily with geography.
Divergent social systems, founded in divergent value systems, are taking root in different regions. Are there really no red states and no blue states? Only if you think it's an accident that public-sector unionism is weakest below the Mason-Dixon line, or that almost all of the states that allow same-sex marriage are in the Northeast.
Meanwhile, pundits and politicians spend far more energy on mockery and hatred than on mutual comprehension.
This is why Obama is now the second president in a row to win election as a uniter - and then campaign for reelection by trashing his opponent and herding his party's base to the polls.
No doubt the president would reject this comparison with George W. Bush. But I mean it as a statement of reality, not an accusation. This is just the way presidential politics works in a polarized milieu. And for all his charisma and good intentions, Obama could not transform that dynamic, or even resist it.
As if conceding the point, Obama offers 2012 voters not hope but "a choice between two fundamentally different visions for America." Romney, too, paints his disagreements with the president in stark terms - leavened, of late, by pledges of bipartisan cooperation faintly reminiscent of those that helped Bush and Obama win, but no more plausible.
Both men promise the party faithful that electoral victory will mean policy triumph; if recent history has shown anything, though, it is that neither party is strong enough to impose its agenda. Nor is there much to be gained from conventional legislative compromise. The country's financial problems are too great for piecemeal solutions, and the parties' differences on how to solve them are too big to split.
Our predicament calls for a different kind of politics - in the tradition of the sectional Great Compromises of pre-Civil War America, including the deals embodied in the Constitution itself.
In those grand bargains, seemingly irreconcilable factions stopped trying to crush each other, at least for a time, and exchanged concessions on principle for the greater good of political stability. It was the domestic equivalent of land for peace.
Though they preserved the Union for decades, the Compromises were fatally tainted by slavery and thus could not ultimately stave off national breakdown.
Prospects for durable compromise today are accordingly brighter - assuming the winners in Tuesday's elections learn from the past 12 years' worth of partisan uniting and dividing.
lanec@washpost.com
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Washingtonpost.com
November 6, 2012 Tuesday 8:12 PM EST
Now, it's the voters' turn to speak
BYLINE: David A. Fahrenthold;Robert Barnes
SECTION: A section; Pg. A01
LENGTH: 1232 words
President Obama held a slim advantage in national and battleground polls going into Election Day as the candidates made their last mad dashes across swing-state America and their campaigns braced for a day of intense battle - and the legal fights that may follow.
A Washington Post-ABC News tracking poll showed Obama at 50 percent to Republican challenger Mitt Romney's 47 percent. That is Obama's best showing since July and a reversal of the three-percentage-point edge Romney held last month.
Elsewhere, new polls showed the president up by small margins in Ohio, Virginia and New Hampshire, three swing states that could give Obama the last electoral votes he needs to win.
For both campaigns, Monday was filled with the hard work - and the head fakes, rumors and spun-up bravado - that are traditional on an election eve. Volunteers called numbers they'd already called. They rapped on doors they'd already knocked on.
Romney announced that he would campaign into Election Day, visiting Pennsylvania and Ohio, in a gesture of either confidence or concern.
"If anyone wants to know where the energy is - if anyone out there that's following American politics wants to know where the energy is - just come right here in this room and you'll see it," the Republican told a crowd at George Mason University in Fairfax County.
Obama finished his campaign on Monday with rallies in Wisconsin, Ohio and Iowa. His traveling aides wore fleeces with his 2008 campaign logo and talked confidently of the president's multiple paths to winning 270 electoral votes a second time.
In Madison, Wis., Obama rallied a crowd of 18,000 in front of the state Capitol, saying the time was nigh for his supporters to help keep him in the White House.
"If you're willing to work with me again, and knock on some doors with me, make some phone calls for me, turn out for me, we'll win Wisconsin," Obama said. "We'll win this election. We'll finish what we started."
In two key swing states, the parties spent Monday battling over voting procedures. In Florida, the state Democratic Party asked a judge to order an extension of early voting, after an early-voting center near Miami shut down temporarily on Sunday with a line outside.
Afterward, Florida Democrats said, election officials in South Florida made it easier to cast in-person absentee ballots. The party said officials in the heavily Democratic counties of Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade were allowing voters to cast absentee ballots Monday.
In Ohio, there were ominous signs that the election might not be settled for days. On Monday, a federal judge there set a hearing for Wednesday to decide how the state should count certain provisional ballots.
These ballots, which are issued to voters whose eligibility is in question, are set aside and counted later. If Ohio's vote comes down to these ballots, the outcome will be delayed during a 10-day review period.
Early-voting numbers
A look at early-voting data in key swing states seems to show a Democratic advantage - although not nearly as big as the one Obama enjoyed four years ago.
In Iowa, Democrats won the early vote by 18 points in 2008. This year, they lead it by 10. In Florida, Democrats' four-point edge is less than their nine-point margin of four years ago.
The pattern repeats in many key states, where Democrats' early-vote edge is four to eight points less than it was in 2008. Given that Obama won the popular vote in 2008 by about seven points, that would suggest a neck-and-neck race.
By Monday, the most expensive general election in U.S. history was winding down. In some states, political commercials were airing at a rate of more than 50,000 spots a day, according to media tracking data. In some places, in fact, there was no more room on the air.
So, without ad slots to buy, conservative groups began placing commercials in deep-blue states such as California and New York.
On Tuesday, the country's first polls will open at 6 a.m. in some East Coast states, including Virginia (they open an hour later in Maryland and the District). The last ones will close 19 hours later, at 8 p.m. local time in Alaska's Aleutian Islands.
By then, we might finally know the outcome. This is the basic math of the race: Seven states are considered tossups. To win the White House, Romney needs to win at least four of them, including the biggest, Florida.
Obama has more options. He could secure reelection with just one of these states - Florida. Or he could win with several combinations of two, such as Ohio and Wisconsin, or Ohio and Virginia. This assumes Romney doesn't pull off an upset somewhere unexpected, such as Pennsylvania.
"We've said we see many different paths to 270 [electoral votes], and all those different paths are still there today that we saw a year ago," David Axelrod, a top strategist for Obama's campaign, told reporters Monday. "That's the difference between the campaigns."
'Very personal for me'
On Monday, the two campaigns did what they had been doing for months: calling and canvassing. They weren't giving up.
"After the ninth, 10th, 11th call, I really feel for them," said Antonette Smith, a volunteer in Colorado for the conservative group Americans for Prosperity who had been dialing up beleaguered swing-state voters all morning. It was Smith's last day at an "action center" in a suburban office park. She said she came as much for her own sanity as anything else.
Smith, 50, who was laid off in May from a health-care marketing group, said it was too hard to sit home alone for the campaign's final hours. She thinks this election could turn the economy around.
"I want to be with people. This is very personal for me," Smith said, her eyes filling with tears. "My daughter needs a new pair of jeans."
In Wisconsin, Romney volunter Dick Farrell went looking for votes in the oldest-fashioned way: knocking on doors. He had a clipboard with the names of likely Romney voters. And he had a script in which he was supposed to ask whether someone had voted, and if not, what time Tuesday they planned to head to the polls.
As the day went on, Farrell knocked a lot, and the homeowners answered only a little. He didn't seem convinced that this was a great use of time.
"There isn't much to this, is there?" he asked, squinting at house numbers, looking for the next one on his list. But campaign workers "say this is really important," Farrell said, "and I'm taking their word for it."
Then, in one of the last houses on Stardust Street in Waukesha, he found one: an actual undecided voter. After 523 days and $3 billion worth of campaigning, the gray-faced man behind the door hadn't made up his mind.
He told Farrell that he'd voted for Obama last time. This time, however, he wasn't sure if he'd do it again. Wasn't sure, actually, if he'd vote at all.
"There's too much to know," the man told Farrell, "and I don't know it."
"Well," Farrell said as a spitting rain began to fall on the quiet street, "I think about the debt, and I'd encourage you to vote for Romney . . . either way, I hope you vote."
The man thanked him, and Farrell made another mark on his clipboard.
fahrenthold@washpost.com
barnesb@washpost.com
Jenna Johnson in Iowa; Steve Hendrix in Colorado; Emily Heil in Wisconsin; Craig Timberg, David Nakamura and Philip Rucker in Ohio; and Dan Eggen and Bill Turque in Washington contributed to this report.
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November 6, 2012 Tuesday 8:12 PM EST
R e l i s h i ng the 'M orm on M o m e nt'
BYLINE: Jason Horowitz
SECTION: Style; Pg. C01
LENGTH: 1453 words
SALT LAKE CITY - "The story began in 1820," the voice in the headphones exclaimed.
A handful of people taking an audio tour of the Church History Museum here over the weekend followed exhibits, from a stained-glass window depicting the first revelation of "14-year-old farm boy" Joseph Smith, to the printing press that produced the first edition of the Book of Mormon in 1830, to the chair that carpenter Brigham Young built before joining the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1832. A few steps forward, the awed museumgoers listened to the words of Parley Pratt, a pioneer ancestor of Mitt Romney, as he imagined the establishment of Zion in Ohio, only to walk a few more feet to inspect the weapons used to chase Mormons from state to state and the death mask of the religion's murdered founder.
A legacy of state-sponsored persecution is embedded in the identity of America's most successful homegrown religion. In a century of assimilation, the country's 6 million Mormons have sought to erase from their public image and museum exhibits the polygamy and early beliefs that triggered federal crackdowns. Mormons have become prominent athletes and academics, captains of industry and public officials. But nothing would mark the faith's place in the American mainstream more than the ascension of one of its own to the presidency of a government that once sought its destruction.
"A people persecuted, denounced and mistreated could suddenly find one of their own in highest office," said Richard Bushman, a prominent Mormon historian and a predecessor of Romney as the highest Mormon authority in Boston. "To put the nation in the hands of a Latter-day Saint is really the ultimate act of trust."
If Romney wins, history will likely remember him not as the first private-equity president, but the first Mormon commander in chief. It is a potential accomplishment that says as much about the country's progress as John F. Kennedy's distinction as the first Catholic to occupy the Oval Office. Utah, more than Michigan or Massachusetts, is Romney's spiritual home, and for many Mormons, the view from the precipice here has been dizzying.
"They're so amped up right now they might as well be drinking coffee," said Patrick Mason, a professor of Mormon studies at Claremont Graduate University.
In the days and hours leading up to Election Day, Mormons expressed their anticipation, giddiness and cautious hope that Romney, a former church leader, would make an impact on history's timeline that would extend and ultimately dwarf the year-long Mormon Moment.
"It would be great. He holds a great power in the priesthood and could bring this nation out of the horrible mess it's in," Jewelle Merritt said as she dabbed tears from her eyes. The 59-year-old teacher from Brigham City had just watched "Joseph Smith: The Prophet of the Restoration," a tearjerker - notably cleansed of polygamy - shown in the church's Legacy Theater about the life and death of the religion's founder. As she walked into the bright sunshine of Temple Square, she said she never doubted the possibility of a Mormon president. "I was taught growing up that when the nation is hanging by a thread, one of the elders of Israel would come to save it. "
That belief, known among Mormons as the White Horse Prophesy, is officially rejected by the church and has fueled anti-Mormon conspiracy theories that Romney would work to establish a theocracy. The vast majority of Mormons here shared the more familiar pride and apprehension that any minority group on the brink of attaining the presidency might experience.
"He comes from pioneer stock. His grandfather moved to Mexico for the same reason my wife's grandfather moved to Mexico," Temple volunteer Jawin Westover, 70, proudly pointed out. (Romney's ancestors fled to Mexico to practice polygamy.) Under the temple spires, Westover watched as five sets of brides and grooms posed for pictures and blond children climbed over statues of Smith. "It's a distinctly American culture and it's the only country that this could happen in. Here's a big chance to show the world how great he is and how great his membership is."
Westover paused to squint and smile in the sun. "But," he said, "what if things go wrong?
The perception Americans and the world have of the church is the chief concern of the hierarchy in Salt Lake City. In recent years, the church has heavily marketed itself as a multiracial, multicultural and exceedingly Everyman faith. It spent millions on an "I'm a Mormon" ad campaign that appeared on billboards and televisions across the country.
In the lobby outside of the church's public affairs office, in the ornate Joseph Smith Memorial Building, a wall installation highlights the faces of the "I'm a Mormon" campaign. Inside the office of Michael Otterson, the church's head of worldwide communications, magazine covers headlined "Mormons" hang on the wall. Since Romney first ran for president in 2007, Otterson's office has been caught up in the prolonged Mormon Moment.
Otterson said that whether Romney wins the election or not, "it isn't the moment anyway, this is simply a transition and an evolution to a level of acceptance. I don't see how you can turn that clock back." He said that while the church had studiously maintained its political neutrality - and that it would keep its independence and distance "even if there were a Mormon president" - the election had been an important opportunity for the church "to really depict who we are." In recent weeks Mormon scholars have noticed what they have called a last-ditch effort to use Romney's religion against him. But Otterson said he hoped a Romney victory would prompt the same celebration of American pluralism that the shattering of other glass ceilings has produced.
Some Mormons have worried that a Republican Mormon president might actually hinder a church whose main objective is branch out to new believers. The hierarchy in Salt Lake is overwhelmingly, but not uniformly, Republican, and except for some notable exceptions, including Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), the large majority of Mormons vote Republican. (Romney's popularity here was likely to cause a Republican landslide down the ticket.)
"The church leadership is going to be careful to make sure that its main message remains universal," Otterson said.
Orrin G. Hatch, the senior U.S. senator from Utah and himself a Mormon, called the monolithic view of Mormons as Republican "really unfair." On his way to the conservative stronghold of Provo, the home of Brigham Young University, for a campaign event, he argued that Utah had become so solidly GOP because of disillusionment with liberal ideas. Romney's election, he said, would historically be viewed as less of a partisan victory than a "blow for religious freedom."
"Mitt Romney has shown that Mormons are as devoted to this country as much, if not more than, any other group," said Hatch, who cited a tortured past in which "the government didn't come to the rescue of the LDS church when people were being killed in Missouri and Illinois and elsewhere. It was as though they didn't belong."
For a faith that initially emphasized separation, maintaining an essential distinctiveness while belonging has become key.
Mia Love, a congressional candidate and the mayor of Saratoga Springs, Utah, appeared in the "I'm a Mormon" ad campaign. A Mormon black woman ("We call it the trifecta" said her campaign adviser), she took a break from rallying her volunteers in a room decorated with a Romney cardboard cutout to reflect on the potential for history. "What is great about this country is the fact that people like Barack Obama, people like Mitt Romney, are able to run for president," said Love, wearing a "Be Calm and Vote Rom" T-shirt. "Anyone can serve, regardless of their race, religion, gender."
At the mouth of Emigration Canyon, a bronze statue of Brigham Young looks out onto the Salt Lake Valley from atop a towering monument marking the spot where he pronounced, "This is the right place." Down the road, the members of the Monument Park congregation filed into their church for Sunday services.
Mike Anderson, the congregation's bishop, paused from counseling a teenage member of the congregation to note that in Detroit and Boston and other cities he has lived in, people have often looked at him as less than normal. "I feel kind of normal," he joked.
Down the hall, Gae Haynie, the congregation's 81-year-old librarian, sorted papers under portraits of past and present church prophets, baptism scenes and paintings of Joseph Smith. "We have risen from tough times," she said. "They hated us. And look what we have now."
horowitzj@washpost.com
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November 6, 2012 Tuesday 8:12 PM EST
Hey, politicians, try acting like sixth-graders
SECTION: Style; Pg. C09
LENGTH: 421 words
Today is Election Day, when Americans will choose the next president of the United States. At KidsPost, we've written a lot about the election to help kids understand what they were seeing in other parts of the newspaper or on television. We explained presidential debates; we even came up with an art project you can do Tuesday night while you watch election results with your family.
But it was our story about political advertising that prompted Catherine Odey's sixth-grade students at Rocky Hill Middle School in Montgomery County to write us letters with their opinions on negative ads.
Regardless of who wins, we hope all the politicians in the United States will pay attention to what these kids have to say:
"After reading the KidsPost article "Selling the President," our class had a very intense discussion about the commercials. . . . I think that they are annoying and they are wasting money. For example, when I was watching 'Jeopardy!' one day, when it went to commercial break, the commercials went from Obama to Romney to Tim Kaine to George Allen! And since 99 percent of the things are bogus, they are wasting lots of money!"
- Arpan Barua, 11
"These ads are just stupid. The candidates are acting like a bunch of 3-year-olds fighting over a toy. Doing campaigns like the Big Bird commercials and saying the other candidate is telling lies is low. The candidates should be showing that they are honorable, kind, hardworking people."
- Brittany Love, 11
"Negative ads are bad because not everything is true so they mislead voters."
- Emma McGrath, 11
"I think candidates spend too much money on ads. I think that ads give false information and people can just tune in to the debates or read credible articles."
- Cedric Starks, 11
"I feel that the ads are annoying and untrue. They don't put anything new, and they never say anything positive about themselves. They only focus on the bad stuff about the person they're running against."
- Angela Grey-Theriot, 11
"Just because you say bad things about the other person doesn't mean that the public will change their minds. Also, I think while President Obama and Governor Romney waste millions and millions of dollars on the ads that people don't even listen to, they should help schools."
- Lisa Patel, 12
"Instead of ads that attack each other, why not let people better understand their motives? They spend millions of dollars just for attacking and defending, like football. So let's make the ads positive so we can really move forward."
- Mei Lu, 12
kidspost@washpost.com
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Washingtonpost.com
November 6, 2012 Tuesday 8:12 PM EST
'SEAL Team Six' takes on the 'Real Housewives,' and both sides can claim victory
BYLINE: Lisa De Moraes
SECTION: Style; Pg. C04
LENGTH: 830 words
In answer to your question as to why National Geographic signed up for the headache that is Harvey Weinstein's controversial film "SEAL Team Six: The Raid on Osama bin Laden," Sunday's unveiling snagged an average of 2.7 million viewers - the network's second-biggest audience ever.
Sure, "The Real Housewives of Atlanta" took out "SEAL Team Six" at 9 p.m., but the bin Laden movie snagged NatGeo's biggest numbers since "Inside 9/11: Zero Hour" clocked an impressive 3 million viewers back in 2005, when the network was available in just 55 million homes (compared with 84 million today).
After Sunday, NatGeo was touting the 4.7 million viewers who had checked out as little as six minutes of the two-hour program. That is commonly known as a "reach" number, and it's relevant to advertisers because it's assumed that if you watched six minutes, you saw an ad - because they're coming at you that fast these days.
The 2.7 million number, on the other hand, is people watching at any given moment during the broadcast, and is Nielsen standard for the record books.
Even so, NatGeo has cause to celebrate, given that 2.7 million viewers is a huge increase from the 660,000-ish the channel averaged in that block of time on Sundays this season to date. It's also a big jump compared with NatGeo's much-ballyhooed telecast last April of "Titanic: The Final Word With James Cameron," about the sinking of the famous luxury liner; that one attracted 1.8 million viewers.
You could also argue that the movie was a win for NatGeo even before its debut, based on the bajillion-upling of news reports about the network - a joint venture between National Geographic and Fox Cable Networks that has struggled with the perception that it's a Discovery Channel also-ran.
That said, even while the SEALs were reenacting their bumping off of bin Laden, they were themselves being taken out by the fifth-season debut of "The Real Housewives of Atlanta."
"Real Housewives" bagged more than 3.2 million viewers at 9, scorching Bravo's ratings record for a season debut of any of its programs - ever.
In the days leading up to the "SEAL Team Six" premiere, some critics blasted NatGeo for running the controversial flick the weekend before Election Day, calling it a big wet kiss to President Obama.
"SEAL Team Six," the critics noted, is backed by longtime Democratic contributor and major Obama campaign backer Harvey Weinstein, who'd bought the rights to the flick at Cannes in May and, according to news reports, then used news and docu footage to beef up Obama's role.
NatGeo chief executive David Lyle, however, insisted that it is an apolitical tribute to the security forces of the country.
And NatGeo President Howard Owens told Politico they'd cut a scene that showed Mitt Romney appearing to oppose the raid in which bin Laden was killed.
"We are overwhelmed that viewers across the country responded en masse to this socially relevant, factually based and entertaining film that highlighted the real inside story behind the manhunt for bin Laden and the heroes in our military and intelligence agencies," Lyle said Monday in a statement.
Nielsen estimates that 289.4 million people are in the country's TV homes this season. And, to reiterate, "SEAL Team Six" averaged 2.7 million of them.
"It proved that no matter who Americans are planning to vote for, a good film is a good film, and we are happy to have had such success with our first original broadcast of a feature film inspired by real-life events," Lyle said.
'Elementary' boon
"Elementary," CBS's procedural-crime-drama take on Sherlock Holmes, has won the lottery, snagging the coveted post-Super Bowl time slot.
CBS announced Monday that it would air an episode of the freshman drama series Sunday, Feb. 3, after Super Bowl XLVII post-game coverage.
The post-Super-Bowl time slot is considered the best in the TV firmament, what with the Super Bowl driving about 100 million viewers into that time slot.
An estimated 111.3 million people watched last year's game - after which about 38 million people stuck around for NBC's singing competition "The Voice" - which is now mopping the floor with the Fox singing competition "The X Factor," and catapulting NBC to first place in the ratings for the season to date.
Although it's a great number, 38 million is not nearly so good as the 53 million people who stuck around in 1996 to watch an episode of NBC's "Friends."
"Elementary," meanwhile, is averaging about 14 million viewers this season, which, while far short of that 53 million - or even 38 million - makes it the No. 2 new series on TV.
In CBS's take on the much-loved franchise, Sherlock (played by Jonny Lee Miller) has just wrapped a "fall from grace in London" with a stint in rehab, and Daddy has shipped him off to Manhattan and hired him a sobriety coach - former surgeon Dr. Watson (Lucy Liu).
demoraesl@washpost.com
To read previous columns by Lisa de Moraes, go to washingtonpost.com/tvblog.
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The Washington Post
November 6, 2012 Tuesday
Regional Edition
The 2012 Catch-22
BYLINE: Charles Lane
SECTION: EDITORIAL COPY; Pg. A17
LENGTH: 772 words
It was exhilarating - that night in July 2004, when a young Senate candidate from Illinois stood before a national television audience, invoked his improbable Kenyan-Kansan background, and called upon Americans to unite.
"There's not a liberal America and a conservative America," Barack Obama said. "There's the United States of America. . . . We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don't like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the red states. We coach Little League in the blue states and, yes, we've got some gay friends in the red states. . . . We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the Stars and Stripes, all of us defending the United States of America."
Those powerful words, and the powerful hope they expressed, helped propel Obama to the presidency and, ultimately, to his bitter reelection struggle against Mitt Romney.
In 2012, though, his language, and that of his Democratic surrogates, is different: "Romnesia," "Romney bet against America" and, in one television ad, "Mitt Romney - he's not one of us."
In 2004, Obama denounced "those who are preparing to divide us - the spin masters, the negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of 'anything goes.' " In this campaign, some of those people work for him.
What went wrong?
It's not, as his worst detractors on the right would have it, that Barack Obama is some kind of unusually sinister politician, who revealed his true nature after taking office. Nor is it sufficient to protest, as Obama's supporters do, that he had to respond in kind when faced with unprecedented GOP demonization.
The problem is simpler: Obama's 2004 speech, though undoubtedly sincere, was not true. Americans were deeply divided then, and they are, if anything, more deeply divided now.
Polarization has reached the point where party affiliation predicts a person's beliefs better than race, education, income, religiosity or gender, according to a remarkable study published in June by the Pew Research Center. More ominous, to anyone familiar with the political history of 19th-century America, is that party and ideology overlap heavily with geography.
Divergent social systems, founded in divergent value systems, are taking root in different regions. Are there really no red states and no blue states? Only if you think it's an accident that public-sector unionism is weakest below the Mason-Dixon line, or that almost all of the states that allow same-sex marriage are in the Northeast.
Meanwhile, pundits and politicians spend far more energy on mockery and hatred than on mutual comprehension.
This is why Obama is now the second president in a row to win election as a uniter - and then campaign for reelection by trashing his opponent and herding his party's base to the polls.
No doubt the president would reject this comparison with George W. Bush. But I mean it as a statement of reality, not an accusation. This is just the way presidential politics works in a polarized milieu. And for all his charisma and good intentions, Obama could not transform that dynamic, or even resist it.
As if conceding the point, Obama offers 2012 voters not hope but "a choice between two fundamentally different visions for America." Romney, too, paints his disagreements with the president in stark terms - leavened, of late, by pledges of bipartisan cooperation faintly reminiscent of those that helped Bush and Obama win, but no more plausible.
Both men promise the party faithful that electoral victory will mean policy triumph; if recent history has shown anything, though, it is that neither party is strong enough to impose its agenda. Nor is there much to be gained from conventional legislative compromise. The country's financial problems are too great for piecemeal solutions, and the parties' differences on how to solve them are too big to split.
Our predicament calls for a different kind of politics - in the tradition of the sectional Great Compromises of pre-Civil War America, including the deals embodied in the Constitution itself.
In those grand bargains, seemingly irreconcilable factions stopped trying to crush each other, at least for a time, and exchanged concessions on principle for the greater good of political stability. It was the domestic equivalent of land for peace.
Though they preserved the Union for decades, the Compromises were fatally tainted by slavery and thus could not ultimately stave off national breakdown.
Prospects for durable compromise today are accordingly brighter - assuming the winners in Tuesday's elections learn from the past 12 years' worth of partisan uniting and dividing.
lanec@washpost.com
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The Washington Post
November 6, 2012 Tuesday
Suburban Edition
Now, it's the voters' turn to speak
BYLINE: David A. Fahrenthold;Robert Barnes
SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A01
LENGTH: 1223 words
President Obama held a slim advantage in national and battleground polls going into Election Day as the candidates made their last mad dashes across swing-state America and their campaigns braced for a day of intense battle - and the legal fights that may follow.
A Washington Post-ABC News tracking poll showed Obama at 50 percent to Republican challenger Mitt Romney's 47 percent. That is Obama's best showing since July and a reversal of the three-percentage-point edge Romney held last month.
Elsewhere, new polls showed the president up by small margins in Ohio, Virginia and New Hampshire, three swing states that could give Obama the last electoral votes he needs to win.
For both campaigns, Monday was filled with the hard work - and the head fakes, rumors and spun-up bravado - that are traditional on an election eve. Volunteers called numbers they'd already called. They rapped on doors they'd already knocked on.
Romney announced that he would campaign into Election Day, visiting Pennsylvania and Ohio, in a gesture of either confidence or concern.
"If anyone wants to know where the energy is - if anyone out there that's following American politics wants to know where the energy is - just come right here in this room and you'll see it," the Republican told a crowd at George Mason University in Fairfax County.
Obama finished his campaign on Monday with rallies in Wisconsin, Ohio and Iowa. His traveling aides wore fleeces with his 2008 campaign logo and talked confidently of the president's multiple paths to winning 270 electoral votes a second time.
In Madison, Wis., Obama rallied a crowd of 18,000 in front of the state Capitol, saying the time was nigh for his supporters to help keep him in the White House.
"If you're willing to work with me again, and knock on some doors with me, make some phone calls for me, turn out for me, we'll win Wisconsin," Obama said. "We'll win this election. We'll finish what we started."
In two key swing states, the parties spent Monday battling over voting procedures. In Florida, the state Democratic Party asked a judge to order an extension of early voting, after an early-voting center near Miami shut down temporarily on Sunday with a line outside.
Afterward, Florida Democrats said, election officials in South Florida made it easier to cast in-person absentee ballots. The party said officials in the heavily Democratic counties of Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade were allowing voters to cast absentee ballots Monday.
In Ohio, there were ominous signs that the election might not be settled for days. On Monday, a federal judge there set a hearing for Wednesday to decide how the state should count certain provisional ballots.
These ballots, which are issued to voters whose eligibility is in question, are set aside and counted later. If Ohio's vote comes down to these ballots, the outcome will be delayed during a 10-day review period.
Early-voting numbers
A look at early-voting data in key swing states seems to show a Democratic advantage - although not nearly as big as the one Obama enjoyed four years ago.
In Iowa, Democrats won the early vote by 18 points in 2008. This year, they lead it by 10. In Florida, Democrats' four-point edge is less than their nine-point margin of four years ago.
The pattern repeats in many key states, where Democrats' early-vote edge is four to eight points less than it was in 2008. Given that Obama won the popular vote in 2008 by about seven points, that would suggest a neck-and-neck race.
By Monday, the most expensive general election in U.S. history was winding down. In some states, political commercials were airing at a rate of more than 50,000 spots a day, according to media tracking data. In some places, in fact, there was no more room on the air.
So, without ad slots to buy, conservative groups began placing commercials in deep-blue states such as California and New York.
On Tuesday, the country's first polls will open at 6 a.m. in some East Coast states, including Virginia (they open an hour later in Maryland and the District). The last ones will close 19 hours later, at 8 p.m. local time in Alaska's Aleutian Islands.
By then, we might finally know the outcome. This is the basic math of the race: Seven states are considered tossups. To win the White House, Romney needs to win at least four of them, including the biggest, Florida.
Obama has more options. He could secure reelection with just one of these states - Florida. Or he could win with several combinations of two, such as Ohio and Wisconsin, or Ohio and Virginia. This assumes Romney doesn't pull off an upset somewhere unexpected, such as Pennsylvania.
"We've said we see many different paths to 270 [electoral votes], and all those different paths are still there today that we saw a year ago," David Axelrod, a top strategist for Obama's campaign, told reporters Monday. "That's the difference between the campaigns."
'Very personal for me'
On Monday, the two campaigns did what they had been doing for months: calling and canvassing. They weren't giving up.
"After the ninth, 10th, 11th call, I really feel for them," said Antonette Smith, a volunteer in Colorado for the conservative group Americans for Prosperity who had been dialing up beleaguered swing-state voters all morning. It was Smith's last day at an "action center" in a suburban office park. She said she came as much for her own sanity as anything else.
Smith, 50, who was laid off in May from a health-care marketing group, said it was too hard to sit home alone for the campaign's final hours. She thinks this election could turn the economy around.
"I want to be with people. This is very personal for me," Smith said, her eyes filling with tears. "My daughter needs a new pair of jeans."
In Wisconsin, Romney volunter Dick Farrell went looking for votes in the oldest-fashioned way: knocking on doors. He had a clipboard with the names of likely Romney voters. And he had a script in which he was supposed to ask whether someone had voted, and if not, what time Tuesday they planned to head to the polls.
As the day went on, Farrell knocked a lot, and the homeowners answered only a little. He didn't seem convinced that this was a great use of time.
"There isn't much to this, is there?" he asked, squinting at house numbers, looking for the next one on his list. But campaign workers "say this is really important," Farrell said, "and I'm taking their word for it."
Then, in one of the last houses on Stardust Street in Waukesha, he found one: an actual undecided voter. After 523 days and $3 billion worth of campaigning, the gray-faced man behind the door hadn't made up his mind.
He told Farrell that he'd voted for Obama last time. This time, however, he wasn't sure if he'd do it again. Wasn't sure, actually, if he'd vote at all.
"There's too much to know," the man told Farrell, "and I don't know it."
"Well," Farrell said as a spitting rain began to fall on the quiet street, "I think about the debt, and I'd encourage you to vote for Romney . . . either way, I hope you vote."
The man thanked him, and Farrell made another mark on his clipboard.
fahrenthold@washpost.com
barnesb@washpost.com
Jenna Johnson in Iowa; Steve Hendrix in Colorado; Emily Heil in Wisconsin; Craig Timberg, David Nakamura and Philip Rucker in Ohio; and Dan Eggen and Bill Turque in Washington contributed to this report.
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The Washington Post
November 6, 2012 Tuesday
Suburban Edition
Hey, politicians, try acting like sixth-graders
SECTION: STYLE; Pg. C09
LENGTH: 421 words
Today is Election Day, when Americans will choose the next president of the United States. At KidsPost, we've written a lot about the election to help kids understand what they were seeing in other parts of the newspaper or on television. We explained presidential debates; we even came up with an art project you can do Tuesday night while you watch election results with your family.
But it was our story about political advertising that prompted Catherine Odey's sixth-grade students at Rocky Hill Middle School in Montgomery County to write us letters with their opinions on negative ads.
Regardless of who wins, we hope all the politicians in the United States will pay attention to what these kids have to say:
"After reading the KidsPost article "Selling the President," our class had a very intense discussion about the commercials. . . . I think that they are annoying and they are wasting money. For example, when I was watching 'Jeopardy!' one day, when it went to commercial break, the commercials went from Obama to Romney to Tim Kaine to George Allen! And since 99 percent of the things are bogus, they are wasting lots of money!"
- Arpan Barua, 11
"These ads are just stupid. The candidates are acting like a bunch of 3-year-olds fighting over a toy. Doing campaigns like the Big Bird commercials and saying the other candidate is telling lies is low. The candidates should be showing that they are honorable, kind, hardworking people."
- Brittany Love, 11
"Negative ads are bad because not everything is true so they mislead voters."
- Emma McGrath, 11
"I think candidates spend too much money on ads. I think that ads give false information and people can just tune in to the debates or read credible articles."
- Cedric Starks, 11
"I feel that the ads are annoying and untrue. They don't put anything new, and they never say anything positive about themselves. They only focus on the bad stuff about the person they're running against."
- Angela Grey-Theriot, 11
"Just because you say bad things about the other person doesn't mean that the public will change their minds. Also, I think while President Obama and Governor Romney waste millions and millions of dollars on the ads that people don't even listen to, they should help schools."
- Lisa Patel, 12
"Instead of ads that attack each other, why not let people better understand their motives? They spend millions of dollars just for attacking and defending, like football. So let's make the ads positive so we can really move forward."
- Mei Lu, 12
kidspost@washpost.com
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The Washington Post
November 6, 2012 Tuesday
Suburban Edition
'SEAL Team Six' takes on the 'Real Housewives,' and both sides can claim victory
BYLINE: Lisa De Moraes
SECTION: STYLE; Pg. C04
LENGTH: 827 words
In answer to your question as to why National Geographic signed up for the headache that is Harvey Weinstein's controversial film "SEAL Team Six: The Raid on Osama bin Laden," Sunday's unveiling snagged an average of 2.7 million viewers - the network's second-biggest audience ever.
Sure, "The Real Housewives of Atlanta" took out "SEAL Team Six" at 9 p.m., but the bin Laden movie snagged NatGeo's biggest numbers since "Inside 9/11: Zero Hour" clocked an impressive 3 million viewers back in 2005, when the network was available in just 55 million homes (compared with 84 million today).
After Sunday, NatGeo was touting the 4.7 million viewers who had checked out as little as six minutes of the two-hour program. That is commonly known as a "reach" number, and it's relevant to advertisers because it's assumed that if you watched six minutes, you saw an ad - because they're coming at you that fast these days.
The 2.7 million number, on the other hand, is people watching at any given moment during the broadcast, and is Nielsen standard for the record books.
Even so, NatGeo has cause to celebrate, given that 2.7 million viewers is a huge increase from the 660,000-ish the channel averaged in that block of time on Sundays this season to date. It's also a big jump compared with NatGeo's much-ballyhooed telecast last April of "Titanic: The Final Word With James Cameron," about the sinking of the famous luxury liner; that one attracted 1.8 million viewers.
You could also argue that the movie was a win for NatGeo even before its debut, based on the bajillion-upling of news reports about the network - a joint venture between National Geographic and Fox Cable Networks that has struggled with the perception that it's a Discovery Channel also-ran.
That said, even while the SEALs were reenacting their bumping off of bin Laden, they were themselves being taken out by the fifth-season debut of "The Real Housewives of Atlanta."
"Real Housewives" bagged more than 3.2 million viewers at 9, scorching Bravo's ratings record for a season debut of any of its programs - ever.
In the days leading up to the "SEAL Team Six" premiere, some critics blasted NatGeo for running the controversial flick the weekend before Election Day, calling it a big wet kiss to President Obama.
"SEAL Team Six," the critics noted, is backed by longtime Democratic contributor and major Obama campaign backer Harvey Weinstein, who'd bought the rights to the flick at Cannes in May and, according to news reports, then used news and docu footage to beef up Obama's role.
NatGeo chief executive David Lyle, however, insisted that it is an apolitical tribute to the security forces of the country.
And NatGeo President Howard Owens told Politico they'd cut a scene that showed Mitt Romney appearing to oppose the raid in which bin Laden was killed.
"We are overwhelmed that viewers across the country responded en masse to this socially relevant, factually based and entertaining film that highlighted the real inside story behind the manhunt for bin Laden and the heroes in our military and intelligence agencies," Lyle said Monday in a statement.
Nielsen estimates that 289.4 million people are in the country's TV homes this season. And, to reiterate, "SEAL Team Six" averaged 2.7 million of them.
"It proved that no matter who Americans are planning to vote for, a good film is a good film, and we are happy to have had such success with our first original broadcast of a feature film inspired by real-life events," Lyle said.
'Elementary' boon
"Elementary," CBS's procedural-crime-drama take on Sherlock Holmes, has won the lottery, snagging the coveted post-Super Bowl time slot.
CBS announced Monday that it would air an episode of the freshman drama series Sunday, Feb. 3, after Super Bowl XLVII post-game coverage.
The post-Super-Bowl time slot is considered the best in the TV firmament, what with the Super Bowl driving about 100 million viewers into that time slot.
An estimated 111.3 million people watched last year's game - after which about 38 million people stuck around for NBC's singing competition "The Voice" - which is now mopping the floor with the Fox singing competition "The X Factor," and catapulting NBC to first place in the ratings for the season to date.
Although it's a great number, 38 million is not nearly so good as the 53 million people who stuck around in 1996 to watch an episode of NBC's "Friends."
"Elementary," meanwhile, is averaging about 14 million viewers this season, which, while far short of that 53 million - or even 38 million - makes it the No. 2 new series on TV.
In CBS's take on the much-loved franchise, Sherlock (played by Jonny Lee Miller) has just wrapped a "fall from grace in London" with a stint in rehab, and Daddy has shipped him off to Manhattan and hired him a sobriety coach - former surgeon Dr. Watson (Lucy Liu).
demoraesl@washpost.com
To read previous columns by Lisa de Moraes, go to washingtonpost.com/tvblog.
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The Washington Post
November 6, 2012 Tuesday
Met 2 Edition
Relishing the 'Mormon Moment'
BYLINE: Jason Horowitz
SECTION: STYLE; Pg. C01
LENGTH: 1451 words
DATELINE: SALT LAKE CITY
SALT LAKE CITY - "The story began in 1820," the voice in the headphones exclaimed.
A handful of people taking an audio tour of the Church History Museum here over the weekend followed exhibits, from a stained-glass window depicting the first revelation of "14-year-old farm boy" Joseph Smith, to the printing press that produced the first edition of the Book of Mormon in 1830, to the chair that carpenter Brigham Young built before joining the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1832. A few steps forward, the awed museumgoers listened to the words of Parley Pratt, a pioneer ancestor of Mitt Romney, as he imagined the establishment of Zion in Ohio, only to walk a few more feet to inspect the weapons used to chase Mormons from state to state and the death mask of the religion's murdered founder.
A legacy of state-sponsored persecution is embedded in the identity of America's most successful homegrown religion. In a century of assimilation, the country's 6 million Mormons have sought to erase from their public image and museum exhibits the polygamy and early beliefs that triggered federal crackdowns. Mormons have become prominent athletes and academics, captains of industry and public officials. But nothing would mark the faith's place in the American mainstream more than the ascension of one of its own to the presidency of a government that once sought its destruction.
"A people persecuted, denounced and mistreated could suddenly find one of their own in highest office," said Richard Bushman, a prominent Mormon historian and a predecessor of Romney as the highest Mormon authority in Boston. "To put the nation in the hands of a Latter-day Saint is really the ultimate act of trust."
If Romney wins, history will likely remember him not as the first private-equity president, but the first Mormon commander in chief. It is a potential accomplishment that says as much about the country's progress as John F. Kennedy's distinction as the first Catholic to occupy the Oval Office. Utah, more than Michigan or Massachusetts, is Romney's spiritual home, and for many Mormons, the view from the precipice here has been dizzying.
"They're so amped up right now they might as well be drinking coffee," said Patrick Mason, a professor of Mormon studies at Claremont Graduate University.
In the days and hours leading up to Election Day, Mormons expressed their anticipation, giddiness and cautious hope that Romney, a former church leader, would make an impact on history's timeline that would extend and ultimately dwarf the year-long Mormon Moment.
"It would be great. He holds a great power in the priesthood and could bring this nation out of the horrible mess it's in," Jewelle Merritt said as she dabbed tears from her eyes. The 59-year-old teacher from Brigham City had just watched "Joseph Smith: The Prophet of the Restoration," a tearjerker - notably cleansed of polygamy - shown in the church's Legacy Theater about the life and death of the religion's founder. As she walked into the bright sunshine of Temple Square, she said she never doubted the possibility of a Mormon president. "I was taught growing up that when the nation is hanging by a thread, one of the elders of Israel would come to save it. "
That belief, known among Mormons as the White Horse Prophesy, is officially rejected by the church and has fueled anti-Mormon conspiracy theories that Romney would work to establish a theocracy. The vast majority of Mormons here shared the more familiar pride and apprehension that any minority group on the brink of attaining the presidency might experience.
"He comes from pioneer stock. His grandfather moved to Mexico for the same reason my wife's grandfather moved to Mexico," Temple volunteer Jawin Westover, 70, proudly pointed out. (Romney's ancestors fled to Mexico to practice polygamy.) Under the temple spires, Westover watched as five sets of brides and grooms posed for pictures and blond children climbed over statues of Smith. "It's a distinctly American culture and it's the only country that this could happen in. Here's a big chance to show the world how great he is and how great his membership is."
Westover paused to squint and smile in the sun. "But," he said, "what if things go wrong?
The perception Americans and the world have of the church is the chief concern of the hierarchy in Salt Lake City. In recent years, the church has heavily marketed itself as a multiracial, multicultural and exceedingly Everyman faith. It spent millions on an "I'm a Mormon" ad campaign that appeared on billboards and televisions across the country.
In the lobby outside of the church's public affairs office, in the ornate Joseph Smith Memorial Building, a wall installation highlights the faces of the "I'm a Mormon" campaign. Inside the office of Michael Otterson, the church's head of worldwide communications, magazine covers headlined "Mormons" hang on the wall. Since Romney first ran for president in 2007, Otterson's office has been caught up in the prolonged Mormon Moment.
Otterson said that whether Romney wins the election or not, "it isn't the moment anyway, this is simply a transition and an evolution to a level of acceptance. I don't see how you can turn that clock back." He said that while the church had studiously maintained its political neutrality - and that it would keep its independence and distance "even if there were a Mormon president" - the election had been an important opportunity for the church "to really depict who we are." In recent weeks Mormon scholars have noticed what they have called a last-ditch effort to use Romney's religion against him. But Otterson said he hoped a Romney victory would prompt the same celebration of American pluralism that the shattering of other glass ceilings has produced.
Some Mormons have worried that a Republican Mormon president might actually hinder a church whose main objective is branch out to new believers. The hierarchy in Salt Lake is overwhelmingly, but not uniformly, Republican, and except for some notable exceptions, including Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), the large majority of Mormons vote Republican. (Romney's popularity here was likely to cause a Republican landslide down the ticket.)
"The church leadership is going to be careful to make sure that its main message remains universal," Otterson said.
Orrin G. Hatch, the senior U.S. senator from Utah and himself a Mormon, called the monolithic view of Mormons as Republican "really unfair." On his way to the conservative stronghold of Provo, the home of Brigham Young University, for a campaign event, he argued that Utah had become so solidly GOP because of disillusionment with liberal ideas. Romney's election, he said, would historically be viewed as less of a partisan victory than a "blow for religious freedom."
"Mitt Romney has shown that Mormons are as devoted to this country as much, if not more than, any other group," said Hatch, who cited a tortured past in which "the government didn't come to the rescue of the LDS church when people were being killed in Missouri and Illinois and elsewhere. It was as though they didn't belong."
For a faith that initially emphasized separation, maintaining an essential distinctiveness while belonging has become key.
Mia Love, a congressional candidate and the mayor of Saratoga Springs, Utah, appeared in the "I'm a Mormon" ad campaign. A Mormon black woman ("We call it the trifecta" said her campaign adviser), she took a break from rallying her volunteers in a room decorated with a Romney cardboard cutout to reflect on the potential for history. "What is great about this country is the fact that people like Barack Obama, people like Mitt Romney, are able to run for president," said Love, wearing a "Be Calm and Vote Rom" T-shirt. "Anyone can serve, regardless of their race, religion, gender."
At the mouth of Emigration Canyon, a bronze statue of Brigham Young looks out onto the Salt Lake Valley from atop a towering monument marking the spot where he pronounced, "This is the right place." Down the road, the members of the Monument Park congregation filed into their church for Sunday services.
Mike Anderson, the congregation's bishop, paused from counseling a teenage member of the congregation to note that in Detroit and Boston and other cities he has lived in, people have often looked at him as less than normal. "I feel kind of normal," he joked.
Down the hall, Gae Haynie, the congregation's 81-year-old librarian, sorted papers under portraits of past and present church prophets, baptism scenes and paintings of Joseph Smith. "We have risen from tough times," she said. "They hated us. And look what we have now."
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The Permanent Militarization of America
BYLINE: By AARON B. O'CONNELL.
Aaron B. O'Connell, an assistant professor of history at the United States Naval Academy and a Marine reserve officer, is the author of ''Underdogs: The Making of the Modern Marine Corps.''
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Editorial Desk; OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR; Pg. 27
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Annapolis, Md.
IN 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower left office warning of the growing power of the military-industrial complex in American life. Most people know the term the president popularized, but few remember his argument.
In his farewell address, Eisenhower called for a better equilibrium between military and domestic affairs in our economy, politics and culture. He worried that the defense industry's search for profits would warp foreign policy and, conversely, that too much state control of the private sector would cause economic stagnation. He warned that unending preparations for war were incongruous with the nation's history. He cautioned that war and warmaking took up too large a proportion of national life, with grave ramifications for our spiritual health.
The military-industrial complex has not emerged in quite the way Eisenhower envisioned. The United States spends an enormous sum on defense -- over $700 billion last year, about half of all military spending in the world -- but in terms of our total economy, it has steadily declined to less than 5 percent of gross domestic product from 14 percent in 1953. Defense-related research has not produced an ossified garrison state; in fact, it has yielded a host of beneficial technologies, from the Internet to civilian nuclear power to GPS navigation. The United States has an enormous armaments industry, but it has not hampered employment and economic growth. In fact, Congress's favorite argument against reducing defense spending is the job loss such cuts would entail.
Nor has the private sector infected foreign policy in the way that Eisenhower warned. Foreign policy has become increasingly reliant on military solutions since World War II, but we are a long way from the Marines' repeated occupations of Haiti, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic in the early 20th century, when commercial interests influenced military action. Of all the criticisms of the 2003 Iraq war, the idea that it was done to somehow magically decrease the cost of oil is the least credible. Though it's true that mercenaries and contractors have exploited the wars of the past decade, hard decisions about the use of military force are made today much as they were in Eisenhower's day: by the president, advised by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the National Security Council, and then more or less rubber-stamped by Congress. Corporations do not get a vote, at least not yet.
But Eisenhower's least heeded warning -- concerning the spiritual effects of permanent preparations for war -- is more important now than ever. Our culture has militarized considerably since Eisenhower's era, and civilians, not the armed services, have been the principal cause. From lawmakers' constant use of ''support our troops'' to justify defense spending, to TV programs and video games like ''NCIS,'' ''Homeland'' and ''Call of Duty,'' to NBC's shameful and unreal reality show ''Stars Earn Stripes,'' Americans are subjected to a daily diet of stories that valorize the military while the storytellers pursue their own opportunistic political and commercial agendas. Of course, veterans should be thanked for serving their country, as should police officers, emergency workers and teachers. But no institution -- particularly one financed by the taxpayers -- should be immune from thoughtful criticism.
Like all institutions, the military works to enhance its public image, but this is just one element of militarization. Most of the political discourse on military matters comes from civilians, who are more vocal about ''supporting our troops'' than the troops themselves. It doesn't help that there are fewer veterans in Congress today than at any previous point since World War II. Those who have served are less likely to offer unvarnished praise for the military, for it, like all institutions, has its own frustrations and failings. But for non-veterans -- including about four-fifths of all members of Congress -- there is only unequivocal, unhesitating adulation. The political costs of anything else are just too high.
For proof of this phenomenon, one need look no further than the continuing furor over sequestration -- the automatic cuts, evenly divided between Pentagon and nonsecurity spending, that will go into effect in January if a deal on the debt and deficits isn't reached. As Bob Woodward's latest book reveals, the Obama administration devised the measure last year to include across-the-board defense cuts because it believed that slashing defense was so unthinkable that it would make compromise inevitable.
But after a grand budget deal collapsed, in large part because of resistance from House Republicans, both parties reframed sequestration as an attack on the troops (even though it has provisions that would protect military pay). The fact that sequestration would also devastate education, health and programs for children has not had the same impact.
Eisenhower understood the trade-offs between guns and butter. ''Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed,'' he warned in 1953, early in his presidency. ''The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.''
He also knew that Congress was a big part of the problem. (In earlier drafts, he referred to the ''military-industrial-Congressional'' complex, but decided against alienating the legislature in his last days in office.) Today, there are just a select few in public life who are willing to question the military or its spending, and those who do -- from the libertarian Ron Paul to the leftist Dennis J. Kucinich -- are dismissed as unrealistic.
The fact that both President Obama and Mitt Romney are calling for increases to the defense budget (in the latter case, above what the military has asked for) is further proof that the military is the true ''third rail'' of American politics. In this strange universe where those without military credentials can't endorse defense cuts, it took a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Adm. Mike Mullen, to make the obvious point that the nation's ballooning debt was the biggest threat to national security.
Uncritical support of all things martial is quickly becoming the new normal for our youth. Hardly any of my students at the Naval Academy remember a time when their nation wasn't at war. Almost all think it ordinary to hear of drone strikes in Yemen or Taliban attacks in Afghanistan. The recent revelation of counterterrorism bases in Africa elicits no surprise in them, nor do the military ceremonies that are now regular features at sporting events. That which is left unexamined eventually becomes invisible, and as a result, few Americans today are giving sufficient consideration to the full range of violent activities the government undertakes in their names.
Were Eisenhower alive, he'd be aghast at our debt, deficits and still expanding military-industrial complex. And he would certainly be critical of the ''insidious penetration of our minds'' by video game companies and television networks, the news media and the partisan pundits. With so little knowledge of what Eisenhower called the ''lingering sadness of war'' and the ''certain agony of the battlefield,'' they have done as much as anyone to turn the hard work of national security into the crass business of politics and entertainment.
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With Control of Senate at Stake, Last-Minute Money Pours Into Races
BYLINE: By JONATHAN WEISMAN and DEREK WILLIS; Jonathan Weisman reported from Painesville, Ohio, and Derek Willis from Washington. John Eligon contributed reporting from St. Louis, Jack Healy from Denver and Steven Yaccino from Chicago.
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PAINESVILLE, Ohio -- A torrent of outside money has dropped into this state in the closing days of the campaign to try to unseat Senator Sherrod Brown, a Democrat, part of a late onslaught across the country that Republicans hope will salvage a respectable showing in Senate races they once had high hopes for.
In Ohio, Arizona, Indiana and even Missouri, once thought to be an uneven contest, a last-minute rush of money on both sides suggests that neither party believes that the balance of power in the next Senate is set.
In Virginia, George Allen, a Republican, has latched on to Mitt Romney, hoping that the top of the ticket can still lift him back to the Senate seat he lost six years ago. In Nevada, Representative Shelley Berkley, a Democrat, has reached into her own wallet, lending her Senate campaign a quarter of a million dollars for the last stretch.
But the hopes of the Republican Party for at best a tie in the Senate now seem to rest on the slender shoulders of Josh Mandel, a baby-faced 35-year-old Ohio state treasurer who concedes that he looks 19. With just one day to go, Republicans are in danger of losing Senate seats in Indiana, Maine and Massachusetts. If they did, they would need to sweep all of the contests in which they either lead or are nearly tied -- in Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Virginia and Wisconsin -- and then hope that Mr. Mandel can pull out a victory.
''We started off this race down 17. By Thanksgiving, we were down 15. By the Super Bowl, we were down 12. Spring training, down 10. About a month ago, we were down 7,'' Mr. Mandel told a packed house of young door-knockers and phone bank volunteers at the Lake County Republican Party headquarters on Saturday night, many of them from out of state. ''And a new poll came out this morning that has us tied, 48-48.''
That poll was something of an outlier. Most other surveys have given Mr. Brown a lead larger than the one President Obama has over Mr. Romney in Ohio. But the Republican Party's deep-pocketed allies are determined to give him a late surge.
Since Oct. 17, the beginning of the final reporting period, 40 groups have spent $13.9 million on the Senate race in Ohio, 43 percent of the $32.7 million spent since the primaries. Of that late rush, nearly 9 of every 10 dollars have been spent on behalf of Mr. Mandel.
Mr. Brown has treated his younger rival with dismissive contempt, suggesting that outside money is the only reason there is a race here.
But Mr. Brown and his allies have played the game as well, using negative advertising to paint Mr. Mandel as a brat who stocked the treasurer's office with friends and cronies while not bothering to show up for work.
''Sherrod Brown likes to complain and play holier than thou when it comes to independent expenditures,'' Mr. Mandel said in an interview here. ''We're not complaining. I'm a grown man, and I have no problem with people running attack ads against me. I understand it's part of the political process.''
At this point, he said, even his wife records the television shows she wants to watch so that she can skip over the political ads.
Mr. Brown said: ''I'm not whining about the money. I'm just saying there's never been this much outside money in any Senate campaign anywhere. It's why there's a race.''
The ad barrage in the state is having an impact. John Carson, a 54-year-old mathematician in Findlay, Ohio, and a Republican, said he still had not decided whom to vote for in the presidential election. But as Mr. Mandel prepared another visit to his town, nicknamed Flag City, he had stronger feelings about the Senate race.
''I have a real bad feeling about Mandel,'' he said. ''It's really the advertising, his and Brown's. He's a slick politician just out for himself.''
Allies of both parties are hoping minds are not completely made up in several states. In the past two weeks, $22 million has poured into the Senate race in Virginia. Outside groups have dumped $17.2 million into Wisconsin, $12.7 million into Arizona, $11.3 million into Indiana, $8.6 million into Montana and $8.5 million into Nevada.
In some of those states, like Wisconsin and Nevada, groups supporting Democratic candidates have outspent the Republican groups. In most of the others, the Democratic groups are not far behind. Only in Ohio are the numbers so lopsided, reflecting the stakes Republicans see in that race and the confidence they have in their private polling. It also shows the certitude among Democrats that they have it won.
Mr. Mandel said his campaign's internal polling had the race tied, but, he said, he has at least a two-percentage-point lead with Ohio's most enthusiastic voters. A poll released Sunday by The Columbus Dispatch showed Mr. Obama with 50 percent and Mr. Romney with 48 percent, which was within the poll's margin of sampling error of two points, and had Mr. Brown ahead of Mr. Mandel by six points, 51 percent to 45 percent, exceeding the margin of error.
Mr. Mandel has had to suffer some indignities in his quest for the Senate. Over the weekend, he played the sidekick to the House speaker, John A. Boehner of Ohio, who barnstormed the state with Mr. Mandel but always played the top act of the show. In Painesville on Saturday night, Mr. Mandel gave brief remarks from his stump speech and then introduced Mr. Boehner, who promptly forgot his name.
''I've got to tell you, I'm proud of our ticket. Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan,'' Mr. Boehner said. ''Uh, we've got, uh, he was just here. I'm going brain-dead. Josh Mandel!''
Mr. Mandel shrugged it off. ''Listen,'' he said, ''he's third in line to be president. This is one of most important and powerful leaders we have in this country. He's a lot more important guy than I am.''
The late rush to help Mr. Mandel may reflect the narrowing of the Senate playing field. The toughest races to handicap do not really include Ohio. In Montana, a freshman Democratic senator, Jon Tester, is nearly tied with the state's only House member, Denny Rehberg, a Republican. Of the $8.5 million in outside money spent on the Senate race in that state, 39 percent has come in the last two weeks, most of it for Mr. Rehberg.
In Wisconsin, polls have given leads to both former Gov. Tommy G. Thompson, a Republican, and his Democratic opponent, Representative Tammy Baldwin. Of the $17.2 million spent so far by outside groups in that race, 45 percent has come in since Oct. 17, but in this case, Ms. Baldwin, who would be the first openly lesbian senator, has benefited from a national network of supporters who have outspent Mr. Thompson's allies.
Outside of Ohio, nowhere is the last-ditch spending spree more prominent than in Indiana, where Republican groups are rushing to try to salvage the campaign of the state treasurer, Richard E. Mourdock, who may have doomed the prospects of a Republican Senate seat by saying that conception from rape is God's will. Forty-seven percent of the outside money spent on the Indiana Senate race has been spent in the last 18 days. Of that, $6.6 million has been spent on Mr. Mourdock's behalf, versus $4.7 million for his opponent, Representative Joe Donnelly, a Democrat.
Even Representative Todd Akin of Missouri, largely written off in his attempt to unseat Senator Claire McCaskill, a Democrat, has made a move. National Republicans had sworn they would not back Mr. Akin after he commented that conception would not result from ''legitimate rape.''
But coordinated spending between his campaign and the Missouri Republican Party topped $1.1 million in the race's final week, a figure higher than either group has on hand. That has led to speculation that the National Republican Senatorial Campaign is shifting money to the state party. Officials of the N.R.S.C. have refused to comment on the move.
The final days of the Missouri race have included a $2 million ad blitz on behalf of Mr. Akin, who has been vastly outspent by Ms. McCaskill throughout the race. Ms. McCaskill has continued to put her own pressure on Mr. Akin, a six-term member of the House, releasing a new ad that used a clip from an interview in which Mr. Romney called for Mr. Akin to drop out of the race.
Indiana, Montana and Wisconsin could determine whether Republicans can at least gain seats in the Senate, instead of leaving the Democrats' 53-seat majority intact or even augmented. Ms. Baldwin, who is from Madison, a liberal bastion, and has one of the most left-leaning voting records in the House, would appear to be an unlikely powerhouse.
And it is not that she is doing incredibly well in a state where Republicans dominated the 2010 elections and fended off attempts to recall a conservative governor a few months ago. Those ''too liberal'' attacks being hurled at her seem to be effective, said Charles Franklin, the poll director at Marquette University.
What is perhaps more surprising, he said, is that Mr. Thompson, a popular four-term governor of the state, has his own negatives that appear to be just as strong.
''Both of these ad campaigns have been effective, and they've been sticky,'' Mr. Franklin said, adding that both candidates are seen more unfavorably than favorably by Wisconsin voters. ''They've stuck to the candidates that they've been directed toward.''
In Montana, each Senate candidate has been crisscrossing from the ski towns and pristine parks in the west to the oil-rich plains in the east, stopping in tiny towns to press for support from handfuls of voters at cafes and gas stations. Windshield time, it is called. Mr. Tester kept up a punishing schedule through the weekend, while Mr. Rehberg laid low and let the advertising speak for him. That included a direct-to-camera plea from Mr. Romney.
''It's all going to come down to voter turnout,'' Mr. Tester said in a phone interview as he rolled across the state.
Indiana could prove to be the 2012 equivalent to Nevada and Delaware during the 2010 Senate races, when Republicans looked poised to easily take Democratic seats only to nominate Tea Party-backed candidates who proved too conservative for the general electorate. But outside groups seem determined to keep Mr. Mourdock in the game.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/05/us/politics/last-minute-money-pours-into-senate-races.html
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GRAPHIC: PHOTO: The Republicans are placing much hope for the Senate on a youthful-looking candidate from Ohio, Josh Mandel. (PHOTOGRAPH BY MICHAEL F. McELROY FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES) (A9)
Former Gov. Tommy G. Thompson, a Senate candidate, fired up the crowd for Mitt Romney during the Wisconsin State Fair. (PHOTOGRAPH BY TANNEN MAURY/EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY)
Republicans have been spending heavily in the closing days of the campaign to try to defeat Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio. (PHOTOGRAPH BY TONY DEJAK/ASSOCIATED PRESS) (A12)
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Groundwork Meets Charm Offensive in Massachusetts Senate Race
BYLINE: By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
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BOSTON -- Even in the darkest days of Elizabeth Warren's Senate campaign, when she was being pummeled for claiming Native American ancestry, her team expressed optimism that she would win in November. Why? Because, they said, she would have a superior ground game that would turn out the vote when it mattered most, on Election Day.
That assertion is now being put to the test. Her campaign officials say they expect to have 24,000 volunteers working for them on Tuesday roughly 10 in each of the state's 2,174 precincts to get her supporters to the polls. That would be by far a record number in Massachusetts. In the days before the election, they expect to knock on one million doors and make two million phone calls.
Her army on the ground is clearly one of Ms. Warren's strength in her hard-fought attempt to unseat Senator Scott P. Brown. But what Mr. Brown, as a Republican in a deep blue state, may lack in ground organization, he makes up for on the stump as a natural-born campaigner who makes a personal connection with voters.
''I'm from here, O.K.?'' Mr. Brown said from the stage at a boisterous rally Thursday night in Wakefield, where he grew up. ''I married a local Waltham girl. My kids were born here. I know this town like the back of my hand.'' Huge cheers erupted from the packed hall.
Ms. Warren is greeted like a rock star. A rally in Boston on Saturday with Representative John Lewis, the Georgia Democrat and civil rights icon, brought down the house. And Mr. Brown has some organization, his team says it has quadrupled the strength of any previous Republican campaign in the state. Recent polls have shown Ms. Warren with a very slim advantage, though all have been within the margin of sampling error.
''It's widely recognized that the Democrats here have the edge in terms of numbers, and that's the real danger for Brown,'' said Peter Ubertaccio, a political scientist at Stonehill College. ''But Brown has been able to blunt the Democratic knocking-on-door strategy through sheer force of personality, and that's what has kept this race so close.''
The Warren campaign has been tilling the fields for months.
It has 48 field offices and 74 paid field organizers, including several veterans of Hillary Rodham Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign. On Saturday alone, they made more than 370,000 phone calls and knocked on more than 123,000 doors; those knocking included Michael S. Dukakis, the former governor and Democratic presidential candidate.
''The ground game is the only thing that matters in the end,'' said John Walsh, chairman of the state Democratic Party. On Election Day itself, he said, Team Warren will be joined by thousands of members of unions and groups like the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. Workers from Mayor Thomas M. Menino's machine in Boston have already been folded in.
They intend to start at 5 in the morning by hanging a card on the front doors of likely Warren voters, reminding them to vote. Warren workers at the polls will keep track of who has voted.
Ms. Warren's closing television ad presents her as a fighter for the middle class. ''Know this,'' she says directly to the camera. ''My fight is for you. Always has been. And I won't back down, no matter how long the odds or how powerful the opposition.''
On the stump, she fires up her supporters with a reminder that Mr. Brown has voted against equal pay for women, coverage for birth control and a Supreme Court nominee who supports abortion rights. If she wins, Ms. Warren will become the first woman in state history elected to the Senate. Polling shows she has lopsided support among women while Mr. Brown has lopsided support among men.
Mr. Brown's get-out-the-vote effort cannot match Ms. Warren's, since the Republican Party has little institutional history in the state. But the party said that Mr. Brown's 2010 election had given it a base on which to build.
''We are running by far the largest volunteer field organization in our party's history,'' said Tim Buckley, a spokesman for the state Republican Party.
Still, Brown supporters are trying to turn their field disadvantage into a strength. At a Brown rally here on Sunday, former Gov. William F. Weld, a Republican, cast the race as a showdown between ''man versus machine.'' He said that just as a machine was working to get Ms. Warren elected, a machine would tell her how to vote. ''The machine never rests,'' he said.
Voter mobilization for Mr. Brown relies less on foot soldiers and more on a personal, down-home appeal as he and his camera-ready family barnstorm across the state in a bright blue bus.
''It is about whose side you're on,'' Mr. Brown said at the Wakefield rally, co-opting a phrase from Ms. Warren as he cast her as a non-compromiser. ''She'll have a message of division, us versus them, haves and the have-nots, men versus women,'' he said. ''I mean, come on. How about somewhere in the middle? How about 'maybe'? How about 'together'? How about sitting down and having a beer and a pizza and solving our problems?''
His closing television ad is a 60-second montage of upbeat images backed by swelling music as Mr. Brown says, ''I've kept my promise to be an independent voice.'' It also features a clip of him with President Obama.
His party label, and his party's presidential standard-bearer, Mitt Romney, have been airbrushed out of his campaign. At his rallies, Mr. Brown leads his audiences in chants of his slogan, ''people over party.''
One of the biggest wild cards in this race is the presidential election. Mr. Obama leads Mr. Romney here by double digits, but this has not translated into a corresponding lead for Ms. Warren. It does suggest that Mr. Brown has won over plenty of Obama voters; the question is whether he can win enough of them.
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GRAPHIC: PHOTO: Elizabeth Warren campaigned in Boston on Saturday with Gov. Deval Patrick, left, and Representative John Lewis of Georgia. (PHOTOGRAPH BY MICHAEL DWYER/ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Storm Aftermath: Continuing Coverage
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HIGHLIGHT: A northeaster knocked out power to homes in New York and New Jersey and interrupted train service, setting back recovery after Hurricane Sandy, but several utilities said they had already brought back most of their customers.
Odd-even gas rationing went into effect Friday in New York City and Long Island as officials moved to shorten the hours-long lines that have become an exasperating feature of daily life for drivers since last week's storm. Lines seemed to be a bit shorter, and though some people with even-numbered plates flouted the law with apparent impunity, there was little reported chaos.
Join us for continued coverage of Hurricane Sandy and its aftermath on Monday, or as news happens.
6:13 P.M. | New Jersey and New York Start to Address Price Gouging
As complaints about post-storm price-gouging continue to pile up, New Jersey Attorney General Jeffrey S. Chiesa filed complaints against seven gas stations and a hotel on Friday, accusing them of "exploiting people's misery to make a quick profit."
One of the gas stations, a Lukoil in Paterson, increased its price by more than $2 a gallon, to $5.49 from $3.45, after the storm, Mr. Chiesa said. The hotel, a Howard Johnson Express Inn in Parsippany, increased its room rate to $119 from $90, Mr. Chiesa said.
The merchants face penalties of $10,000 for a first offense if found guilty. Price gouging is defined as increasing prices by more than 10 percent during an emergency, beyond covering any additional costs brought on by the emergency itself.
The attorney general's office has received 2,000 complaints from people in five counties in the wake of the storm, Mr. Chiesa said. Four percent of the state's gas stations have been the subject of complaints.
In New York, the office of Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman said that it had received 600 complaints so far including one that a grocery in Battery Park City charged $10 for a box of matches and another that a Waldbaum's in Carle Place on Long Island charged $6.99 for a small bag of potatoes that was $2.99 before the storm.
The attorney general has also subpoenaed Craigslist for information about people who have been offering non-bargains like an empty five-gallon gas container for $500 or a $700 generator for $1,200.
Last year after Tropical Storm Irene, the office received only about a dozen complaints. Two of them led to fines of several thousand dollars against gas stations, including one in Yonkers that charged 97 cents more per gallon after the storm, and another in Farmingdale on Long Island that increased its price by 84 cents a gallon.
In Brooklyn, District Attorney Charles J. Hynes announced Thursday that he would impanel a grand jury to investigate price-gouging.
- Andy Newman
5:34 P.M. | A New York City Program to Repair Damaged Houses
Looking to streamline the daunting process for homeowners of getting storm-damaged homes fixed up, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg unveiled a program Friday in which homeowners can simply register and contractors will perform and oversee the repairs, with homeowners not having to reach into their pockets.
With contractors, electricians, plumbers and other tradesmen suddenly inundated with work, many homeowners have been finding it next to impossible to get workers to their houses. And though their insurers and the Federal Emergency Management Agency may eventually reimburse them, paying for the work up front is another hurdle.
Under the new program called NYC Rapid Repairs, said the mayor, "Once you've signed up, a contractor will come to your home, asses the damage, create a work order and within a short time the work will be done."
There will be caps on how much work will be covered, however. Currently, FEMA offers $10,000 in housing-repair reimbursement. The city hopes to set the cap considerably higher for this program, an official said.
Teams of contractors will be assigned to each affected neighborhood and "will be able to work on multiple buildings at once, not just one at a time," the mayor said.
He said that homes that need the least work will be dealt with first.
Homeowners can register for the program starting on Tuesday at DisasterAssistance.gov or by calling 1-800-621-3362.
- Andy Newman
5:05 P.M. | For the Rockaways, a Ferry and Some Subway Service
The A train's causeway over Jamaica Bay to the Rockaways, swamped and ripped up by Hurricane Sandy, remains out of service, a work in progress.
But residents of the Rockaways received two pieces of good transportation news on Friday. One is that A train service within the Rockaway peninsula will resume on Sunday, with a shuttle bus connection across Jamaica Bay to subway service at Howard Beach, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said.
The other is that ferry service to Manhattan will begin on Monday, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said.
Seastreak, a company that runs ferries to Atlantic Highlands, N.J., among other places, will operate the ferries, which will run from Beach 108th Street and Beach Channel Drive and stop at Pier 11 near South Street Seaport, with free transfers between Pier 11 and East 34th Street in Midtown.
There will be five morning boats to Manhattan, from 5:45 a.m. to 9:20 a.m., and three in the evening. The fare will be $2 each way. The trip to Pier 11 will take 50 minutes.
- Andy Newman
4:44 P.M. | Some Light Will Come to the Statue of Liberty
The Statue of Liberty's torch has been snuffed for a while. But the statue itself will be visible in the dark again beginning tonight, the National Park Service said.
Using three small diesel generators fueled from a tank on Liberty Island, a lighting company has devised a makeshift system for illuminating the statue until power is restored on the island, said David Barna, a spokesman for the park service in Washington.
The monument, including its iconic torch, and the museum on nearby Ellis Island have been without power since Hurricane Sandy hit on Oct. 29. The islands suffered significant damage and will be closed to visitors indefinitely, the park service said.
The lighting system was donated to the National Park Foundation, which raises private funds for national parks, by Musco Lighting. Mr. Barna said the value of Musco's donation would be about $140,000.
- Patrick McGeehan
4:10 P.M. | Mayor Bloomberg Speaks
Watch on Youtube.Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is scheduled to speak at 4:00 p.m.
2:26 P.M. | Obama Coming to New York City on Thursday
President Obama is coming to New York City on Thursday to see the damage from Hurricane Sandy firsthand, a White House official said this afternoon.
The president will "view storm damage, talk with citizens who are recovering from the storm and thank first responders who put their lives at risk to protect their communities," the official said.
- Andy Newman
2:08 P.M. | Zero May Be a Strange Number, but It's Not Odd
In dealing with New York's worst gasoline crisis since the 1970s, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg waded Thursday into a problem that has stumped people for years: Is the number zero odd, even or neither?
"Those with license plates ending in an even number, or the number zero, will be able to buy gas or diesel only on even-numbered days, such as Saturday, Nov. 10," the mayor said as he announced the imposition of odd-even gas rationing. Those with license plates ending in odd numbers or a letter can buy gas on only odd-numbered dates.
To mathematicians, it was a little astonishing that zero had to be singled out at all. (Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey said nothing regarding zero in his gas-rationing announcement last week.)
"It's absolutely not a matter of debate," said Walter Neumann, the chairman of Barnard College's mathematics department.
He explained that even integers, or whole numbers, are defined as numbers that can be divided by two without producing nonwhole numbers. Dividing three by two produces 1.5, making it odd; dividing four by two produces two, making it even. Zero divided by two equals zero - no fraction or nonwhole number results. So zero is even.
"It's very clear," said Marc Masdeu, an assistant professor at Columbia University who specializes in number theory, sounding puzzled at the question.
But tell that to the Parisian police officers who, during a smog alarm in 1977, were assigned to enforce a system under which cars with odd license plates could be driven on odd days, and even plates on even. Those with license plates ending in zero drove with impunity, because the police did not know what to do about zero, according to a paper by Prof. Hossein Arsham of the University of Baltimore, who has written about the concept of zero.
If anything, the mayor's decision to single out zero underscores just how tricky a place it occupies in the pantheon of numbers. Until Europeans adopted Arabic numerals in the Middle Ages, the concept of nothing, or none, had no numerical representation in the Western world. And any elementary school student can reel off a litany of arithmetic rules that mark off zero as special and strange.
"Treating zero as a number is already interesting," said Jonathan Goodman, a professor of mathematics at New York University. "If people don't think that zero's a number, the question of whether zero's even or odd doesn't occur."
Befuddlement over which way zero swings persists on the Internet. Last month, phrases like "is zero odd or even" were searched via Google more than 6,000 times globally.
And that is why Mr. Bloomberg singled out the number for mention, Marc LaVorgna, a spokesman for the mayor, said. "Zero can be a point of confusion, so we wanted to be absolutely clear in the rule."
- Vivian Yee
1:17 P.M. | And at Some Pumps Just Beyond Rationing's Limits ...
Meanwhile, just across the New York City line in Westchester County, where there is no odd-even rule in effect, were the gas stations inundated with Bronx refugees driving cars with even-numbered plates, desperate to fill their tanks today?
They were not, at least if a phone survey of 10 stations in Yonkers, Mount Vernon, Pelham Manor and New Rochelle was any indication.
Five of the stations were out of gas. But the other five were selling gas and reported no significant waits.
"Last week we had lines that were miles long here," said Chris Kraft, co-owner of the 76 station at 920 McLean Avenue in Yonkers, barely two blocks from Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx. Today, he said at noon, "maybe eight cars."
There did seem to be a fair number of out-of-towners, though, Mr. Kraft said. "I see a lot of people that I've never seen before, and they look like they're from New York," he said. He was asked to elaborate. "People that look like they're from the Bronx."
At U.S. Petroleum on Main Street in New Rochelle, two miles up Boston Post Road from the Bronx border, the man on the phone reported all was well.
"No lines," the man said. "You can get all day, no problem."
- Andy Newman
12:27 P.M. | Some Drivers in City and on Long Island Report Short Lines
The big question on Day 1 of gas rationing, at least in drivers' minds, is whether it is leading to shorter lines. There was no overview immediately available from the mayor or the Police Department in New York City, but there was anecdotal evidence on Twitter of short lines, in Fort Greene and Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn and on Queens Boulevard in Queens
RT @waterwinetravel: @brooklyngasCoastal station at Fulton/Vanderbilt has regular gas only.No line. Cops enforcing rationing. Odd #s onl
- NYC GAS (@NYC_GAS) November 9, 2012
@nyc_gas#nycgas gas station on utica and Atlantic Ave had gas his morning around 730 short line. 6 cars.
- iDatBkDude (@DatBkDude) November 9, 2012
and in Babylon in Suffolk County.
Now that looks like a gas line 3 cars !#LiGas#LiHasGas#LongIsland Rt 109 & Wellwood ave twitter.com/Stockadamus/st
- STOCKADAMUS[#x2705] (@Stockadamus) November 9, 2012
With at least half the cars on the road suddenly ineligible to buy gas, the lines certainly should have been shorter. Though there were plenty of exceptions, the vast majority of drivers with even-numbered plates knew to stay away from the pumps.
At a busy Hess station at 10th Avenue and West 45th Street, a police officer stood in the street, checking license plates and waving away cars with even plates. The officer, who would not give his name, said that only about one in 50 cars had an even number.
But there were still plenty of long lines. The queue at a Hess station on Fourth Avenue in Gowanus, Brooklyn, wound far around the corner onto Sackett Street and nearly out of sight. More dispatches from the waiting line came in from Ditmas Park, Brooklyn .
Waited 75 mins for gas at Foster & CIA in Ditmas Park. #nycgas
- David Cook (@davidcookmusic) November 9, 2012
and from East New York, where a driver who waited 45 minutes - not that bad, in the scheme of things - emerged with sense of humor intact:
#brooklyngas RT @daneshad: Just filled up gas in Brooklyn @ Fulton & Pennsylvania Ave. The wait was about 45 mins and when I left a new tan
- NYC GAS (@NYC_GAS) November 9, 2012
- Andy Newman
9:25 A.M. | Bloomberg Urges Patience on Gas Rationing
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, resuming his weekly radio show for the first time since Hurricane Sandy pounded the region, urged New York City drivers to be patient as they get accustomed to a mandatory gas-rationing system that began Friday morning.
He also cautioned that the waits at gas stations, where often apoplectic drivers have routinely waited for hours to fill their tanks since the storm hit, would not necessarily be drastically shorter as a result of the new rules, which restrict refilling to cars with even-number license plates on even-number days and odd-number plates on odd-number days. And that is because the chief problem remained the extensive damage sustained by distribution terminals.
"There's no guarantee that odd-even is going to make a big difference," the mayor said, calling in for a shorter-than-usual interview with John Gambling on WOR-AM. "The real answer - all the experts believe - is just with time. They really thought that the damage to some of these small distribution terminals was not anywhere near as extensive as it was when they finally got electricity back and then tried to get it going."
Mr. Bloomberg also said, in response to a question about how it would seem logical for gas station owners, as businessmen, to try to be open for business: "I assume that that's the case, so there's got to be some reason why."
He added: "And I think part of it really is they just don't think that these terminals can fill the trucks anyway near fast enough, and so they wouldn't get gas, they'd only be open for a couple of hours, and maybe pay have to pay their employees full-day. I don't know."
New York City's rationing effort coincided with one that began Friday morning in Nassau and Suffolk Counties and followed odd-even rules imposed for 12 New Jersey counties last Saturday. The gas shortage was also exacerbated by the northeaster on Wednesday, which interrupted work to repair petroleum terminals and slowed barges carrying fuel from reaching their docks.
To make the rationing system go as smoothly as possible, Mr. Bloomberg said Friday that the city had "put a police officer at every gas station."
But he also suggested that city residents appreciated the efforts that companies and city agencies had put in during the last two weeks to helping the region recover more quickly. He said that his own respect for companies and city agencies had "doubled or tripled."
He also said that his primary focus was not on gas, but rather on helping tens of thousands of people - about half of whom live in public housing - "get power back" so they can "get back to much more normal life."
Mr. Bloomberg said that he hoped that all public housing developments would have electricity by Friday night, and heat by early next week.
"Then we can worry about lost belongings, things like that," he said.
- David W. Chen
8:28 A.M. | In Brooklyn, Shorter Lines and the Odd (Even) Scofflaw
At the Hess station at McGuinness Boulevard and Greenpoint Avenue in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, the wait for gas this morning was only about 20 minutes - far shorter than it had been in recent days, said Tony Dazzo, 35, an engineer who lives in Queens and was filling his car.
"They should have done it sooner," he said. "It gets half the people off the line and moves it a lot more quickly."
Most of those in line had odd-numbered plates or plates that ended in letters, in keeping with the new rule. But not all of them. Around 8 a.m., Cynthia Quiles, 42, a janitor for the Department of Education, filled up her Chevy Tahoe with an even-numbered plate even as 10 police officers stood by.
She said her job gave her an exception to the rule, even though those officially exempt from it include only cabs and liveries, buses and paratransit vehicles, emergency vehicles, commercial vehicles and those with M.D. plates.
"I think it's a fair rule," she said. "Because the lines are ridiculous."
Ms. Quiles added that twice in the past two weeks she had gotten in line for gas at 10 p.m. with a half tank and slept in her idling car until she could get gas at 7 a.m.
A block away, at a Gulf station at 176 McGuinness, Angel Perez, 34, who packages artwork, was turned away. He would have been welcome despite his even-numbered license plate if only he had a corporate account, but he did not. The station accepted all drivers with accounts, regardless of their plate numbers, as well as other drivers with odd-numbered plates. There were no police officers there, even though there were 10 nearby at the Hess station.
Mr. Perez, who drove to Brooklyn from Staten Island, said it was the third time he was turned away by 8 a.m.
"I didn't know about it until this morning, and look at me, I'm on empty," he said, pointing at his dashboard. "I understand he's trying to keep things organized, I just wish I had a little more notice."
- Nate Schweber
6:28 A.M. | Gas Rule in Effect, if Not Yet Enforced at the Pump
Jasmin Espinao, 34, who works at a construction company, went out of her way to get gasoline on Friday morning because she has an odd-numbered license plate and heard on the radio that only cars with odd plates could fill up on Friday (Nov. 9) under a rule announced Thursday by the mayor. She hoped the line might be shorter. But she was too early.
At 5:45 a.m., 15 minutes before the rule would take effect, Ms. Espinao got in line at the BP station on the corner of Flushing and Bushwick Avenues in Brooklyn behind a slew of cars with even-numbered plates. Many of them were presumably trying to beat the deadline, as drivers were apparently doing across the city.
#bp on #woodhavenblvd longggg line w/ even number plates filling up before the gas rationing rule kicks in at 6am #pix11news
- Dan Mannarino (@Pix11Dan) November 9, 2012
"I think it's a good idea, but the fact that you're in line with evens, it's like, what?" Ms. Espinao said. "It makes no sense. I hope it works, but it should be clear."
Benson Flemming, 39, an information technologist who lives in Queens, waited in line for 45 minutes sometime around 4 a.m. at a gas station in Brooklyn, only to have the station run dry just as he got to the pumps. He had gone there, the BP at Flushing and Bushwick, in desperation and frustration. He said he hoped the mayor's odd-even rationing could cut the lines.
"If there's something he can do to improve the situation, he needs to do it," Mr. Flemming said.
As the clock struck 6, Jose Dominguez, 36, a truck driver, waited in line to fill up his personal vehicle, a Honda sedan with an even-numbered plate. He said more patience was needed.
"We just have to cope with it," he said. "We just have to cooperate."
As of 6:25, there were 10 cars at the station's pumps, two of them with even-numbered plates. Drivers who violated the rule (doing so is a misdemeanor punishable by up to three months in jail) were not being told to go away by station attendants, and there were no police officers visible.
Nor did enforcement of the rule seem to be immediate at a station in Old Westbury on Long Island, where a radio reporter from WINS said, "I haven't seen the police turn any even-numbered plates away."
At the BP on Flushing and Bushwick, Raj Singh, 23, a station attendant, said he didn't know about the mayor's order.
"I have no idea about that," he said.
When asked if the police were helping to enforce the rule, he replied, "there are no police."
At 6:35, with the line stretching four blocks down Flushing Avenue, the station ran out of gas.
One by one, frustrated drivers peeled off to continue their search.
- Nate Schweber
3:31 P.M. | Odd-Even Gas Limits Set for City and Long Island
10:23 p.m. | Updated A revised version of this article is available here.
With gas lines in New York City still stubbornly long and no relief for gas shortages in sight, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg imposed an odd-even gas rationing rule Thursday that goes into effect at 6 a.m. tomorrow. Identical rules are going into effect in Nassau and Suffolk Counties on Long Island at 5 a.m. tomorrow.
The mayor said the measure, imposed by emergency order and similar to one put in place in 12 New Jersey counties by Gov. Chris Christie on Saturday that has been considered effective, should cut down lines and allow gas stations to stay open later.
"This is not a step that we take lightly," he said, "but given the shortage that we will face for the next few weeks and the growing frustrations of New Yorkers, we believe it is the right step."
The gas rule applies to most private cars. Buses, taxis and livery cabs, emergency vehicles, commercial vehicles, paratransit vehicles and cars with MD plates are all exempt.
Under the rule, motorists whose license plates end in an odd number or any letter or other character will be able to buy gas only on odd-numbered dates of the month.
Drivers with even-numbered plates (0 counts as an even number) will be able to buy gas only on even-numbered dates.
Violations of the gas rule are class B misdemeanors, punishable by up to three months in jail.
Only about 25 percent of the city's 800 gas stations are open at a given time during the day, the mayor's press office said (the vast majority of city stations reported by users of the crowd-sourced site GasBuddy are also out of gas). But AAA and the federal Energy Information Administration provided higher, and different, figures, saying that their surveys of stations show that about 70 percent of stations in the city sold gas at some point today. The reasons for the size of the discrepancy were not clear.
Lines of several hours to buy gas, fed in part by panic buying and hoarding, have become the norm in New York City. Fights have broken out on many lines, and the Police Department, already stretched thin dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, has been deployed to maintain order at gas stations all over the city.
In New Jersey, by comparison, Governor Christie said Thursday morning, "I've driven around the state the last two days and I've barely seen any fuel lines any more. There's order, there's plenty of gas."
New Jersey has an advantage over New York in that it is higher in the supply chain, with many refineries operating in New Jersey. In New York City, many gas stations rely on distribution terminals in Brooklyn and Queens that were damaged by the storm, or lost power, and have not come back fully.
Mayor Bloomberg was asked how long the restriction would remain in place. He said he did not know.
"We'll keep it in for a while," he said. "You know, if you think about it, it's no great imposition once you get used to it.
"We have to do something," the mayor added, "and this is something that is practical and enforceable and understandable, and doing something is much better than doing nothing."
- Andy Newman
Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this post misstated the odd-even rationing system planned for New York. Qualification for gas will be based on the final character on license plates, not simply the final number.
3:25 P.M. | Odd-Even Gas Rationing to Be Imposed on Long Island
Nassau and Suffolk Counties on Long Island are imposing an odd-even gas rationing system tomorrow morning at 5 a.m., similar to the system going into effect in New York City, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said Thursday.
Governor Cuomo said that Wednesday night's storm and the power failures it cause had led to longer lines in Long Island, especially in Nassau County, today.
"A partial failure of a terminal served by the Buckeye Pipeline, which pumps approximately 4.5 million gallons of gas per day into the New York City and Long Island area, occurred due to power failures late last night," Mr. Cuomo said in a statement. " While power was restored this morning, there was an interruption in the fuel supply chain to those regions."
Under the rules announced by the governor, drivers of cars with plates that end in even numbers can buy gas only even-numbered dates, and drivers of cars with plates that end in odd numbers can buy gas only on odd-numbered dates.
License plates that end in letters or other characters will be considered odd-numbered plates. Out of state plates will be subject to the same rules.
The restriction does not apply to filling of fuel cans, commercial vehicles, taxi or limousine fleets, or emergency fleets, nor does it apply to hand held gas cans.
An odd-even rationing rule in New Jersey, imposed in 12 counties by Gov. Chris Christie on Saturday, is credited with helping reduce gas lines there.
- Andy Newman
2:58 P.M. | New Jersey Judge Extends Voting for Displaced Residents
A New Jersey judge has ruled that displaced voters who could not get through when they requested ballots by fax or e-mail Tuesday can still vote.
The American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey announced on Thursday that Superior Court Judge Walter Koprowski of Essex County had signed the order extending voting for some people.
The state had said voters displaced by Hurricane Sandy could take until Friday to cast ballots by e-mail or fax, as long as they had applied for the special ballots by 5 p.m. on Election Day. The new order [PDF] applies to people who can prove they tried to apply for electronic ballots on time but could not get them because fax lines were busy or e-mail in-boxes were overflowing.
It was not clear how many voters the order applied to.
- The Associated Press
2:55 P.M. | Mayor Bloomberg Speaks
Watch on Youtube.Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is scheduled to speak at 3 p.m.
2:11 P.M. | Recovery Could Cost New York $1 Billion, Cuomo Says
The cost to New York's state government of storm recovery could top $1 billion, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said on Thursday.
"I've worked for two years to close deficits, $10 billion deficits, which was all the money in the world," the governor said at an afternoon news conference. "Now we're looking at an additional $1 billion on the state side, maybe higher after what's happened."
Mr. Cuomo cited an estimate released last week that the entire cost to the region of Hurricane Sandy, in damage and economic loss, could hit $50 billion, $33 billion of it in New York. "That is a staggering number," he said.
The governor also reiterated his insistence that the nation's taxpayers, not the state's, foot the entire bill for damage to the power-delivery system. He was asked whether he would consent to the Long Island Power Authority raising rates if the Federal Emergency Management Agency paid only 75 percent of the utility's damage costs.
"If FEMA only thinks they're going to pay 75 percent of damages, I'm going to oppose that," he said. "If they think any local government or any taxpayer in this state can pay any more for this storm, they are wrong. One hundred percent reimbursement is what we deserve and what we're going to fight for."
- Andy Newman
2:10 P.M. | Temporary Housing Bound for New York Area
Federal officials said on Thursday that they had started moving temporary housing toward the New York region, where tens of thousands of people are in need of housing in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency is moving mobile homes or manufactured housing toward areas, including Staten Island, that were the most severely damaged by the storm, W. Craig Fugate, the administrator of FEMA, told reporters in a teleconference. He did not know yet exactly where the housing would be located or when people could move in.
In New York City, the estimates of people in need of housing range from 20,000 to 40,000.
Mr. Fugate said some people affected by the storm were staying as far away as Albany.
- Michael S. Schmidt
2:01 P.M. | Queens-Midtown Tunnel to Reopen Friday
The Queens-Midtown Tunnel, which had been flooded by Hurricane Sandy, will reopen to passenger vehicles on Friday, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced on Thursday.
The tunnel will reopen at 6 a.m. with two inbound and two outbound lanes. No trucks will be permitted to use the tunnel.
The closing of the tunnel had made for difficult travels for drivers from Queens and Long Island and had caused worse-than-usual congestion on the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge.
"Bringing back the Queens-Midtown Tunnel seemed like an impossible job after the storm, but M.T.A. Bridges and Tunnels workers have done the impossible," said Joseph J. Lhota, the chairman and chief executive of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which operates the tunnel.
The tunnel's reopening leaves the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel as the last major New York City crossing still closed. There is no time frame for reopening it.
- The New York Times
12:37 P.M. | Gov. Cuomo Speaks
newyorkstateofficeofthegovernor on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free
Governor Cuomo spoke at 12:30 p.m.
12:29 P.M. | Snow Was Better Than Rain, Christie Says
Yesterday's northeaster set the recovery effort back only about 24 or 36 hours in New Jersey, Gov. Chris Christie said Thursday morning, striking a relatively hopeful tone.
"'Believe it or not, the snow was helpful," Mr. Christie said. "Because it wasn't rain, it helped on the flooding side." Virtually no significant flooding was reported in the state.
The governor, speaking at a National Guard armory in Somerset, said that while 167,000 of the 390,000 homes without power lost their lights in the northeaster, utility companies were working quickly.
Outside of the most ruined areas, like the barrier islands, where both the infrastructure and many of the individual homes that survived are in tatters, Mr. Christie said he expected that virtually everyone in the state would have power by Saturday.
Other highlights from his news conference:
*Evacuations: He expects to allow residents of coastal communities from Brick Township to Berkeley Township back into their towns for "controlled visits" by this weekend.
*Gasoline: "I've driven around the state the last two days and I've barely seen any fuel lines any more," Mr. Christie said. He said he hoped to re-evaluate the odd-even rationing rule over the weekend with an eye toward shelving it.
*Mass transit: New Jersey Transit, whose operations across the state remain badly hobbled, did not sustain any new damage in yesterday's storm. The state has also added another commuting option: free bus-plus-ferry service from the Meadowlands park-and-ride to Weehawken to West 39th Street in Midtown. "Come to the Meadowlands and get on a bus," the governor said invitingly.
*Drinking water: The state suffered "a bit of a backslide" yesterday, and there are now boil-water advisories in 11 communities scattered across Sussex, Monmouth and Ocean Counties.
*Schools: 77 percent of the state's schools are open, the same as yesterday but up from a figure in the 40s on Monday.
Unlike his counterparts across the river in New York, Mr. Christie declined to criticize the state's utility companies for the pace of power restoration and in fact praised them and their work crews.
While the utilities might have been able to move more quickly, he said, "I would really caution, for political advantage, elected officials from trying to make villains out of people working 18-hour days trying to help the people of New Jersey." The villain "in this instance," he said, "is Hurricane Sandy."
- Andy Newman
11:04 A.M. | Gov. Christie Speaks
Watch on Youtube.Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey spoke at 11 a.m.
9:13 A.M. | Milder Storm Caused at Least 375,000 Homes to Go Dark
Wednesday's northeaster might not have brought the flooding that was predicted, but thanks to up to a foot of heavy, wet snow and stiff winds, it still knocked out power to at least 375,000 homes in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, utility companies said, dealing a setback to the region's slow recovery from Hurricane Sandy.
But utility companies said that their crews - supplemented by thousands of reinforcements from across the country - were working quickly and had already restored power to many or most of their customers that lost it yesterday. With good weather forecast for the next few days, the recovery is expected to move forward. Over all in the tristate area, about 683,000 homes remain in the dark, down from a peak of 5.3 million last week, according to federal figures.
National Weather Service offices covering the three states said that they received virtually no reports of coastal flooding. "Other than in Sandy Hook, where there was minor coastal flooding, we didn't get any reports," said Mitchell Gaines, a meteorologist in the Mount Holly, N.J., office. "But that doesn't necessarily mean that it didn't happen."
In New Jersey, parts of which got hit with a foot of snow, at least 230,000 homes lost power. But crews were working quickly to restore it. Public Service Electric & Gas said that it had already restored power to 50,000 of the 90,000 customers who went dark yesterday.
In New York, the Long Island Power Authority reported that 60,000 customers lost power. Consolidated Edison, which serves New York City and Westchester County, reported that 55,000 homes lost power, about half of which have already been restored.
Orange and Rockland Utilities, which serves a swath of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, said that 10,000 of its customers lost power but that more than 9,000 had been restored. And Atlantic City Electric, which had finally brought back on line all its customers who lost power in Hurricane Sandy, lost 21,000 more last night but has restored 14,000 of them.
The highest snowfall totals from the storm were seen in Connecticut, with 13.5 inches in Clintonville and 12 inches in nearby North Haven. United Illuminating, which serves those towns and much of the state's coastline, said that about 14,000 of its customers lost power, but that all but a few hundred had been restored as of this morning.
Other snowfall totals around the region:
*Manchester Township, Ocean County, N.J: 12 inches.
*Danbury, Conn.: 10 inches.
*Cheesequake, N.J.: 8 inches.
*North Valley Stream on Long Island: 7 inches.
*Flushing, Queens: 7 inches.
*Scarsdale, N.Y.: 7 inches.
*Newark and Jersey City: 6 inches.
*Central Park: 4.7 inches.
- Andy Newman
9:29 P.M. | Storm Blankets New York Region in Snow
A powerful northeaster pushing through the New York area has blanketed the region with a thick layer of snow that is more than seven inches deep in some places.
As of Wednesday evening, parts of Westchester County had received five to seven inches of snow, the National Weather Service said in a statement. The service said that close to three inches had fallen in Central Park in New York City.
Strong winds have also lashed the region, knocking down power lines and cutting electricity to areas where it had only recently been restored in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. The weather service clocked gusts of 40 to 50 miles an hour in coastal regions of New York City and Long Island.
8:19 P.M. | L.I.R.R. Resumes Limited Departures
The Long Island Rail Road resumed limited departures out of Penn Station in Manhattan and Atlantic Terminal in Brooklyn around 7:50 Wednesday night after suspending service completely earlier in the evening because of the wintry storm moving through the area, Sam Zambuto, a railroad spokesman, said. Despite heavy snow and strong winds, trains will proceed slowly along their appointed routes, though the weather could continue to cause delays, Mr. Zambuto said.
- Michael Schwirtz
7:18 P.M. | L.I.R.R. Suspends Departures as Storm Woes Cascade
The Long Island Rail Road suspended all departures out of Penn Station in Manhattan and Atlantic Terminal in Brooklyn around 6:40 Wednesday night after a series of storm-related problems developed on several branches, railroad officials said. A spokesman, Sal Arena, said it was not clear when service would resume, though he said the railroad was hopeful that the trains would begin running again Wednesday evening.
All trains that had already left Penn Station and Atlantic Terminal would eventually reach their destinations, railroad officials said.
A railroad spokeswoman, Marjorie Anders, described a litany of woes. "We had a power pole that came down on Little Neck, had to hold four trains," she said. "Then we had mechanical problems at Bethpage. A crossing gate failure on the West Hempstead branch. We have a third-rail fire at Far Rockaway - the train is backing up to the nearest station in Inwood."
Penn Station itself was closed after the shutdown was announced, and masses of commuters stood outside at barricades in the falling snow. Mr. Arena said at 7:10 p.m. that the railroad hoped to reopen Penn Station soon and begin running trains.
- Andy Newman
6:27 P.M. | Photo: Digging Out in New Jersey
6:59 P.M. | Man Found in Darkened Stairwell Is Latest Storm Victim
Hurricane Sandy continued to take a deadly toll more than a week after striking the region, as the police raised to 41 the number of New Yorkers whose deaths were connected to storm.
The latest came on Election Day.
That is when someone found William McKeon, 78, lying at the bottom of a darkened staircase in a building along Shore Front Parkway in the Rockaways, the police said. Bleeding from the head, he was unresponsive and unconscious. The stairs were wet and covered with sand, the police said.
Mr. McKeon, who was found around 9 a.m., died late Tuesday at Jamaica Hospital from "injuries sustained as a result of the storm," the police said, citing a determination made by the city medical examiner.
Ellen Borakove, a spokeswoman for the medical examiner's office, said the death had been deemed "Hurricane Sandy-related" after it was found that Mr. McKeon suffered blunt trauma to the head after falling down in a stairwell that was blacked out by a power failure.
"If there's a power outage because it was caused by the storm, it's storm-related," she said, adding that "it's still going to be ruled an accident either way."
- J. David Goodman
6:05 P.M. | New Storm Knocks Out Power to 11,000 Con Ed Customers
Just when Consolidated Edison's customers thought it was safe to put away the flashlights, Athena blew into town.
The northeaster called Athena (by the Weather Channel) started tearing down power lines on Wednesday faster than an army of repair crews could put them back up. By about 5 p.m., the storm had knocked out electricity to about 11,000 Con Edison customers in New York City and Westchester County, at least a few of whom had just gotten it back after Hurricane Sandy tore through the region last week.
Between the storms, the number of Con Ed customers who have lost power in the last 10 days passed the one million mark, or nearly one-third of the company's 3.3 million customers, said John Miksad, senior vice president for electric operations at Con Edison.
By nightfall, the new storm's winds and blowing snow were threatening to drive the crews off the jobs. "At some point," Mr. Miksad said, "when the winds get too severe, we'll be pulling back, either just working on the ground or pulling back entirely and hunkering down until we can get back out there."
All told, about 75,000 Con Edison customers had no power on Wednesday evening, up from about 64,000 earlier in the day, he said.
He added that the company planned to have Russian translators accompany some workers in neighborhoods like Brighton Beach that were hit hard by Hurricane Sandy's floodwaters to explain to customers that they must repair their electrical equipment before their power can be restored.
- Patrick McGeehan
5:53 P.M. | Photo: New Jersey Utility Workers Brave the Elements
Public Service Electric & Gas technicians worked on power lines in Union CIty, N.J., as the snow fell Wednesday afternoon.
4:40 P.M. | Site Links Displaced New Yorkers to Donated Housing
New Yorkers displaced by Hurricane Sandy have another option for free housing: Airbnb, an online clearinghouse for renting out your place - or renting someone else's - has created a special page for people with homes to volunteer and those who need them.
Airbnb announced the plan with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg on Wednesday, and on its blog.
So far, Airbnb says it's gotten nearly 2,500 last-minute bookings for affected areas, with more than 4,000 people taking advantage of the free housing. The company says it will provide its standard customer service and insurance for hosts.
- Diantha Parker
4:13 P.M. | High Tide Comes and Goes, but No Major Flooding
The afternoon tide has come and gone in New York, with no reports of significant flooding, the National Weather Service said.
While storm surges causing moderate and localized major flooding had been forecast for this afternoon, "It seems to have come in under what we had initially expected, which is a good thing," said David Stark, a meteorologist with the Weather Service's Upton, N.Y., office.
Some minor flooding was reported in Nassau County. A Newsday reporter posted a photo on Twitter of a flooded street in Freeport.
Street flooding in #Freeport near Nautical Mile. Weren't we just doing this? #LongIslandinstagr.am/p/RvdOCQx0Pk/
- Patrick Whittle (@pxwhittle) November 7, 2012
And some areas on the North Shore of Long Island, around Kings Point, "might touch moderate" flooding this evening, Mr. Stark said. But over all, he said of the flooding, "It looks like it's going to be more of a minor situation." The next high tide, after midnight, should not bring as big a surge, Mr. Stark said.
High winds, rain and snow are still expected, though, and hamper recovery efforts. "This is still a significant system," said Brian Ciemnecki, another Weather Service meteorologist.
In New Jersey, where coastal evacuations were ordered in several towns, the peak concern for coastal flooding is tonight's high tide, around 2 a.m., The Weather Channel said.
- Andy Newman
3:53 P.M. | Federal Disaster Centers Close for Storm
The northeaster now battering the New York region has snarled FEMA's efforts to help residents recover from last week's storm, leading the agency to shut 10 mobile centers.
"We had to close them," said Mike Byrne, the Federal Emergency Management Agency official overseeing the relief work. "We would really be putting them at risk if we kept them open. The minute the weather clears, they'll be back open."
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg was asked at his afternoon news conference Wednesday why the city was not ordering evacuations if the meteorological threat was dire enough to drive out FEMA. "We do not believe it's necessary to evacuate people," he said.
The closings of the FEMA centers left some residents fuming. "They didn't want to get their precious van wet," a church volunteer in Coney Island told the news site DNAInfo, which reported the closings on Wednesday morning.
Mr. Byrne described them as a minor setback and said the agency's larger efforts in the region were still under way.
He met Wednesday with 400 employees from agencies across the federal Department of Homeland Security who had volunteered to help with the recovery from Hurricane Sandy. They are staying aboard a merchant marine ship stationed off Staten Island's north shore. They had eschewed accommodations on land, he said, to keep hotel rooms available for people whose homes have been damaged or destroyed. Another 400 people were expected to arrive Thursday.
"It's certainly not the Ritz," Mr. Byrne said. "It's certainly enough, and the people and the morale are just great."
The volunteers include information-technology experts, Immigration and Customs Enforcement employees and airport security staff members. They are supplementing the roughly 2,000 FEMA employees in the region for the relief effort, which Mr. Byrne described as "The Four P's: People, Power, Pumps and Picking up Debris."
He said FEMA had already provided more than two million meals to hungry people; helped pump out the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel (officially called the Hugh L. Carey Tunnel); and provided rental assistance to families hit by the storm.
- Sam Dolnick
3:02 P.M. | Video: Bloomberg Addresses New Yorkers
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg was scheduled to give a briefing at 3 p.m. from City Hall. Watch in the video player above or click here.
- The New York Times
2:42 P.M. | A School Reopens, but Not for Long
Montclair High School in New Jersey had been closed since Hurricane Sandy struck last Monday.
Today, the school reopened.
But not for long.
This afternoon, parents received a text message: "MHS has lost power & will close early at 2:20, Nov 7."
- Andy Newman and Michael Kolomatsky
2:03 P.M. | Video: Transit Crews Working to Restore L Line
Frustrated L-train riders: here's something to keep you entertained as you wait for your beloved, accursed subway line to reopen: seven minutes of video from the M.T.A. of transit hard-hats working down in the tunnel at Bedford Avenue yesterday.
Highlights include a steampunk-looking blue machine [0:48 of the video], a sweet tunnel shot straight out of Hitchcock [1:09], a lingering close-up of rusty electrical panels [3:25] , some good jargon ("I got AC and float on both units, all right, center module... power to the WRPS on all three lights") [4:35] and a great industrial-noise soundtrack throughout.
Unfortunately, the agency cannot say yet when L service will be restored. Joseph J. Lhota, the M.T.A. chairman, said yesterday that L service had a "lower probability of happening" today than service on the G line, which did in fact resume this morning, and a transit spokesman said this afternoon that not much had changed.
But the video is practically the next best thing to riding the train. Almost.
- Andy Newman
12:26 P.M. | Alternate-Side Parking Rules Suspended Through Monday
The city has suspended alternate-side parking rules through Saturday to facilitate storm-recovery efforts. With no alternate-side restrictions on Sundays and the Veterans Day parking holiday coming up Monday, that means at least six more days of not having to make way for the street-sweeper.
- Andy Newman
12:18 P.M. | Prepare for Setbacks, Christie Warns
With a storm surge heading toward New Jersey's battered coast and three to six inches of heavy, wet snow possible inland, Gov. Chris Christie warned Wednesday morning that many residents who have gotten their power back since the storm may lose it again.
"I can see us actually moving backwards," Mr. Christie said at a news conference at a firehouse in Harvey Cedars on Long Beach Island, the barrier island that suffered some of the heaviest damage in last week's storm.
Long Beach Island had been reopened to residents, but the governor said he was cutting off access again, "in consultation with elected officials, for the next day or so, because of this nor'easter."
Mr. Christie said that he had advised officials on the island to reinforce the protective dunes that are credited with limiting damage from Hurricane Sandy.
"While we're doing what we can to increase the dunes," he said, "we don't know how well they'll hold."
Mr. Christie said that 369,000 homes in the state were still without power, down from a peak of 2.76 million. While power crews are still at work, Mr. Christie said that if winds reach 40 miles an hour today, as they are predicted to do, the crews will have to stop work, per federal safety law.
Inland, Mr. Christie said, the forecast wet snow would fall on trees that have been weakened by the storm and still have leaves on them that would catch the snow, presenting a threat of downed branches and power lines. As of noon, snow was already falling in northern New Jersey, while sleet pelted the southern half of the state.
@katebilo Here is one I sent to CBSphilly from Clayton NJ Now its turning into rain mixed with the snow.twitpic.com/bb5n1t
- tara laracuente (@taracl87) November 7, 2012
In general, Mr. Christie said, the state is ready for the storm. Shelters are prepared to take in a surge of people, and 20 truckloads of water were on the way to parts of Middlesex County that already have a boil-water advisory in effect. [Update: the advisory was lifted on Wednesday.]
He said that the odd-even gas rationing rule he put into effect on Saturday had been relatively effective and that he would decide over the weekend whether to keep it in place next week.
But nearly a quarter of the state's school systems are not fully operating, 10 percent of residents still lack power, and the governor said he had had just about enough from Mother Nature.
"When I got the final forecast last night," he said, "I'm waiting for the locusts and pestilence next."
- Andy Newman
12:16 P.M. | Parks, Playgrounds and Beaches Are Closed
All New York City parks, beaches and playgrounds have been closed by the city because of expected bad weather and will remain closed until noon on Thursday, according to the city's Parks and Recreations Department.
- The New York Times
11:31 A.M. | Storm Prompts Flight Cancellations
More than 1,000 flights in and out of airports in the Northeast have been canceled in advance of the storm, according to the Web site NYC Aviation.
The three New York area airports, Philadelphia International Airport and Boston Logan International Airport were among the hardest hit.
Travelers are urged to contact their carriers for further information about their flights.
- The New York Times
11:30 A.M. | New York City Warns Drivers to Stay Off Roads
As a powerful storm bore down on the New York City region, city officials encouraged drivers to stay off the roads after 5 p.m. because of high winds and possible flooding. The storm was predicted to have sustained winds of 25 to 40 miles per hour with gusts as high as 65 miles per hour.
- The New York Times
11:16 A.M. | Business Owners Ponder Lessons From the Storm
Few small-business owners were prepared for the wrath of Hurricane Sandy. The storm and its tidal surge ravaged stores and restaurants, soaked inventory and stalled manufacturing throughout the New York region last week. Read more here.
- The New York Times
11:12 A.M. | Video: Gov. Christie Speaks
Watch on Youtube.
Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey was scheduled to speak at 11:15 a.m. from a firehouse in Harvey Cedars, after surveying storm damage in Long Beach Island. Watch in the video player above or click here.
- The New York Times
10:19 A.M. | 'Consider Taking Shelter,' Mayor Tells Some Residents
With the northeaster closing in on the city, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg advised residents of some low-lying neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens to "consider taking shelter with family or friends, or at a city-run shelter," based on "analysis of the erosion caused by Hurricane Sandy."
The mayor specifically cited Gerritsen Beach in Brooklyn, Hamilton Beach near Howard Beach in Queens, and Breezy Point in the Rockaways. But he added that the police would be making similar announcements over loudspeakers in "other areas that saw significant flooding."
The storm surge accompanying this afternoon's high tide is expected to be the highest of the storm. High tide at the Battery in Manhattan is at 1:37 p.m.
A listing of city shelters can be found here.
A listing of pickup locations for buses going to shelters is here.
- Andy Newman
9:50 A.M. | G Train Resumes Limited Service
The G train's back - thanks Obama! twitter.com/GogoGowanus/st
- Matt Kaplan (@GogoGowanus) November 7, 2012
The G train is back, mostly. The train, the only line that connects Queens and Brooklyn without traveling through Manhattan, resumed limited service on Wednesday morning, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority said.
"G trains resumed service at 8:55 a.m. along their full route from Church Avenue in Brooklyn to Court Square in Queens," according to an M.T.A. news release. "The restoration is possible after M.T.A. crews worked around the clock to pump water from the Greenpoint tube under Newtown Creek, which flooded during the storm. The tube suffered severe damage to its signaling and communications systems and requires extensive repairs.
You get what you get ...RT @paulineym: @patkiernan G train service even *more* limited? That means what, one train per fortnight?
- Pat Kiernan (@patkiernan) November 7, 2012
But because of continued repairs, trains will operate at slower speeds. To accommodate demands, the number of cars on each train will be doubled to 8 from 4. But the M.T.A. warns that delays and overcrowding should be expected.
- The New York Times
9:26 A.M. | First Day Back, at a New School
Wednesday was the first day back at school for many students and faculty affected by Hurricane Sandy.
Franklin K. Lane in Brooklyn, which already houses four high schools under one roof, is absorbing two schools that are normally in one building on Broad Channel.
That campus, called Beach Channel, was flooded, according to students and teachers. It is unclear when the building will be safe for use.
So on Wednesday at 7:30 a.m., students and faculty from hurricane-torn areas hopped off buses and out of family members' cars to head into their new school.
"We made it," said one teacher as she trekked up a small hill toward the campus.
Beach Channel teachers high-fived students and asked about their families. Nearly everyone passing through the school gates seemed relieved to return to a semblance of normality.
"I'm sort of in limbo now," said Liza Sklar, 45, a librarian from the Beach Channel campus. The storm flooded the basement, den and first floor of her house in Oceanside on Long Island, and she has been living in one room with her husband, two children and a dog. The Federal Emergency Management Agency denied them any assistance, she said.
At the entrance to Franklin K. Lane, the three-member social studies team from the Channel View School for Research, one of the two displaced schools, served as the welcome committee. "Oh my God, there is more of our kids, dude," said Craig Dorsi, a world history teacher, as he hugged Brianna Stevens, 14.
"We're trying to make it as emotionally normal as possible," said Mr. Dorsi.
There are 664 students at his school, and many of them are still spread around the area because they evacuated during the storm. Others are at home in storm-affected areas and are without power or Internet. Some may not even realize that school is back in session. "We're expecting anywhere from 40 to 664," said Mr. Dorsi.
With unfamiliar faces coming in, there is always a risk of fights or scuffles. But several students and faculty members from both campuses said they were not overly concerned about conflict among students. The scene outside school on Wednesday was peaceful. "Honestly, I think our kids will be happy to help," said Adrian Constant, 42, an English teacher at one of the high schools on the Franklin K. Lane campus.
- Julie Turkewitz
7:54 A.M. | FEMA to Increase Housing Aid for Displaced Families
Victims of Hurricane Sandy will get a bit of extra help from the federal government to find a temporary place to live.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency is announcing Wednesday morning that it is increasing its assistance to displaced families to 125 percent of the normal federal rental subsidy.
This means that Hurricane Sandy victims will get $1,843 a month in assistance for a two-bedroom apartment in New York City, compared with the standard federal subsidy of $1,474.
Even with the extra money, it is far below what many New Yorkers pay in rent. But FEMA officials estimate that this change, which also applies in New Jersey, will allow people displaced by the storm to afford apartments currently out of reach.
- Eric Lipton
6:43 P.M. | Warnings of Flooding and Strong Winds Starting Wednesday
The National Weather service issued a coastal flood warning Tuesday afternoon as a northeaster advanced toward the East Coast, predicting moderate flooding Wednesday in most of coastal New York and New Jersey, but possible localized major flooding on the south shore of Long Island.
The area at highest risk for major flooding is from Lindenhurst to Freeport in Nassau County, several towns east of Long Beach and the Rockaways, which were devastated in last week's storm.
The latest Weather Service forecast calls for a storm surge Wednesday of 2.5 to 5 feet, with New York Harbor likely to have a surge on the lower end of that range, said David Stark, a meteorologist in the Upton, N.Y., office. The storm surge from Hurricane Sandy at the Battery at the bottom of Manhattan by comparison was 9.23 feet. The highest surge Wednesday, closer to 5 feet, will be on the south and north shores of Long Island, Mr. Stark said.
The flood warning is in effect from 11 a.m. Wednesday to 6 a.m. Thursday. That period includes the high tides at 1:37 p.m. Wednesday and 2:40 a.m. Thursday in the Battery.
"Locally major flooding could occur in places due to changes to underwater slopes and/or loss of protective dunes, both caused by Sandy," the flood warning reads. "Widespread flooding of vulnerable shore roads and/or basements will hamper recovery efforts."
The strongest winds, too, will be on Long Island, with gusts up to 70 miles an hour possible, Mr. Stark said. Sustained winds across the region will be in the range of 25 to 40 miles an hour - enough to bring down weakened trees and lead to another round of power failures.
"With the wind and the potential coastal flooding," Mr. Stark said, "it is shaping up to have a significant impact on our area."
The Weather Service is also predicting moderate coastal flooding in New Jersey, which could lead to closings of flood-prone road like Routes 35 and 36 and other roads that are being used by crews working on storm response. "They many not be able to do much work tomorrow," said Dean Iovino, a meteorologist in the Weather Service's Mount Holly, N.J., office.
The storm is expected to bring one to two inches of rain, with the figure in New York City being near the low end. There is little chance of snow in the city, the Weather Service said, but the northern suburbs could see some wet flakes, and Orange County and the lower Hudson Valley could see an inch or more.
- Andy Newman
5:00 P.M. | National Guard Truck Kills Pedestrian, 82, on Canal St.
A National Guard truck carrying Guard members involved in the storm relief effort struck and killed an 82-year-old man on Canal Street in Chinatown on Tuesday afternoon, the authorities said.
The man, who was not immediately identified by the police, suffered "severe body trauma" from the impact with the large, green-camouflage-color truck, one of more than 600 vehicles that the New York National Guard has deployed to carry food, water and other relief to storm-struck areas of the state.
He was pronounced dead at New York Downtown Hospital shortly after the accident, which occurred around 1:25 p.m. near the intersection with Centre Street, the police said.
"They were conducting a resupply mission when this unfortunate accident occurred," said Eric Durr, a spokesman for the National Guard. He said the vehicle belonged to the 369th Sustainment Brigade, based out of the Harlem armory, and was part of a convoy.
The police said the truck, a personnel carrier, was traveling west on Canal Street when it struck the man, who was crossing Canal from north to south. It was not clear whether the man or the truck's driver was disobeying a traffic signal; no summons was immediately issued and the police said the investigation was continuing. The driver was not publicly identified.
Mr. Durr said the convoy had been involved in carting supplies and was en route to the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center to pick up items donated by Wal-Mart and then take them to a relief staging area at Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn for distribution.
"There was a police escort in front," Mr. Durr said. "The truck that struck the gentleman was the last vehicle in the convoy."
He added, "Apparently, the gentleman stepped off into traffic."
- J. David Goodman
1:57 P.M. | Thieves Hit Polling Site but Voters' Resolve Is Intact
In the storm-battered Rockaways, already beset with huge problems from Hurricane Sandy, more of them cropped up before dawn Tuesday at one of the biggest polling sites.
Poll workers arrived in the dark to find that the portable toilets and the main generator to power the site had been stolen, after being delivered hours earlier by federal emergency workers.
The thieves did leave a smaller generator behind, but siphoned out all of its gas, said John Luisi, a Board of Elections official helping to run the site.
"I guess they didn't realize Rockaway is a war zone right now," said Estel Lyons, a registered nurse who lives on 123rd Street and was working as a poll worker. Ms. Lyons said she voted and decided to work at the polling site because "you want to feel like your voice is being heard."
Poll workers scrambled to get gas to run the remaining generator and open the site, in the outdoor playground of Public School 180, which overlooks Jamaica Bay at Beach 104th Street in Queens and has views of the Manhattan skyline. Voters arrived and flooded into the dimly lighted, low-slung tents set up for them to cast ballots.
Most of the voters were local residents whose homes had suffered damage from the storm and who have been living without power for more than a week. Others had evacuated the Rockaways and had returned to vote.
"I wasn't going to let no hurricane stop me from voting," said Amos Eberhardt, 61, who left his room in a halfway house on Beach 116th Street and moved into a halfway house in Brooklyn, from which it took him 90 minutes to travel by bus back to the Rockaways to cast his vote.
Nicole McCormick, 35, a medical administrator, had ridden out the hurricane in her upper-floor apartment and then moved to a friend's home in Jamaica, Queens. But Ms. McCormick - with two children, Tyler Frazier, 14, and Cheniya Sanford, 12 - spent several hours driving back and forth Tuesday so she could vote for President Obama.
"This is how we can get the word out, that despite the devastation, we can still make an effort to have our voice heard," she said, standing with other voters in the inch-deep dried silt on the blacktop, residue from seawater that flooded head-high through this area a week ago, leaving scores of houses flooded and cars ruined, and causing fires that destroyed more than 120 houses.
Regarding the storm, the cleanup and the election, Ms. McCormick said: "It's all connected. We feel like we've lost so much, so we're making an effort to vote because we don't want to lose our voice, too."
- Corey Kilgannon
2:06 P.M. | Parks, Playgrounds and Beaches Will Close Before New Storm
New York City mobilized in preparation for the northeaster expected to hit the city tomorrow, as Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced that parks, playgrounds and beaches would close for 24 hours beginning at noon Wednesday.
Mr. Bloomberg said that the northeaster was expected to bring a surge in the water level of two to four-and-a-half feet at tomorrow's high tides, roughly at 1 p.m. and midnight - far less than Hurricane Sandy brought ashore, but enough to re-flood low-lying areas.
The new storm, the mayor said, will carry winds of 25 to 35 miles an hour to the city, with gusts up to 55 miles an hour late Wednesday afternoon, as well as an inch of rain that may mix with sleet.
"We could have some snow on the ground and certainly snow on the trees," the mayor said at a briefing at City Hall on Tuesday afternoon. "That makes the trees that already have their bases flooded more likely to fall over."
Earlier Tuesday, the mayor announced that recycling was being discontinued temporarily to free up sanitation crews to work in the neighborhoods hit hardest by last week's storm.
Garbage pickup, too, in areas not badly storm damaged, may be reduced, from three times a week to two or from two times a week to one, the mayor said.
"Just put your garbage out," the mayor said, "and we'll get to it."
- Andy Newman
1:00 P.M. | In Bay Head, Making the Most of a Fought-For Polling Place
BAY HEAD, N.J. - Just after daybreak, under a pink-hued sky, Shelly Coleman and her husband, Terrance, bundled up in winter jackets, left their sodden, water-damaged home and headed to the Bay Head firehouse, where a makeshift polling place had sprouted - literally overnight.
The couple walked through the sand-blown and mucky streets, sidestepping the occasional dead fish that lay on its side, a lifeless eye staring up at them. The firehouse, powered by an industrial-size generator that rumbled like the engine of a jetliner, was one of the few places with heat in this tiny seaside borough, just below Point Pleasant Beach.
"I'm going to vote in here all day long - it's nice and warm," declared Brent Wentz, 72, as he walked into the firehouse Tuesday about 7:30 a.m.
Ms. Coleman approached the borough's clerk and exclaimed: "Guess what? We got water back on Friday. It was soooo exciting."
"It's the little things," the municipal clerk, Patricia Applegate, 60, said and nodded. "You don't realize these little things that you take for granted until they are gone."
And so it went all morning at the Bay Head polling place, where residents of the 0.7-square-mile borough and poll workers provided one another with storm-recovery updates: Who has water? Hot water? A heat source? Propane?
Until Monday afternoon, state and county election officials were telling Bay Head residents that this pocket of Ocean County would have no local polling place. Most of the roughly 800 registered voters in Bay Head had evacuated and not returned, officials said. Instead, Bay Head voters would be sent inland, over the Lovelandtown Bridge, into Point Pleasant.
On Monday afternoon, however, Mayor William Curtis mounted a resistance.
"It was a fight. They didn't want to deliver voting booths down here," Mayor Curtis said, as voters streamed into the firehouse Tuesday. "They wanted us to go across the bridge because they didn't think there was going to be enough people here to vote. I just said: 'No, no, no. We have enough people here in town that will vote.' This is us. This is our home and people are pulling together and we want to be here."
The mayor and other residents pointed out that many of their cars were destroyed in the storm and driving out of town, through a National Guard checkpoint and back, was a hardship. They also cited the lack of available gas.
In the days leading to the election, several residents, their homes destroyed by a torrent of ocean and lake water, said they felt forgotten by the federal government, particularly FEMA.
Leslie Wentz, 58, said she had no heat and had not showered in days. She was using baby wipes to stay clean, she said. The election, she said, was not her top priority.
"I think everybody is just in survival mode," she said. "Everybody is trying to survive. The town is doing a great job. The church is doing a great job, but I feel like the federal government is not coming in and doing anything. I can't get anybody to help me."
She said she voted for Mitt Romney. When asked about her choice for Congress, Ms. Wentz said: "I am so brain-dead right now. I don't even know those people. I just want a new president. We have no heat."
Ms. Coleman emerged from the voting booth and stopped to show a reporter her hands, blistered and raw from hours spent ripping up wet carpet in her home.
She also confided a worry, speaking in a low, almost secretive, tone, even though she stood outside and no one was around:
"Someone went and wrote Romney on the beach and we think we are going to get in trouble because they went and wrote Romney on the beach and Obama is going to stick it to us," she said. "We were like, who is the person that did that because now if Obama wins, then we are not going to get aid. I think they saw it from the helicopter when Obama flew over. Is that terrible? I don't know who did it. But it made some people nervous."
- Wendy Ruderman
1:01 P.M. | Virus Outbreak Spurs Removal of Storm Refugees From School
Almost 170 evacuees and homeless people are being moved from the John Jay High School campus, an imposing building in Park Slope, Brooklyn, that houses four schools, because of the outbreak of norovirus, a common and highly contagious intestinal bug that has hit 13 children since Friday, a Homeless Services Department spokeswoman said Tuesday.
The evacuees will be moved all together, and the school cleaned so that students can return on Thursday, a Department of Education spokeswoman said.
The building has been used as a shelter for evacuees of Hurricane Sandy and homeless people. Students returning to eight city school buildings being used as shelters were slated to go back on Wednesday, in some cases sharing the building with the shelter population.
The additional day's delay at John Jay frustrated parents of children who attend school there.
"The D.O.E. should not be responsible for temporary housing," said Loretta Redmond, a parent at Millennium Brooklyn High School, one of the schools, in an e-mail to Dennis Walcott, the chancellor of the Department of Education. "There are no health screenings being done at the shelter - never mind any other kind of screenings."
The 13 children who were affected by the virus have been separated, with their families, from the healthy population in the shelter, said Jay Varma, deputy commissioner for disease control at the city's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. He said the outbreak was not surprising considering the time of year and the fact that "these are schools and there wasn't an expectation that they would be long-term facilities for the homeless."
He said the virus could not live long after the school was disinfected and cleaned. "We don't think there is a risk to students after they get back to school," he said. If they do get sick, they will probably have acquired the virus in the community or from somebody else, he said.
It was unclear where the evacuees would be sent and whether that facility would also be a school. Citing privacy, officials said only that they were being sent to the Bronx. "Evacuees will be moved to another facility this afternoon, where those who are ill will receive necessary treatment and be placed in separate space while they recover," said a health department spokeswoman.
The Department of Education relocated its staff out of the building as soon as it learned about the "common but contagious stomach virus," said Erin Hughes, a spokeswoman for the Education Department.
Ms. Redmond, the parent, was dubious that school would actually start on Thursday.
"I hope to really see that happen," she said. "I am not convinced since we've been given so many stories."
- Jenny Anderson
12:46 P.M. | 350,000 New York Homes Still Lack Power
Though power has been restored to more than 1.7 million homes in New York since the storm hit, about 350,000 homes are still dark, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said Tuesday.
"That's down from what it was, about 2.1 million, but it's still not O.K.," he said. "It's nice that other people have their power on, but it doesn't mean much to you until you have your power on."
More than 103,000 customers in Nassau County, 89,000 in Suffolk County, 66,000 in New York City and 63,000 in Westchester County are still waiting for their lights to go back on. Mr. Cuomo reiterated his annoyance with Consolidated Edison and the Long Island Power Authority for the pace of restorations, though the utilities have said they are working as fast as they possibly can.
"I don't believe that their performance has been adequate, period," Mr. Cuomo said.
- Andy Newman
12:43 P.M. | Cuomo Asks Corporations to Contribute to Recovery Effort
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo called on American corporations Tuesday to contribute to the storm cleanup effort.
"We're going to need home furnishings," the governor said at a news conference. "We're going to need lumber. We're going to need furnaces."
The governor thanked many companies, including Wal-Mart and PepsiCo, for having stepped forward already, but warned that he would come knocking at the doors of others.
Mr. Cuomo was joined at the news conference by a regional vice president at Home Depot, Tony Lemma, who announced that the chain was donating ten truckloads of cleaning products to be split between New York and New Jersey, containing cleaning supplies, chemicals, mops, brooms, shovels, dust masks and batteries.
Mr. Cuomo said he had been asked by a corporate leader what the state needed.
"I said, 'We need everything,'" the governor said. "Entire households were lost. We appreciate, we need, and we request corporate America to come forward and be helpful."
- Andy Newman
12:25 P.M. | Mayor Bloomberg Speaks
Watch on Youtube.Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is scheduled to speak at 12:30 P.M.
- The New York Times
12:10 P.M. | After a Gas Station Runs Dry, Cabbies Park and Wait
At a Hess station on 10th Avenue and 44th Street, a long line of taxis and sedans had come to a standstill on Tuesday morning. After two tankers refueled the station at 6 a.m., the supply was depleted by 8:40 a.m. Another tanker was said to be coming, so drivers parked their cars and waited under the watchful gaze of police officers. A half-dozen men toting empty gasoline containers stood on the sidewalk.
Fritz Petit-Homme, a Brooklyn cabdriver, said he had no choice but to sit and wait since his yellow cab was down to the last quarter tank. "It's better to stay in line than to go," he said. "Even if they deliver at 5, I wait."
Mr. Petit-Homme, 54, said that he loses $30 to $35 every hour that he is parked instead of driving. He said that he tried to fill up in Brooklyn but that stations there were closed, or the lines were worse than in Manhattan. He said his friend, also a cabdriver, waited in line for five hours on Saturday at a Brooklyn gas station, only to find that the pump was tapped out when he got to the front. "It was so bad I didn't even try," said Mr. Petit-Homme, who opted instead to stay home.
Another driver, John Solomon, was third in the line but had to leave after two hours to pick up a client at Rockefeller Center at 11 a.m. There was still no tanker in sight. "What did I accomplish for two hours?" he said. "That's a disappointment."
Mr. Solomon, 50, who lives in Washington Heights, said he planned to conserve gas by turning off the heat, and keeping his foot off the gas pedal as much as possible. He said he would return to the Hess station tonight and if there was still no gas, he might even drive out to New Jersey.
"You know when you're so close, but so far?" he said before driving away. "I'm like, 'Really, no more gas?'"
- Winnie Hu
11:54 A.M. | Some Displaced Voters Run Into Problems in New Jersey
In New Jersey, state-mandated rules to enable displaced voters and emergency workers to vote apparently are being thwarted by uninformed local election officials and by technology.
Catherine Weiss, who runs the pro bono program at Lowenstein Sandler, a law firm and partner in the national Election Protection network, said late Tuesday morning that while the state rules allowed provisional voting outside voters' home districts, "we are having issues with local polling places not permitting this to happen."
She also said that while another state directive allows displaced voters to cast their ballots by e-mail or fax, local servers "have been overwhelmed by requests and produced backlogs of a couple of thousand emails that cannot be processed by the deadline."
- Sam Roberts
12:01 P.M. | Gov. Cuomo Speaks
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo updated New Yorkers at a news conference.
- The New York Times
11:53 A.M. | Bellevue Hospital Is on Lockdown
Bellevue Hospital Center, which evacuated hundreds of patients after Hurricane Sandy struck, is now on lockdown because of possible structural damage from the storm, according to hospital employees, who were informed of the decision on Tuesday morning. The hospital administration told employees that the lockdown was ordered so that the structural safety of the building could be assessed.
No one is being allowed into the building, on First Avenue and 27th Street in Manhattan, to retrieve possessions or to carry out work. But liquid nitrogen is being delivered to a number of laboratories. It was not clear from the announcement what the liquid nitrogen was supposed to protect.
But doctors said that Bellevue labs contained many perishable research projects and patient tests, including blood and urine tests. It is not clear whether those tests have been compromised. Ian Michaels, a spokesman for Bellevue, said he was checking.
The administration said it was not yet known how long the structural assessment would take or when people would be permitted back in the building.
Bellevue, the city's flagship public hospital and major trauma center, housed 725 patients when the storm hit last week. It had to be evacuated after the rising waters of the East River gushed into its cavernous basement at the height of the storm. The hospital lost power and went to backup generators. When the basement fuel pumps failed, nurses, administrators and medical residents passed buckets of fuel up 13 flights of stairs to feed the generators through the night Monday until the National Guard was called in to relieve them. Critically ill patients had to be dragged down many flights of stairs on sleds. The last two patients, who were too sick to be carried, were taken out over the weekend, as some elevator service was restored.
- Anemona Hartocollis
11:40 A.M. | In Storm-Battered Red Hook, Determined to Vote
Susan Mugo, 36, an information technologist who had to evacuate from her home in Red Hook, Brooklyn, returned Tuesday morning to vote.
It was not easy. Her usual polling place in a public school was closed because of storm damage. There were no directions there to the alternate site. "I had to ask around," she said. But eventually, she found herself standing in the line in the bright sunshine outside P.S. 27, waiting to cast her ballot.
@lheron Relocated Red Hook poll site from PS 15 to PS 27 gets set up 45 minutes late, volunteers working hard instagr.am/p/Rr9bB0HOmZ/#WSJvote
- Jessica Lee (@jessicalee27) November 6, 2012
The school lies in a largely powerless area a few blocks from a blacked-out public-housing complex, the Red Hook Houses. A young woman stood outside the school beside a Volkswagen Passat decorated with Obama bumper stickers and held up a sign that read "shuttle," offering residents of the Red Hook Houses rides to and from the polls.
Patrick Carroll, 30, an actor who lives in Red Hook, said that while he was not hit hard by the storm, it did motivate him politically.
"The storm made me start wanting to do more to make other people know what's at risk," he said. "With the storm, things are seeming more at risk than they were a couple weeks ago."
He had worked a phone bank, making calls to voters in Nevada, Florida and Ohio.
"I really believe Obama's the guy for the job," he said.
- Nate Schweber
11:11 A.M. | Wrapped Around the Corner, a Line Inches Along
The line to vote at the Theater for the New City on First Avenue in the East Village wound around the corner onto Ninth Street. By 8:40 a.m., at least 175 people were patiently reading newspapers, manipulating smartphones and drinking coffee, advancing not even a foot a minute.
Alex Schroder, 23, said she hoped it would be no longer than an hour, because she had to get to her job as a preschool teacher. "I am really excited to vote," she said, "so I don't mind waiting."
- Andrea Kannapell
10:51 A.M. | Rejected Ballots and Talk of the Economy in the East Village
At the Sirovich Senior Center on East 12th Street, the voters who arrived at 8:10 a.m. finished a little after 9 am. Several voters were given ballots that weren't neatly torn from the book, so the scanner rejected them.
Maura Green, 30, a jewelry designer who had waited an hour in line, was one of them. When she returned to the poll workers' table for a new ballot, they kept her standing there for another 15 or 20 minutes while they blamed each other for the problem (several other voters had returned to the table with rejected ballots as well) or attended to other voters in the growing line.
"It seemed the poll workers were not very organized or didn't prepare," Ms. Green said. "It was very chaotic. They didn't seem to have a plan."
Ms. Green said what was on her mind was "the economy. Things have gotten better for me over the last four years. I don't know if it has to do with Obama." Four years ago, she said, she was "underemployed" and working retail. Now she has a job as a designer and also sells her designs independently.
Paula Zanger, 49, who runs Orange Howell, a small company that makes silver ornaments, said that as a 15th generation American, she wanted to say something positive about the election and its outcome, but she could not. "Money and work are on my mind, definitely picking up work post-Sandy," she said. "I think a lot's going to open up psychologically after the election. Everyone's on hold in some form or another."
She added: "It's about movement. It's been very stalled out. I'm really good at what I do and I have a lot of experience, and I've never seen it like this. And I hate being that negative, because it's not American and everybody knows it's not good for business."
Ms. Zanger supported President Obama and, because she pays for her own health insurance - and has some pre-existing conditions - she is counting on AFA. But she said she was more passionate about the Senate races than the presidential race.
"I have a very hard time understanding Obama vs. Mitt," she said, "because it's as if the majority of the population expects the pedagogy, one person, to change their lives after eight years of Bush, which on the scale of the country is quite impossible. Like big daddy's gonna save us. It doesn't work that way."
- John Leland
10:44 A.M. | Mr. Ma Attempts to Vote
On the third floor of a New York University building on East 13th Street, lines of voters snaked around corners and through hallways. Workers said residents would have to fill out ballots by hand, then have them scanned. But by a little after 9 a.m., workers said the scanner had stopped working.
Residents deposited their sheets in a box instead - if they could obtain one at all. Voters in the 59th election district were told to separate into two lines, one for last names beginning with A through L and another for M through Z.
"Ma," one man said, as he reached the front of the M through Z line. A poll worker said she could not find his name, showing him her first page of entries, which began with a list of "Mac" names. He was not in the A through L book, either.
Mr. Ma, who did not give his first name, was instructed to vote by affidavit. He said he would, but was concerned that others in the city might also become lost in this alphabetical Bermuda Triangle.
"It's O.K.," the worker said. "There aren't a lot of Asians in this district."
- Matt Flegenheimer
10:14 A.M. | At 2 Polling Sites, Problems With Vote-Scanning Machines
There were reports on Tuesday morning of problems with the vote-scanning machines that were being used in New York City for a presidential election for the first time. At Riverside Church in Manhattan, all three scanners were down, having jammed not long after voting began at 6 a.m. Poll workers said they expected to be counting "emergency ballots" manually until 4 a.m. Wednesday.
At a polling site on 80th Street on the East Side the story was much the same with all the scanning machines not functioning. Poll workers said that they were aware of the problem but that no one had arrived to repair the machines. Instead workers were relying on absentee ballots.
- Nina Bernstein and Michael Barbaro
9:46 A.M. | No Full Power in Rockaways by Week's End After All
The Long Island Power Authority, which said on Sunday that it expected to restore full power to the devastated Rockaways in Queens by the end of the week, has abandoned that target.
A spokeswoman for the utility said this morning that because the damage in the 11-mile-long peninsula was so extensive, restoring power on a "case-by-case basis" was the best LIPA could offer now. She said there was no timetable for full restoration.
- Andy Newman
9:09 A.M. | In Forest Hills, One Voter's Mind-Set: 'Women's Rights'
In Forest Hills, Queens, Ann Dichter, 63, said she had never seen as busy a polling place in her 10-plus years there as she did Tuesday. Asked what was on her mind this day, she began a tirade against one of the presidential candidates, then stopped and summed up her mind-set thusly: "Women's rights."
- Michael Wilson
8:59 A.M. | Voting in the Dark on Staten Island
- The New York Times
8:29 A.M. | On Upper West Side, a Long Wait, Then 4 More Lines
At Public School 163, on the Upper West Side, hundreds of voters waited on the sidewalk and packed into a gym for what turned out to be a chaotic voting situation. Voters had to wait in four lines - to determine which election district they lived in, to get a ballot, to fill out the ballot, and to get the ballot scanned. The process took an hour, there was no help for the disabled, the font on the ballot was tiny, and people became increasingly upset and were trying to advise election workers on how it might run better.
- Michael Paulson
8:24 A.M. | A Frustrated Voter in Westchester County
Randy Harter, 66, an artist and designer, voted in New Rochelle, in Westchester County, at 6 a.m. and said his frustrating experience was symptomatic of incompetence in government. It was an issue that was on his mind because of what he described as an incompetent response to Hurricane Sandy in an area where thousands of houses still have no power more than a week after the storm struck.
He asked an election worker how to fill out a paper ballot he'd never seen before and was told: "Just fill it out." When his ballot was inserted, the machine jammed. A second worker came over and brought another machine, and it too jammed. He eventually was given an envelope in which to place a ballot that would be hand-counted. The entire voting experience took 45 minutes, Mr. Harter said.
"Morons are running things, and nobody's in charge," he said afterward.
Still, he voted for President Obama, even though he is running the federal government.
"He inherited a government that's incompetent, and he's trying to fix it," Mr. Harter said.
- Joseph Berger
8:21 A.M. | At a Brooklyn Polling Place, Just the Usual Chaos
Susan Edgerley, editor of The New York Times's Dining section, sent this dispatch from her polling place in Brooklyn.
At Public School 29 in Cobble Hill, the line was short at 6 a.m., but it took me 45 minutes to vote because I was sent to the wrong place twice (or rather, two different wrong places) and my district location was read incorrectly three times. Finally, a poll worker used an envelope to better read across the line and tell me my election district.
Poll workers were the usual mix - one tried to look me up by my first name, Susan, rather than my last name, Edgerley. Another was listing the date on voter ID cards as 2002. I overheard one worker telling another to go help out at a table because "they don't know what they're doing over there." The same worker told another - the one who had twice told me the wrong district for my address - to sit down and stop yelling.
On my side of the school gymnasium, only one of two ballot scanners was working. Oh well.
Enterprising moms take advantage of long lines to vote at PS 29 in Cobble Hill by selling baked goods to benefit PTA. twitter.com/katetaylornyt/
- Kate Taylor (@katetaylornyt) November 6, 2012
- Susan Edgerley
7:13 A.M. | PATH Resumes From Jersey City
For New Jersey commuters seeking a way into Manhattan, options on Monday were few and unappealing.
But that has started to change today with the restoration of some PATH service. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said that limited PATH service would be reinstated, with fares waived, between Journal Square in Jersey City and 33rd Street in Manhattan, though stops would not be made at Christopher and Ninth Streets.
The flow of commuters started as a trickle early on Tuesday, judging from the Port Authority's Twitter feed, which posted a picture of the Journal Square station.
First commuters arrive at Journal Sq PATH station today, on the first day of PATH resuming following Hurricane #Sandy. twitter.com/PANYNJ/status/
- Port Authority NY&NJ (@PANYNJ) November 6, 2012
- Christine Hauser
12:03 A.M. | Evacuation Ordered in New Jersey Town Ahead of Storm
Authorities in Brick Township, a coastal town in New Jersey that was ravaged by Hurricane Sandy, have ordered residents in low-lying waterfront areas to evacuate ahead of a northeaster forecast to hit the region this week.
The storm "has the potential to strongly impact our town with high winds, storm surge and flooding," a statement posted on the town's Web site said Monday.
Residents in areas prone to flooding must evacuate by 6 p.m. Tuesday, the statement said.
The storm is expected to move into the region on Wednesday evening, producing torrential rain, high seas and wind gusts of up to 70 miles per hour, according to the National Weather Service.
- Michael Schwirtz
8:32 P.M. | Police Pitch In on Relief Effort
Officer Matthew Youssef rapped several times on the glass door of a darkened single-family home in Howard Beach, Queens, on Monday afternoon before cracking it slightly and leaning inside.
"Anyone home?" he called out.
"Downstairs!" a man's voice responded.
He and another officer, Santo Collardo, entered and descended into a wrecked basement to find out what food, water or other supplies the man, a 59-year-old school bus driver named Richard Eaton, might need.
The officers were a small part of a sprawling relief effort joined by the New York Police Department to assist those still reeling from Hurricane Sandy, bringing food to corners of the city without power and going door to door to inform residents huddled in their homes of the relief supplies nearby.
Deputy Inspector James Klein, directing the department's effort from a parking lot at Aqueduct Racetrack in South Ozone Park, Queens, said the donations had poured in. By 2:30 p.m. Monday, he said, the police there had loaded two panel trucks, 10 police vans and a Metropolitan Transportation Authority bus full of supplies, including boxes of Cheerios, blankets and cleaning supplies.
"Transportation is at a premium - sometimes we have to use our imagination," Inspector Klein said.
Among the items most in demand a week after the storm hit, he said, were garbage bags and baby diapers as well as items that might not seem as obvious, such as garden hoses and dehumidifiers. "For getting the moisture out of homes," he said.
That afternoon, Officers Youssef and Collardo were part of a group sent to the desolate corner of Cross Bay Boulevard and 164th Avenue near a Staples store. There, they popped out the legs on a small gray table and began stacking boxes of baby food, dog snacks and water among myriad other items - matzos, milk - across from the boarded-up hulk of a 7-Eleven store and a pizza parlor, where green graffiti read, "We are open OPEN."
No sooner had the officers arrived on the corner, with no power to light the signals and not a pedestrian in sight, than residents began to emerge.
"Ma'am, do you need water?"
"Yes," said Concetta Napolitano, 68, emerging from a black Mercedes with her husband, Neil. She said they had no power in their home nearby since the storm and had lost one car. She left with sterile cleaning wipes, a big bottle of water and a large package of Q-tips.
Another man, Santo Bonnano, also took water as well as two boxes of cereal and some dog food for the miniature schnauzer that he said had become the family's only source of heat in their bone-cold home.
As in other hard-hit neighborhood, residents were attempting to keep up with life's routines.
"I worked today," said Mr. Eaton, the school bus driver. But, he added, "most of the kids weren't going to school today." A yellow minibus that he drove to public schools around the Upper West Side that morning sat in his driveway. He said the storm had destroyed three of his cars and a school bus.
A water line could be seen on a Pontiac parked across the street; it stopped just below the door handles.
Like many New Yorkers, members of the Police Department have faced their own storm-related hardships. Some are still without power or struggling to repair heavily damaged homes. The department has said the homes of more than 500 officers sustained "catastrophic damage" from the storm.
Five police unions, representing patrolmen up to captains, announced the creation of a fund to assist officers directly affected by the storm, a number they put at 1,500 officers. "They've lost the clothes off their backs" in some cases, said Roy T. Richter, president of the Captain's Endowment Association. "And they still got to go to work."
But among those coordinating relief, there were few complaints about the long hours or the difficulties they faced once home.
"Everybody's got a story," Inspector Klein said. "That's what drives them to do what they're doing."
- J. David Goodman
8:13 P.M. | Annual Political Conference in Puerto Rico Canceled
A conference for New York politicians scheduled for later this week in Puerto Rico was canceled on Monday in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. The annual gathering, Somos el Futuro, was scheduled to begin Wednesday in San Juan. But several prominent elected officials, reluctant to lounge poolside while their constituents search for food and shelter, said earlier Monday that they would stay home this year because of the devastation from the storm.
- Thomas Kaplan
7:43 P.M. | 9/11 Memorial to Reopen
The National September 11 Memorial, which has been closed because of flooding during Hurricane Sandy, will reopen on Tuesday, Joseph C. Daniels, president and chief executive of the National September 11 Memorial and Museum, said in a statement on Monday evening.
A deluge of at least seven feet of seawater flooded the main floor of the museum during last week's storm, nearly immersing two fire trucks. Construction of the museum, which is 70 feet below the memorial plaza downtown, has been plagued by delays amid a financing dispute between the memorial foundation and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
The floodwaters have been "substantially removed" and crews are now working to dry out the site, Mr. Daniels said.
The memorial will temporarily operate under limited hours, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., the statement said. The number of visitors will also be limited. Tickets that were reserved before the storm will be honored.
The 9/11 Memorial Visitor Center at 90 West Street will remain closed for now.
- Michael Schwirtz
7:30 P.M. | In Coney Island, Waiting in Line for Food and Supplies
It was crowded in the parking lot beside MCU Park in Coney Island all day on Monday, but there were not many cars.
Instead, crowds of people outside the minor-league baseball stadium lined up to register for federal assistance or emergency supplies like blankets, water and dry ice; to charge their phones; or just to eat a warm meal, namely a hot dog, appropriate for the locale - Coney Island hosts a famous hot dog eating contest every year.
Seagulls circled above the lines, occasionally swooping down to grab a discarded bun. City buses converted to heating shelters also idled in the lot, where the elderly warmed up and children played while their parents inched forward in line.
"We have nothing," said Ali King, 55, who added that he had been walking up 15 flights of stairs daily to bring his son blankets. "We come here on this line every day trying to ascertain something that can assist us to get through the night."
A week had passed since Hurricane Sandy hit, depositing great amounts of sand several blocks inland, and leaving the streets blocked by rising piles of debris. In Coney Island, as in many other areas devastated by the storm, people had stayed in their apartments, despite plummeting temperatures and diminishing stores of food.
The reasons were several: Some were afraid of what would happen to their homes if they left; others were worried about losing their public-housing benefits like Section 8 if they went to shelters. Some people were undocumented immigrants and had no friends to call on, and feared any contact with the system.
After a week without services, though, the collective resolve had begun to break down, and people descended on the parking lot and other relief stations around Coney Island in greater numbers. The line was as diverse as the census findings for these tracts: there were elderly Russians, young African-Americans, families from Central America. They were now united in a common plight, holding empty cardboard boxes and turning their backs to a bitter wind.
- Annie Correal
6:21 P.M. | Con Ed Defends Itself
Consolidated Edison responded to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo's criticism on Monday evening by saying that the company had already restored four times as many customers as it ever had to restore after a storm.
"The 800,000 or so we've restored is equivalent to four Hurricane Irenes," said John Miksad, senior vice president for electric operations at Con Edison. "We still have one hurricane to restore. It's been a massive undertaking."
The company still had 140,000 customers lacking power, down from 960,000, a total that was nearly five times the 200,000 Con Ed customers who lost power when Hurricane Irene swept through the region last year.
"I don't know of a way we could have done this any faster," Mr. Miksad said. "I think we're doing well. I think we have a very efficient operation going. I can't imagine a more efficient operation, but I'm always open to suggestions. I think we're moving as fast as humanly possible."
He said the number of customers in Westchester County without power had been pared to 62,000 from more than 210,000 at the peak. In Manhattan, the company had to reduce voltage by 5 percent to three networks downtown that have had power flowing again since the end of last week.
- Patrick McGeehan
5:45 P.M. | Grief and Awe at the Botanical Garden
When a mammoth storm churned across New York City a week ago, some of the tallest denizens took much of the brunt. While trees lay sprawled across streets and sidewalks, the city's more bucolic sanctuaries were where much of the worst damage took place.
Among them was the New York Botanical Garden, which lost more than 100 trees, including many ancient oaks, one of them 101 feet tall and thought to be about 200 years old. Read more.
- The New York Times
5:35 P.M. | Transit Improves, but Evening Commute May Be Rough
Monday evening's commute will require fortitude and patience. Long lines to reach buses outside the Port Authority Bus Terminal have formed with anxious passengers hoping to get home and Twitter is alighting with mob scenes like this:
Commute in NYC is an exercise in patience 2nite. @unclerush @mtainsidertwitter.com/Shariemanon/st
- GlamFairySharie (@Shariemanon) November 5, 2012
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority restored additional subway service on Monday, including the J train to Chambers Street. But many routes are still truncated or operating on a limited basis. Check mta.info to see how your subway line has been affected.
There are delays on the Brooklyn-bound 4 and 5 trains as a result of an investigation at the Barclays Center.
#ServAdv: Brooklyn-bound #4 #5 delayed due to @nypdnews investigation at Atlantic Ave-Barclays Center
- NYCT Subway Service (@NYCTSubwayScoop) November 5, 2012
Long Island Rail Road is operating on a modified schedule on all branches except the Long Beach branch, which remains idle. Trains on the Ronkonkoma branch are not running east of Ronkonkoma, and trains on the Montauk branch are not operating east of Speonk.
To ease congestion anticipated during the evening rush at Pennsylvania Station, the M.T.A. recommended passengers wait until 6:30 p.m.
#LIRR customers in Manhattan may wish to postpone eastbound travel until after 6:30pm. Penn Station expected to be less crowded by then.
- MTA (@MTAInsider) November 5, 2012
According to mta.info, Metro-North trains are operating on their regular schedules on the Hudson, Harlem and New Haven lines, with branch service resuming as well. The New Canaan branch has bus service in effect, with buses leaving stations 20 minutes before the scheduled train time.
Follow @NYCTSubwayScoop and @MTAInsider for latest updates.
- Emily S. Rueb
6:01 P.M. | Displaced New Yorkers Can Vote Anywhere in State
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said Monday that he had signed an executive order allowing voters living in areas most affected by Hurricane Sandy to vote by affidavit ballot at any polling place in the state.
"Just because you're displaced doesn't mean you should be disenfranchised," Mr. Cuomo said at a news conference. He added, "Compared to what we have had to deal with the past week, this will be a walk in the park, going out and voting."
New Jersey had taken a similar step, and good-government groups and some local elected officials had urged Mr. Cuomo to follow suit. Mr. Cuomo said displaced voters would receive the ballot specific to the area to which they had evacuated, meaning that in many cases, they would not be able to vote for candidates in local, legislative and Congressional races, but only for the two statewide contests on the ballot, president and United States Senate.
The executive order applies to voters in New York City and in Nassau, Suffolk, Rockland and Westchester Counties. Because the affidavit ballots will not be good for local races, Mr. Cuomo's spokesman, Josh Vlasto, said, "we strongly urge only displaced people to utilize the affidavit ballot."
Each polling place that was rendered unusable by the storm has been replaced with an alternate location, and voters who want to participate in their full slate of races can do so at the alternate location. Mr. Cuomo's step was intended largely for people who have moved so far from their homes that voting Tuesday at their neighborhood's temporary polling place would not be possible.
Several groups and public officials praised Mr. Cuomo's action, including the New York City public advocate, Bill de Blasio, who described it as "exactly the kind of flexible problem solving we need from government as we recover from this storm."
But one good-government group, Citizens Union, said it was concerned that a large number of voters would now seek to cast affidavit ballots without realizing that they would not be able to vote in local races, which in many cases are far more competitive than the two statewide contests.
"It's just going to cause greater confusion in an already chaotic election and hurt down-ballot races where turnout will be very low," said Dick Dadey, the executive director of Citizens Union. "It's a well-intentioned move, but its consequences are not ultimately helpful."
Mr. Cuomo, asked about the difficulty of voting for those whose communities had been evacuated or whose polling places had changed, said, "It is what it is. You have people who are displaced. We're trying to do the best we can. We want everyone to vote. We want to make it as easy as possible."
- Thomas Kaplan
5:35 P.M. | Gas Supply Is Slowly Improving
The gasoline supply was slowly improving in the New York City region on Monday, according to AAA.
Here is the organization's updated estimates of the number of gas stations that are open in areas damaged by Hurricane Sandy:
New York City: 60 to 65 percent are open (compared with 40 to 45 percent open on Friday)
New Jersey: 55 to 60 percent are open (compared with 45 to 50 percent open on Friday)
Long Island: 50 to 55 percent are open (compared with 35 to 40 percent open on Friday)
Still, long lines continue in parts of northern New Jersey, New York City and Long Island. The primary problem remains a lack of electricity rather than low supplies. Many gas stations remain without power, which results in increased demand at the limited number of pumps that are open. There also have been logistical challenges in delivering gasoline to open stations, but these problems are expected to diminish now that pipelines, distribution terminals and harbors have reopened in many areas.
- Winnie Hu
5:31 P.M. | Cuomo Concerned About New Storm
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, speaking at a briefing on Monday afternoon, said that he was concerned about a strong Northeaster forecast to hit the area on Wednesday and that it could complicate recovery efforts from Hurricane Sandy. He said he was concerned about the quantity of debris now on streets and sidewalks as people have discarded items damaged by flooding. As a result, he was ordering local communities to collect it before the new storm hit and said they would be reimbursed for any additional costs.
- The New York Times
5:18 P.M. | Cuomo Gives Briefing
Watch on Youtube.
- The New York Times
5:12 P.M. | Napolitano Warns of Threat From Approaching Northeaster
As Coney Island residents lined up on Monday afternoon for emergency supplies in a parking lot in the shadow of the famous parachute ride, not far away, the secretary of homeland security, Janet Napolitano, talked to reporters next to a trailer belonging to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Her message was equal parts reassurance and caution.
The reassurance was that federal resources would continue to be distributed where they were most needed and that the gasoline shortage that had left thousands in the region waiting in long lines would soon ease.
The caution concerned the storm predicted for the region later this week. "We know that there's a nor'easter coming our way and it's going to bring with it some more wind, some more rain, and possibly some more flooding and some more surge," Ms. Napolitano said. "Everything that people did to get ready for Sandy, we need to do for the nor'easter."
"Please listen to your local officials," she added. "If they advise you to evacuate again, please evacuate." She warned that some residents might lose power again and emphasized that the federal government would continue to bring in crews from around the country to help Consolidated Edison and other utility companies restore power.
She said that Sandy had hit public housing buildings particularly hard and that for their residents and others displaced by storm damage, "no option is off the table" for temporary housing, including rental units, hotel and motel rooms, FEMA trailers and prefabricated units.
To date, Ms. Napolitano said, 206,000 people had registered with FEMA and $192 million in FEMA aid had been distributed, along with 9.2 million gallons of water and 6.3 million meals.
The military has sent 12 million gallons of unleaded gasoline and 10 million gallons of diesel to the region, Ms. Napolitano said. "The gasoline is here; it's just a matter of getting it distributed" to stations, she said.
Nevertheless, she advised people for the time being to conserve gasoline.
- Annie Correal
5:04 P.M. | The Governor, the President and the Boss
Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey is a Republican. Bruce Springsteen is a Democrat. Mr. Christie is a huge fan of Mr. Springsteen, but political differences have stood between them. Mr. Springsteen has never invited Mr. Christie backstage at any of the dozens of his concerts that Mr. Christie has attended.
So who was able to get Mr. Springsteen on the phone for Mr. Christie? Their newly mutual friend, the president of the United States, of course.
Read more about the storm's strange bedfellows on The Caucus.
- The New York Times
The Dark City
Tell Us Who Helped You Get Through the Storm
Around Odd-Even License Plate Rules, a History of Impatience
Three Dozen Trees Felled in Riverside Park
Storm Leaves Lady Liberty and Ellis Island Cut Off From Visitors
LOAD-DATE: November 12, 2012
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
DOCUMENT-TYPE: News
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog
Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved
27 of 2097 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times Blogs
(The Caucus)
November 5, 2012 Monday
Campaign Diary: Candidates Spending Final Day in Swing States
BYLINE: THE NEW YORK TIMES
SECTION: US; politics
LENGTH: 6728 words
HIGHLIGHT: A running diary of the last day of campaigning for President Obama and Mitt Romney before Election Day.
New York Times political reporters traveled with the presidential candidates and their running mates on the last day of campaigning before Election Day. What follows is a running diary of the day.
12:09 A.M. | A Raucous Homecoming for Ryan
MILWAUKEE - Lest he forget where he is after visiting four airplane hangars in four states across three time zones, Representative Paul D. Ryan could glance behind him at the enormous banner, "Victory in Wisconsin.''
But then, he could hardly forget he had finally arrived home. To the strains of "It's a Long Way to the Top if You Want to Rock and Roll,'' he received five minutes of raucous applause from the crowd of 2,500, his biggest response in days. He gave a bear hug to Gov. Scott Walker, who had introduced him. "Boy, it feels so good to be home,'' he exclaimed.
Standing in the middle of the crowd, his voice a mix of rasp and emotion, Mr. Ryan said, "We have traveled across this country as a family, talking with people throughout America who care so deeply about the country.''
He cited a list of conservative Republican leaders from Wisconsin, including the governor, Senator Ron Johnson and Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee. "Here we are, this state, our beautiful 10 electoral votes,'' he said. "They can't take us for granted anymore.''
Yet, in presidential elections, as his audience well knew, he said, "We haven't gone Republican since 1984.'' Exhorting a crowd that needed no uplift, he started a chant of "One more day!''
"Let's prove 'em wrong!'' he said.
"I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart on behalf of my family,'' he said. "Thank you for waiting in line, thank you for taking the time, thank you for getting people to the polls ''
His words were drowned out by cheers, supporters waving flags and "Wisconsin Believes" signs with fervor.
Mr. Ryan had one more flight, a hop to his hometown of Janesville. But he wasn't quite finished campaigning. Late in the day his campaign announced that after voting Tuesday morning, he would head to Ohio and Virginia.
He will arrive in Cleveland at 11:55, shortly after Mitt Romney, for a joint appearance. He'll get to Richmond at 2:55. Then, of course, it is on to Boston.
- Trip Gabriel
12:02 A.M. | Emotions Run High in Last Moments on the Trail
DES MOINES - 10:30 p.m., Central time - And during the last rally, here where it all started, President Obama shed a tear.
Mr. Obama was talking before a crowd of 20,000 here, shivering in the cold. He told the story about the lady who first started the whole "fired up, ready to go" chant, in Greenwood, S.C., back in 2008.
And then, he talked about Iowa, about knocking on doors during the 2008 Democratic primaries, and sitting in living rooms here in this state, when his campaign seemed at once so improbable yet so full of hope.
And then, the tears came. The president is not one for showing emotion. He quickly wiped them away, and kept talking.
- Helene Cooper
11:22 P.M. | Back Where It All Began
DES MOINES - 10:02 p.m., Central time - The first lady, Michelle Obama, is introducing President Obama in front of the State Capitol here, where it all started back in 2008.
There are 20,000 people here, who have been standing in the cold waiting on the president for hours.
"This is a pretty emotional time for us because as you know this is the final event of my husband's campaign," Mrs. Obama says. "So we had to come here."
She vows that "tomorrow, we won't stop until every last voice and every last vote is counted."
She sounds exhausted. But her voice gets stronger when she introduces "the love of my life" and her husband jogs onto the stage, giving her a 10-second-long hug.
And then it's Barack Obama's last campaign rally.
"I've come back to Iowa one more time," he says, "to ask for your vote."
- Helene Cooper
10:30 P.M. | On the Last Stop of the Night, a Familiar Face
DES MOINES - 8:59 p.m., Central time - Air Force One is wheels down in Des Moines, and President Obama alights shortly after.
This is his last stop before heading home to Chicago.
He bounds down the stairs, now clad in a sports jacket to ward off the chill. His motorcade holds on the tarmac for a few minutes, awaiting arrival of the plane with the first lady, Michelle Obama.
At 9:16 p.m., the motorcade moves a few hundred feet to the Flotus plane. Mr. Obama gets out of his car and stands at the bottom of the steps to greet, and hug, his wife.
"How you doing?" he asks her.
Two minutes later, the motorcade is rolling.
- Helene Cooper
8:59 P.M. | Biden Seizes on '47 Percent' Remarks in Final Rally
RICHMOND, Va. - Closing out his campaigning at a frigid evening rally along the banks of the James River here, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. told a crowd of supporters that Mitt Romney had "personally offended" him when he spoke about 47 percent of Americans, saying that the Republican presidential nominee was talking about Mr. Biden's parents and people like them.
The long campaign showed little sign of taking its toll on the 69-year-old vice president, who, wearing a brown leather jacket and alternately energetically waving his finger and fist, urged the crowd to defeat the nominees of what he characterized as an increasingly radical and reactionary Republican Party.
"This is not your father's Republican Party," Mr. Biden said. "This is not John Warner's Republican Party, and this is not Mitt Romney's father's Republican Party," he added, referring to Virginia's popular former G.O.P. senator and to George Romney, who was governor of Michigan in the 1960s.
Much of Mr. Biden's talk here, which followed a performance by John Mellencamp, an Obama-Biden supporter, tracked his familiar stump-speech lines of recent weeks. But he seemed to bear down in an unusually personal way on criticism of Mr. Romney's secretly recorded comments at a fund-raiser earlier this year. In those comments, Mr. Romney had said that there are 47 percent of Americans who "are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them."
"It personally offended me," Mr. Biden said. "Who he was talking about were my mom and dad. Who he was talking about is those seniors who worked their whole life and got social security and now aren't paying taxes on it, nor should they pay any taxes on it. The majority of those people are people who are employed, who pay with their withholding taxes, pay their property tax. They probably pay an effective tax rate more than he pays on $20 million."
Mr. Biden added, "We are determined - Barack and I - to level the playing field for the middle class. Give them a fighting chance."
The rally was Mr. Biden's last official campaign stop, though he will vote Tuesday in his home state of Delaware.
- Richard A. Oppel Jr.
8:45 p.m. | A Big Crowd Gathers for Romney's Campaign Solo
FAIRFAX, Va. - Like President Obama (and Gov. Chris Christie), Mitt Romney had his own, admittedly casual brush with a musical legend on Monday: he name-dropped the mother of all rock groups, The Beatles.
As he surveyed the enormous crowd of at an athletic complex here, Mr. Romney appeared incredulous that they had turned out for him - and him alone. (His biggest crowd are often lured by a two-fer: Mr. Romney and a musical guest, like "Kid Rock.")
"I am overwhelmed," Mr. Romney said. "I am looking around to see if we have the Beatles here or something to have brought you but it looks like you came just for the campaign and I appreciate it."
- Michael Barbaro
7:58 P.M. | Stopping at a Campaign Office
COLUMBUS, Ohio - President Obama mades an unscheduled stop at a campaign office. Staffers and volunteers were working the phones, "Ohio for Obama" signs on the walls.
Mr. Obama walked in to cheers. "Let me say hi to everybody," he said jovially. "You guys are working hard."
The president hugged and kissed some people, then paused and said: "This is the foundation of this campaign. All the ups and downs, the TV stuff doesn't matter because you guys are what make this campaign."
He then turned and hugged a woman who exclaimed: "Oh my god!"
Mr. Obama admonished a campaign worker who asked for a picture. "We're gonna do pictures with everybody...you're a field organizer, you gotta be looking out for your volunteers."
Then the president sat down and began making phone calls to volunteers.
"This is Barack Obama, looks like I missed you, everybody's been telling me what a great job you're doing."
After that phone call, he said, "I like this. This is intense right here."
He then made another call.
"Hi Jim. This is Barack Obama. It really is. Well listen. I heard all the doors you've been knocking on, I wanted to say thank you."
Jim must have been talking a lot because Mr. Obama listened for a long time.
A woman sitting next to the president said into her phone, "I'm sitting next to Barack Obama right now, he says hi to you!"
She handed the phone to Mr. Obama, who said,"hey Gloria, keep it up!"
The woman returns to the call with Gloria: "That's right baby! He kissed me on the cheek!"
- Helene Cooper
7:50 P.M. | Campaign Aides Mum on Ryan's Election Day Plans
DES MOINES, Iowa - Back in the warm months, just after Mitt Romney tapped Representative Paul D. Ryan to be his No. 2, joint appearances by the running mates drew hugely enthusiastic crowds, which were larger than those Mr. Romney alone attracted, and the senior partner visibly drew energy from his younger ticket mate.
This is now, when Mr. Romney is the one with star power for Republicans, and Mr. Ryan has been much less noticed on the national stage.
With Mr. Romney announcing he is adding two last-minute events on Election Day, visits to field offices to inspire volunteers and attract publicity, will Mr. Ryan be going along?
Aides to Mr. Ryan are not saying, at least for now. One press aide said, "You won't hear it from me.'' The travelling campaign spokesman, Michael Steel, said, "No new information yet.''
Mr. Ryan is taking a short flight home to Janesville, Wis. late tonight after his finally rally in Milwaukee rally, then plans to vote tomorrow morning. The only other event on his dance card so far is a flight to Boston for the joint election night appearance.
Stay tuned.
- Trip Gabriel
7:15 p.m. | Romney Makes an Entrance
COLUMBUS, Ohio - Mr. Romney's aides wanted a big entrance for his rally here on Monday night. Their time-tested strategy of driving the candidate into an airport hangar on his campaign bus didn't feel right.
The obvious solution: have Mr. Romney ride in on his campaign plane.
At 7:15 p.m., as the crowd inside a hangar here waited for the candidate to walk in the front door, a giant side gate opened, music blared and the plane began to steer its way in.
Bob White, Mr. Romney's longtime friend, took out his cell phone to record the moment. "This place is going to go crazy," Mr. White predicted. It did.
But there was a small problem. The plane's first try in brought the right wing too close to the door, so the plane backed up and attempted a second try. It worked.
As Mr. and Mrs.Romney walked off, another aide, Beth Myers, soon followed, trailing behind. She radiated a can-you-believe-we-just-did-that mirth. "That," she yelled to her campaign colleagues. "Was s-o-o-o cool."
- Michael Barbaro
7:13 P.M. | Mellencamp Warms Up the Crowd in Virginia
RICHMOND, Va. - John Mellencamp took the stage 20 minutes ago to warm up the crowd at Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.'s final campaign stop here at the historic Tredegar Iron Works downtown.
He began singing "Jack and Diane" by himself, playing the guitar. Then he sang "Small Town," accompanied by a guitarist and accordion player.
In between the two songs, Mr. Mellencamp told the crowd, "In one man's success, there is real hope for us all. And that's why we're all here tonight."
Then he played "The West End," introducing it as a song about "what greed can do to a country when the middle class has no place to go."
"But the middle class is going to rise up again, and the rich are going to pay their fair share," Mr. Mellencamp told the crowd, adding: "Let there be no haves and have-nots - just a level playing-field that makes everything possible, and that we can still believe in the American dream."
The song's lyrics include:
For my whole life
I've lived down in the West End
But it sure has changed here
Since I was a kid
It's worse now
Look what progress did
Someone lined their pockets
I don't know who that is
- Richard A. Oppel Jr.
5:14 P.M. | Jay-Z, Springsteen and the President in Ohio
COLUMBUS, Ohio - Jay-Z is firing up the crowd of 15,500 here in the Nationwide Arena in a fully amped-up show.
"Ohio, will you make some noise for your president, Barack Obama!"
President Obama is on stage. "Fired up!" he begins, trying to recreate the magic of 2008. "Ready to go!"
The crowds are smaller now, but here in this swing state to end all swing states, on this last day of campaigning, there is a rainbow mix of black, white and brown. And they are all screaming.
For Bruce Springsteen, who opened the show? Yes. For Jay-Z? Definitely. For the president? Sure, him too.
The president is touting his accomplishments. Twenty minutes into his speech, when Mr. Obama mentions the name "Mitt Romney," the crowd predictably boos.
Wait for it. Here comes the line: "Don't boo. Vote!" Mr. Obama says.
Back to his accomplishments. "The war in Iraq is over," Mr. Obama says. "Al Qaeda is on the path to defeat. Osama bin Laden is dead."
Mr. Obama's voice is starting to crack now, and his church-preacher cadence is coming out.
The president is doing a slew of radio interviews Monday, his aides said, and will even appear on ESPN during "Monday Night Football" time.
"Ohio, after four years, you know me by now," Mr. Obama says. There is allowance during his talk for some of the disappointment of the last four years.
"You may be frustrated with the pace of change but that's O.K., so am I," Mr. Obama said, his voice definitely cracking now. "But you know I mean what I say and I say what I mean."
He's tie-less, with a black blazer, leaning into the podium. The blue signs that say "Forward!" dot the arena.
Mr. Obama seems to be weaving in and out of enthusiasm and emotion. One minute he is droning on with the usual stump speech - "change is turning the page on a decade of war so we can do some nation-building at home" - and the next minute he seems to remember that this is it, the last day, his last chance.
And his voice rises again. "Ohio, my bet's on you. My hope is with you. My faith is with you."
Now he's yelling. His finger goes up and down against the podium, punctuating his points. "We've come too far to turn back now we will win Ohio let's go vote!"
The voice is almost gone. But he's still got another rally to do, in Des Moines, in a few hours.
- Helene Cooper
4:35 p.m. | In Colorado, a Ryan Pep Talk
JOHNSTOWN, Colo. - Representative Paul D. Ryan's marathon fly-around included rallies in four airplane hangars in three time zones, but he also managed a visit to a truck stop here, north of Denver.
Not just any roadside attraction, it's a place called Johnson's Corner, with its own Web site with an entry for "Our Story." It has been open 24-7, 365 days a year since 1952. It serves its celebrated cinnamon rolls.
"They're like the size of your head, I'm told," Mr. Ryan said to his two young sons as he entered the restaurant in search of voters and baked goods. He ordered two dozen of the rolls, each in a plastic clamshell and swimming in a bath of icing. He held one up to his son Sam's head to show its size.
A reporter asked how Mr. Ryan felt about the election. News flash: "I feel very good about it," he said.
He climbed onto an outdoor stage flanked by red and blue Kenworth tractor-trailer cabs, chrome gleaming.
Midway through Mr. Ryan's stump speech - after he asked supporters to "vote out of love of country"' and before he recited the five-point Romney-Ryan plan - a big rig on Interstate 25 tooted its horn as it passed the rally. "I'll tell you, truckers are great," Mr. Ryan said.
He implored Coloradans to "leave it all on the field" on Election Day, to urge friends and families to go to the polls. "Let's wake up on Wednesday morning knowing we did all we could," he said.
When reporters returned to the press bus, they found a surprise on each seat: a cinnamon roll the size of, well, a salad plate.
- Trip Gabriel
3:15 p.m. | The President Connects the Boss With a Famous Fan
COLUMBUS, Ohio - On what is supposed to be a day focused on swing states, New Jersey continues to pop up. The White House spokesman, Jay Carney, confirmed that President Obama had put Bruce Springsteen on the phone with Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey while the president and the Boss were flying to Columbus from Madison, Wis., on Air Force One.
Mr. Christie, a Republican, is well known as one of the biggest Bruce fans ever, but had not gotten love from Mr. Springsteen, a die-hard Democrat, in the past. Though Mr. Christie has attended more than 100 of his concerts, Mr. Springsteen has not invited him backstage.
But in these post-hurricane days of bipartisan bonhomie between Mr. Obama and Mr. Christie, who better than the president to serve as yenta between the Boss and his fan?
Mr. Christie promptly relayed the fact of the phone call to reporters. When asked, Mr. Carney confirmed: "When Potus told the governor he had someone who wanted to speak with him, Springsteen, who was using the handset across the table from the president, said, 'Governor, this is Bruce.' "
- Helene Cooper
4:17 p.m. | Ann Romney Goes to (Suburban) Washington
FAIRFAX, Va. - Mr. Romney and his wife, Ann, own three homes. But just before 4 p.m. on Monday, Mrs. Romney made it known that she wouldn't mind taking up residence in a fourth.
At a rally in a suburb of Washington - home of the coveted 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue address - Mrs. Romney took the stage and posed a question to a crowd of more than 10,000.
"Are we going to be neighbors soon?" she playfully asked.
(Based on the cheering response, the answer was an unequivocal yes.)
- Ashley Parker
3:18 p.m. | Campaign Coverage of the Boss
COLUMBUS, Ohio - We interrupt this Obama campaign report with a brief side trip to the Jersey Shore.
Air Force One is wheels down here after a one-hour flight.
Instead of scrambling to watch the president alight, the reporters traveling on the plane scramble to catch a glimpse of ... Bruce Springsteen.
Penetrating questions follow.
"Was this your first time on Air Force One?"
The Boss starts grinning. He nods. "It was pretty cool," he says.
Another hard-hitting question:
"What did you talk about on the plane with President Obama?"
Mr. Springsteen, famously a New Jersey native, says they talked about the impact of Hurricane Sandy on the Jersey Shore. "I'm feeling pretty hopeful," he says about the chances that his beloved seashore will recover.
A few minutes later, after his arrival at the campaign's Columbus event, another sharp query for Mr. Springsteen comes rocketing from the traveling press.
"Sir, have you spoken with Governor Christie since the storm?" Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, a Republican, is a huge Springsteen fan, but he doesn't get much love from his state's greatest export.
Times may be changing, though. "Yes," Mr. Springsteen replies. "We have."
O.K., back to the president. Seriously.
- Helene Cooper
2:44 P.M. | Romney to Hit Ohio and Pennsylvania on Election Day
DULLES, Va. - Mitt Romney, who had no plans to campaign on Election Day, has decided to travel to the swing states of Pennsylvania and Ohio on Tuesday.
Aides said Mr. Romney would visit campaign offices in Pittsburgh and Cleveland. Until now, his staff had said a rally in New Hampshire on Monday night would be his last event of the campaign.
Read more here.
- Michael Barbaro
2:14 P.M. | A Refreshed and Confident Biden in Virginia
STERLING, Va. - Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. finished his first campaign rally of the day about an hour ago in Sterling, Va., where he accused the Republican ticket of doing everything they could to confuse the electorate and to run away in the closing stages of the election from what he suggested were more radical and conservative positions they previously advocated.
Looking and sounding refreshed and confident, Mr. Biden spoke only about 20 minutes - shorter than a lot of his stump speeches - telling a smaller-than-usual but energized crowd that this state was crucial to the Obama-Biden campaign's re-election.
In fact, he said almost word for word the same thing he had told people at a rally in Lakewood, Ohio, on Sunday morning - except for substituting "Virginia" for "Ohio:"
"We need you, Virginia! With your help, we will win Virginia," Mr. Biden said. "We win Virginia, we win this election!"
Mr. Biden also pledged, without detailing how, that there would be 100,000 new math and science teachers over the next 10 years, "so our kids are the best in the world." He also asserted that the students of his wife, Jill, who teaches English at a community college in Virginia, "are going to hear the word 'insourcing' more than their parents heard the word 'outsourcing.'" Mr. Biden did not explain how that would happen, given the significant wage disparities between the United States and many other countries with skilled workers.
Though he was speaking in a wealthy enclave of suburban Washington, a good deal of Mr. Biden's speech sounded as if he were still in the gritty, union-heavy urban locations where he campaigned in Ohio. There, polls indicate that the $80 billion auto bailout that President Obama supported is popular and has helped buttress the Obama-Biden campaign's re-election hopes in a state that is often a battleground between the two parties.
In fact, in one of Mr. Biden's final points at his appearance in Sterling, he referred to a Romney campaign radio commercial that suggested that Chrysler and General Motors, which got federal financing during the auto bailout, were shifting work to China at the expense of American autoworkers. The ad had drawn an unusually harsh response from executives at both companies: A spokesman for G.M. called it "cynical campaign politics at its worst." Chrysler's top executive also felt compelled to e-mail his employees that it was "inaccurate to suggest" that Jeep production would be moved to China from the United States - a message that came as another Romney commercial left the impression that Jeep might shift jobs to China at the expense of domestic workers.
"Not a shred of truth to it," Mr. Biden said here, referring to the Romney advertising blitz over the auto bailout. "General Motors and Chrysler have denounced the Romney ads as untrue and a lie."
"Guys," he added, "when's the last time you've seen two major American corporations in the waning hours of the campaign go after a Republican candidate?"
- Richard A. Oppel Jr.
1:50 P.M. | Going All-In on Virginia
LYNCHBURG, Va. - Just how badly does Mitt Romney need to win Virginia?
The state's governor, Bob McDonnell, just answered that, perhaps accidentally, during a rally here when he spun through Mr. Romney's Virginia-laden schedule over the past week.
"He's spent three of the last five days of the campaign right here in Virginia," the governor said. "Paul Ryan was here all day Saturday."
Get the idea? Mr. McDonnell was not done, however.
"They've spent an immense amount of time and effort and energy on the ground to be able to tell the people of Virginia about their positive optimistic Romney-Reagan vision for the future of this great nation," Mr. McDonnell added.
- Michael Barbaro
1:18 P.M. | A Modest Crowd for Romney in Virginia
LYNCHBURG, Va. - Let us not measure Mitt Romney's electoral hopes on the size of his crowds today - or risk the wrath of his angry staff members, who eagerly blast out his overflow crowds (30,000 people Sunday night in Morrisville, Penn., on Sunday night) but are far more quiet with his smaller ones.
But it must be said: Mitt Romney's crowds, on this final day before Election Day 2012, are so far quite modest - 3,200 this morning in Sanford, Fla., and no more than a few thousand just now in Lynchburg, Va.
Of course, what actually matters is how many people show up to the polls, not how many people turn out to glimpse Mr. Romney one more time before Tuesday. And Lynchburg is an admittedly small area. ("For the size of our city, it's a good crowd," said Christine Wooldridge, of Lynchburg. "I've heard he's gotten crowds of 20,000, but that won't happen here.")
But Mr. Romney, like many politicians, feeds off his crowds. And this group of voters, halfheartedly waving flags on this sunny day, is a listless, sleepy bunch.
Mr. Romney dutifully made his way through his stump speech, but delivered all of his lines in the pitch you'd use in a boardroom, not a raucous political rally. When he asked the voters if they were "tired of being tired," he sounded pretty tired himself.
Still, his attempts at optimism were on full display as he ad-libbed this line: "It's not just the size of crowds, but this one is pretty darn impressive," he said, as if trying to convince himself.
- Ashley Parker
1:16 P.M. | Obama and Romney to Appear on 'Monday Night Football'
President Obama and Mitt Romney will appear at halftime of the "Monday Night Football" game in New Orleans between the Philadelphia Eagles and the New Orleans Saints. They will answer questions - presumably somewhat more oriented to the world of sports than to Libya or auto bailouts - from the ESPN studio host, Chris Berman.
It is becoming something of a tradition the night before the election: four years ago Mr. Obama and Senator John McCain also appeared at halftime on "Monday Night Football."
Read more on the Media Decoder blog.
- Bill Carter
12:51 P.M. | Ryan Makes a Plea to Nevada
RENO, Nev. - Under sunny skies and in the shadow of peaks already covered with snow, Representative Paul D. Ryan made Stop No. 1 on a day that will take him next to Colorado, Iowa, Ohio and, finally, a late-night rally in Milwaukee in his home state.
"We're doing a barn-burner today, we're crisscrossing the country, Mitt and I,'' Mr. Ryan told supporters in a darkened airplane hangar.
"It's kind of déjà vu, you look kind of familiar,'' Mr. Ryan said in a jocular vein. "You've seen a few of us around, haven't you? And you know why? Nevada can make the difference.''
That is possible, but Nevada looks like a tough battleground state for the Republican ticket. By some estimates, two-thirds of Nevadans have already voted. Democrats cast 44 percent of the ballots and Republicans 37 percent. It translates to a 50,000-vote margin for Democrats. A local official introducing Mr. Ryan called on Republicans to "burn down that firewall" on Tuesday. For the Republican ticket to prevail, Nevada analysts say, it would need a flood of independents breaking for Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan.
As Mr. Ryan arrived late Sunday night, his motorcade passed the Democratic headquarters of the Washoe County Democrats. The lights were still on at 11:45 p.m.
- Trip Gabriel
12:45 p.m. | A Day of Flybys for Romney
SANFORD, Fla. - Less than 24 hours before the polls open, Mitt Romney has entered the drive-through portion of his campaign.
He spent the last year traveling to voters, crisscrossing the country and dropping into small towns and rural communities.
But on the final day, they came to him.
Three of Mr. Romney's five rallies are veritable flybys, held in airport hangars so Mr. Romney can land, jog down the steps of his private plane to the blaring thrum of Kid Rock's "Born Free," and then begin taxiing to the next city nearly as soon as he has shaken the last hand and kissed the last baby.
When Mr. Romney's plane touched down here after an 18-hour day (four events in four states) just before 1 a.m. Monday, his aides had already begun setting up for the day's rally. A "Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Can't Lose" sign greeted the plane, and an empty hangar waited lighted and ready for the voters who would file in just hours later.
So, what do voters think, heading to an auxiliary airport hangar to glimpse the man who they hope will be the next president?
"It's a convenient venue for him to come into and land," Greg Baker, 65, of Sorrento, Fla., said with a shrug. "And rallies are rallies."
- Ashley Parker
12:28 P.M. | An Obama Supporter on Political Geography in Virginia
STERLING, Va. - An Obama-Biden supporter here, Bruce Burton, a union representative who lives in Fairfax County, explained in an interview the rough voting demographics of the state: "Virginia is really
two states: You have Northern Virginia, and then everything below the Rappahannock. And this part tends to be a lot more Democratic," he said, referring to the portion north of the river, which he said includes a lot more people from other parts of the country, more members of minority groups, and more federal government employees.
Mr. Burton blames the Republicans for trying to stymie Mr. Obama¹s efforts to revive the economy, and he credits the president's stimulus package for lowering the unemployment rate by a full percentage point. Citing a recent cartoon, Mr. Burton said, "For the Republicans to criticize the president for the economy is like John Wilkes Booth criticizing Abraham Lincoln for missing the second act of the play." He added: "Or Lucy pulling the football out and then blaming Charlie Brown because he missed." Senator Jim Webb of Virgnia is now warming up the crowd for former governor Tim Kaine, the Democrat who is running to replace him.
- Richard A. Oppel Jr.
12:16 P.M. | Springsteen Rallies the Crowd in Madison
MADISON, Wis. - Bruce Springsteen is introducing President Obama. "This is a song called 'Land of Hope and Dreams,'" he said, as he begins the familiar opening chords of his millennium anthem.
The crowd of 18,000 is bundled up in front of the state Capitol, and the American flag is waving in the background. Mr. Springsteen is acoustic. Atop a crane, David Plouffe, David Axelrod and Robert Gibbs stand, hands in pockets, watching the Boss as he stumps for their boss.
The song ends, and the president jogs onto the stage, engulfing Mr. Springsteen in a huge bear hug.
Reporters, who had been atop giant cranes themselves to get a better view of Mr. Springsteen, hastily scramble down to take notes as Mr. Obama begins his stump speech.
It's hard to hear, and Mr. Obama, who has been drinking hot tea to help his throat during the final campaign slog, already sounds hoarse. "Our fight goes on," he says. He describes his vision of an America where "everybody is doing their fair share, everybody is playing by the same rules, that's why you elected me in 2008 and that's why I'm running for a second term!"
The crowd is chanting: "Four more years! Four more years!"
- Helene Cooper
12:04 P.M. | A Rock Concert Atmosphere at Biden Rallies
STERLING, Va. - At Vice President Jospher R. Biden Jr.'s rallies, the aides like to play loud, loud music before and after, so booming that it is hard to interview the people there. Right now it's one of the campaign's favorites: "Roll With the Changes" by REO Speedwagon. "Oh, you got to learn to, got to learn to, got to learn to roll. ..."
- Richard A. Oppel Jr.
11:55 a.m. | Casual Monday in Madison
MADISON, Wis. - There's a Casual Friday feel in the lobby of the Sheraton Madison. Robert Gibbs and David Plouffe are in jeans, Mr. Gibbs in grungy-looking sneakers. Valerie Jarrett is not. David Axelrod and Reggie Love didn't get the jeans memo either. Nor Ben Rhodes nor Jay Carney. Jen Psaki is all in black.
It's a beautiful bright and chilly day. As the motorcade began rolling to the event, we were told, a crowd of 18,000 awaited.
The president arrived as Bruce Springsteen was playing an acoustic version of "Promise Land."
- Helene Cooper
11:51 A.M. | A Delivery Four Decades in the Making
SANFORD, Fla. - An air of unfinished family business has always hovered around the Romney campaign, from the George Romney posters in his Boston headquarters to the way both Mr. Romney and his wife, Ann, reverentially speak of Mr. Romney's father, the late three-term governor of Michigan.
And on Monday, just after 10 a.m. here, the generations of Romney men made their presence felt yet again.
Mr. Romney emerged onstage at his first rally of the day wearing a purple striped tie, courtesy of his older brother Scott. Scott has had the tie for years, and last night, when Mr. Romney saw it, he told his older brother he was in need of new neck ware.
"Can I add that to my rotation he asked?" (Yes, came the reply).
After the rally, a supporter approached Mr. Romney as he shook hands, and handed him a Ziploc bag containing six blue Romney pins from 1968, when Mr. Romney's father ran for president.
He had been holding onto the pins, waiting for just the right moment to give them to Mr. Romney. And less than 24-hours before Election Day - and more than four decades after George Romney's bid - he finally found his chance.
- Ashley Parker
11:23 a.m. | The Bidens on the Ground in Virginia
STERLING, Va. - Hundreds of people are already waiting at the Heritage Farm Museum at Claude Moore Park here for Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.'s first scheduled campaign event of the day, a rally with his wife, Dr. Jill Biden.
The Bidens flew to Washington last night after a three-stop swing in Ohio - perhaps the most critical battleground state this election, with 18 electoral votes - where Mr. Biden declared: "We need Ohio, we need you. We win Ohio, we win this election."
But the Obama-Biden campaign also needs Virginia and its 13 electoral votes. And so the 69-year-old vice president is spending the final day of the campaign in Virginia, ending with an evening rally in Richmond where John Mellencamp will perform. The state's Democratic Senators - Jim Webb and Mark Warner - and the former Democratic governor, Tim Kaine, are expected to attend both events, according to the Obama-Biden campaign.
- Richard A. Oppel Jr.
9:10 a.m. | Voices of Voters for Romney
SANFORD, Fla. - On the final day of campaigning, voters are at their most energized, their voices crying out during Mr. Romney's speeches with expressions of support and fury.
But what exactly are they shouting?
Here is a sampling:
"Help us take back our country!"
"We want Mitt."
"Fire Obama!"
"Unacceptable!"
"He's a loser!" (Obama)
"Keystone, pipeline!"
"We love you, Ann!" (Mr. Romney's wife)
"One more day! One more day!"
"45! 45! 45!" (Mr. Romney would be the 45th president)
"Mitt! Mitt! Mitt!"
- Michael Barbaro
10:15 a.m. | The Traveling Press and the Traveling Press Secretary
SANFORD, Fla. - It is a fitting coda to the frequently distant and contentious relationship between the reporters that travel with Mr. Romney and his campaign's traveling press secretary, Rick Gorka.
On Monday morning, the reporters yelled in unison for Mr. Gorka to walk to the back of the plane to answer questions, something he has done less and less over time.
He did so, warily, and sparingly.
REPORTER: What is the mood inside the campaign?
GORKA: "We are an economic campaign. Streamlining government. We feel great."
REPORTER: Is Mr. Romney planning a surprise rally in Ohio on Election Day, as we have heard?
GORKA: "We'll advise his official schedule. And if there is anything beyond that, we will update you."
REPORTER: You said tonight's rally is his "final" rally? Is that accurate anymore?
GORKA: "We will have an official schedule we will announce."
And so it went, most questions bouncing back half-answered.
Until, suddenly, the questions and answers become rather warm and playful. Both sides seemed to realize the limitations of their long relationship, and to embrace it.
A reporter asked Mr. Gorka to provide running, behind the scenes details about Mr. Romney's day on Tuesday, including his "last meal."
"He is going to live beyond Tuesday," Mr. Gorka deadpanned, drawing laughter.
A reporter pointed out that if Mr. Romney did have a last-minute rally on Tuesday, despite a widely reported schedule that said he would not, members of the news media would "have egg all over our faces."
To which Mr. Gorka replied dryly: "We don't want that."
Asked about his own mood on the final full day of campaigning, Mr. Gorka was reflective.
"I am sitting here. I am enjoying it. I know I have Patron underneath this plane to help me get through this day if I need to."
At that, Charlie Pearce, a campaign staffer, stalked Mr. Gorka from behind, walked down the plane's center aisle and placed a Philadelphia Eagle's helmet over Mr. Gorka's head.
The press laughed. Mr. Gorka laughed.
"Luckily there is nothing in here to be concussed," he said, pointing to the helmet.
"Now," he added, "I am ready for my close up."
- Michael Barbaro
9:30 a.m. | The Boss on The Plane
MADISON, Wis. - Call it Air Force Born to Run.
Obama spokeswoman Jen Psaki electrifies the press corps traveling with President Obama when she informs them that Bruce Springsteen will join President Obama on the presidential 747 on Monday for the last day of campaigning. The Boss, who will be performing at not one but three rallies Monday for Mr. Obama, will fly with the
president from Madison to Columbus.
Stay tuned.
- Helene Cooper
8:45 a.m. | Crossed Signals on Economic Messaging
SANFORD, Fla. - Even on the final day of a presidential campaign, signals can become crossed. At a rally here, the Republican governor of Florida, Rick Scott, introduced Mr. Romney, whose message of economic turmoil under President Obama is central to his quest for the White House.
Mr. Scott did not seem to be playing ball.
"Guess what?" he asked the crowd in an airport hangar. "The biggest drop in unemployment in the country is in our great state of Florida."
Mr. Romney did not repeat that line when he took the stage.
- Michael Barbaro
8:36 a.m. | Obama Begins Three-State Swing in Wisconsin
MADISON, Wis. - President Obama began his last day of campaigning here in a state that almost every Democratic model for an Obama victory assumes will be in his column. But with Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin on the Republican ticket, the president is taking no chances.
After this weekend's marathon crisscrossing of every swing state, Mr. Obama's schedule on Monday looked almost tame by comparison. Even so, he was to hit three states before heading to sweet home Chicago for the night.
After the rally planned for Monday morning in this college town, Mr. Obama will return one last time to the swing state of all swing states for a rally in Columbus, Ohio. The president has been holding on to a small lead in the polls in Ohio, and his campaign aides believe that if he wins the state, he will win the election. Unless, that is, Mr. Romney manages to sweep all the other swing states, or turn a blue state - Mr. Romney planted a flag in Pennsylvania on Sunday - red.
After Ohio, Michelle Obama will join her husband for one last rally where the two like to insist that it all started - Des Moines. Mr. Obama's victory in the Iowa caucuses in 2008 catapulted his candidacy from also-ran to front-runner in the Democratic primaries, and the Obamas talk often about how much they loved tramping around in the snow in Iowa and hanging out with butter cows and whatnot at the Iowa State Fair.
In recent days, the president has been joined onstage by Democratic bigwigs. Former President Bill Clinton was with him on Sunday in New Hampshire, and Mr. Clinton will be on the road for him again on Monday in Pennsylvania, lest that state get its head turned by its new suitor, Mr. Romney.
In Florida, with its crucial Latino vote, Mr. Obama also got a lift on Sunday from Pitbull, a Cuban-American hip-hop artist.
But that is nothing compared to the firepower coming out for the president on Monday. The Obama campaign is hauling out its biggest weapon for dragging blue-collar white voters to the polls: Bruce Springsteen.
He is joining Mr. Obama at all three stops on Monday - Madison, Wis.; Columbus, Ohio; and Des Moines. And lest anyone forget the African-American vote, Jay-Z will also be joining the president in Columbus.
In Des Moines, Mrs. Obama will be onstage with her husband, to talk about the good old days.
Then the president and the first lady will head back to their hometown, Chicago, where they are planning to spend Election Day.
- Helene Cooper
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November 5, 2012 Monday
Fate of Maryland Same-Sex Marriage Ballot Measure Is Uncertain
BYLINE: EMMARIE HUETTEMAN
SECTION: US; politics
LENGTH: 979 words
HIGHLIGHT: Supporters of Maryland's same-sex marriage law hope to parlay the backing of President Obama, who is expected to win the state, into a victory.
For the first time since President Obama endorsed same-sex marriage, four states will ask voters to decide Tuesday whether it is legal, presenting the latest opportunity for supporters to overcome a losing record of appealing directly to voters through referendums.
Supporters of Maryland's same-sex marriage law hope to parlay the backing of Mr. Obama, who is expected to win the state, into a victory. Voters have backed constitutional amendments limiting marriage to a man and a woman in more than 30 states. If efforts to legalize marriage for gay and lesbian couples in any of the four states succeed Tuesday, it will be the first time that same-sex marriage is legalized by ballot measure.
Six states and Washington, D.C., have legalized same-sex marriage by legislation or a judicial ruling. Following suit, the Maryland and Washington State Legislatures passed laws approving it this year, only to face challenges from opponents who forced referendums on Election Day. Maine, where voters repealed the state's same-sex marriage law in 2009, and Minnesota will also ask voters whether same-sex marriage should be legal.
The Obama campaign announced the president's support for Maryland's law in October as Marylanders for Marriage Equality began broadcasting a radio advertisement featuring Mr. Obama's endorsement of same-sex marriage.
"I think President Obama's endorsement has been a significant factor in more conversations being had in all communities, including the African-American community," said Kevin Nix, communications director of Marylanders for Marriage Equality, adding, "The needle has moved."
But even with the president's support, whether the law will survive Election Day is unclear. Recent polls show a close race, and some experts caution that they may be misleading anyway as voters may be hesitant to voice their opposition to the rights of others, with the vote against legalization often undercounted in polls.
A recent poll by The Baltimore Sun showed likely voters were evenly split on Maryland's referendum. Unlike a Washington Post poll about a week earlier - which showed that likely voters favored the law 52 percent to 43 percent - the Baltimore Sun poll did not use the ballot's wording, highlighting the challenge of polling on ballot measures, which pollsters sometimes rephrase to make them easier to understand in phone surveys. Explaining that opponents had petitioned to get the law on the ballot after it was approved by the legislature and Gov. Martin O'Malley, the Baltimore Sun's poll asked simply, "In November, will you vote to make same-sex marriage legal or illegal in Maryland?" In response, 46 percent said legal while 47 percent said illegal.
In Maryland, which has one of the largest black populations in the country, it's been a fight for black voters. Both sides have featured black ministers and civil rights leaders in their campaign ads. The Maryland Marriage Alliance, the campaign opposing the state's same-sex marriage law, recently aired a radio commercial featuring Alveda King, niece of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and a minister, rejecting comparisons between the civil rights movement and efforts to legalize marriage for gay and lesbian couples and arguing Maryland already has protections for them
"It is possible to be tolerant of gay and lesbian rights without redefining marriage, God's holy union," she said in the commercial.
The Maryland Marriage Alliance could not be reached for comment.
In addition to Mr. Obama, the N.A.A.C.P. came out in favor of same-sex marriage this year, and local chapters have been especially active in Maryland, Mr. Nix said. But the Baltimore Sun poll in October showed 50 percent of black voters oppose the law, while 42 percent support it.
Polls show young people are among the strongest supporters of the ballot measures, particularly in Maryland and Washington State. A Baltimore Sun poll in September showed that 61 percent of voters under the age of 35 favor Maryland's law, while just 22 percent oppose it. A recent KCTS 9 Washington poll reported more than 70 percent of registered Washington State voters ages 18 to 29 support the ballot referendum there, where polls show that voters are likely to uphold the state's law legalizing same-sex marriage.
But young voters - who tend to support same-sex marriage in higher numbers than older voters but also tend to vote in lower numbers - are not the only reason the polls are close. A study released in October found that support nationwide for legalizing marriage for gay and lesbian couples has increased across the board since 2004, with even evangelical Protestants expressing stronger support. Third Way, the Washington, D.C.-based research institute that conducted the study, attributed 75 percent of the growth in support to people's changing their minds on the issue.
With the countdown to Election Day down to hours, both sides in Maryland are making their closing arguments to voters. In a commercial released Friday, the Maryland Marriage Alliance warns voters that the portions of the law purporting to protect religious organizations that oppose same-sex marriage have harmful loopholes and that the law will hurt parents' rights to decide what their children are taught in school about same-sex marriage.
Mr. O'Malley, who has thrown his support behind the law he signed, will attend Marylanders for Marriage Equality's election night event in Baltimore, and Mr. Nix is hopeful that they will have reason to celebrate.
"The momentum is on our side," he said. "I think it's still going to be a close race, but I think we can pull it out."
Gay Donors, Key Group for Obama, to Plot Strategy in Washington
At One Mississippi Polling Place, Sharp Divisions
Groups in Florida Look to Highlight Changes as Early Voting Begins
Romney Plans Economic Speech in Iowa
Error-Filled Instructions Are Sent to Ohio Voters
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November 5, 2012 Monday
Presidential Campaign Apps Get to Know You Really Well
BYLINE: SOMINI SENGUPTA
SECTION: TECHNOLOGY
LENGTH: 483 words
HIGHLIGHT: The Obama and Romney campaigns may learn a lot about you, depending on what apps you download.
How well does the next president of the United States know you?
Depends on your apps.
By virtue of what you install on your computer or cellphone, your political preferences can become part of the soup of data that ad networks can mine -- in this case on behalf of the presidential hopefuls, who are making their last push for reluctant or undecided voters.
The Facebook apps of the Obama and Romney campaigns inhale a lot of information about you and your friends. Like many apps on Facebook, they gather your Facebook 'likes' and locations, along with your Facebook friends' 'likes' and locations. Both can post content on your behalf; the Obama campaign app can even post what political contributions you have made.
Brian Kennish, founder of Disconnect.me, which offers browser plug-ins to stave off the data collection, points out the weirdest feature. The Obama app "initiates an unencrypted client-side request to get your profile," which means that if you're using a public wireless connection, anyone with access to the network can see you're using the app.
As for the campaigns' mobile apps, both have little pieces of code embedded in them to enable tracking. Both the Obama and Romney mobile apps send user data to a variety of companies, to serve ads and analyze user behavior, according to an analysis of both by PrivacyChoice, a firm based in Santa Cruz.
In its analysis, PrivacyChoice found that both the Obama and Romney apps sent data to ad networks, though the Obama campaign app appeared to send data to more of them. That would allow the incumbent to send ads not just while a would-be voter was using the Obama app, but also potentially when she was playing a game on her cellphone or reading the news.
Jim Brock, the company founder, observed that digital reach of both campaigns showed how much politicians had come to rely on the harvest of personal data. "The idea that government can regulate a business it has become so dependent on is perhaps a fantasy," he said.
Boston-based Abine, meanwhile, released what it calls a Val-You calculator that seeks to measure how much politicians are willing to pay to advertise to a particular voter. It is based not only on whether you live in a battleground state. It also looks at how much news you consume online and whether you're on Facebook.
Finally, secure.me, a San Francisco-based privacy start-up, compared how political parties collected Facebook data in this country and in Canada and Germany. In those countries, the biggest parties also use Facebook to reach voters, but refrain from grabbing data about their Facebook friends, according to secure.me.
Twitter Unveils the Twindex, a New Political Index
A New Google App Gives You Local Information - Before You Ask for It
President Obama Takes Questions From the Internet on Reddit
Disruptions: Indiscreet Photos, Glimpsed Then Gone
Obama and Romney Campaigns Adopt Square for Funding
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November 5, 2012 Monday
In Nevada, a Push to Get Holdouts to the Polls
BYLINE: STEPHANIE SAUL
SECTION: US; politics
LENGTH: 590 words
HIGHLIGHT: In Nevada, where nearly 70 percent of voters had already cast their ballots, both sides pushed forward with fervent last-minute efforts to get the stragglers to polls.
LAS VEGAS -- In Nevada, where nearly 70 percent of voters had already cast their ballots, both sides pushed forward with fervent last-minute efforts to get the stragglers to polls.
Figures released by elections officials showed that Democrats held an edge of more than 40,000 voters by the time early voting ended last week. In Clark County, the state's most populous, more Democrats had voted early this year than in 2008.
With the advantage apparently for President Obama in early voting, Mitt Romney's campaign had imported a 600-member volunteer army from nearby states. The group gathered Monday morning at the Las Vegas offices of Brady Industries, a facility supply distributor.
The volunteers were dispatched in 40 vans to Las Vegas-area neighborhoods, where they planned to walk door to door, guiding by walking lists of conservative voters. After sundown they planned to return to Brady Industries, where the company had donated space for a large phone bank.
One of the volunteers was Lisa Vander, 50, of San Diego, who said she was unemployed despite an "incredible" résumé and blames it on the current economy. "It's really about jobs jobs jobs," Ms. Vander said. She said she believed Mr. Romney would do more for the economy.
Mr. Romney's running mate, Representative Paul D. Ryan, began his day Monday with a final campaign stop in Reno. Later in the day, Craig Romney, Mr. Romney's Spanish-speaking son, was to hold a rally on the heavily Hispanic east side of Las Vegas.
The state's Hispanic vote -- about 25 percent of the total -- was viewed as critical. The organization Mi Familia Vota had worked to make sure Hispanics registered and went to the polls in early voting. On Tuesday the group is planning to drive additional voters to polling places. The effort appears to have been successful. In Clark County, the home of Las Vegas, early voting among those with Hispanic surnames outstripped turnout in 2008 by more than 12,000 voters. The group skews heavily Democratic.
The Obama campaign was also working to scrape up every remaining vote. At a senior housing complex in downtown Las Vegas named after Senator Harry Reid, Betty Barfield, a volunteer coordinator for the Obama campaign, was sitting outside in her wheel chair. Half the complex of 100 apartments had voted early, Ms. Barfield said. She had arranged for two buses to come take the remaining residents to polls on Tuesday. Almost all of them will vote for Mr. Obama, she said.
"It's really been a joy and a privilege for me," said Ms. Barfield, a minister who is African-American. "I never thought I would see this and it would happen in my lifetime. I thank God for letting me live long enough."
She has also held phone banks and Obama meetings at the senior complex, many of them catered. The Obama campaign supplied ice cream for one of them. "Any time you want people to come and hear what you have to say, you must have free food," Ms. Barfield said.
Morning television viewers in Las Vegas on Monday were bombarded with back-to-back commercials paid for by both the candidates and outside groups supporting both sides. Campaign-weary Nevadans said they were particularly tired of the negative advertising in the race between Senator Dean Heller, a Republican, against his Democratic opponent, Representative Shelley Berkley.
Romney Talks Economy in Nevada
Federal Judge in Ohio Restores Early Voting
Obama Heads West for Dollars and Thanks From Gay Supporters
Gingrich Looks Ahead to 'Super Tuesday'
Gingrich Says Romney Is 'Little Food Stamp'
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USA TODAY
November 5, 2012 Monday
FINAL EDITION
In swing states: 48%-48%;
With minds made up, vote 'comes down to turnout'
BYLINE: Susan Page, @susanpage, USA TODAY
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 1A
LENGTH: 2183 words
Voters in the nation's key battlegrounds have become as enthusiastic and engaged in the 2012 presidential election as they were in the historic contest four years ago, and they finally have made up their minds about President Obama and Mitt Romney.
It's a tie: 48%-48%.
The even split among likely voters in the USA TODAY/Gallup Poll of Swing States reflects gains in the campaign's final weeks by Obama, who has closed a 4-percentage-point deficit from early October in the wake of a disappointing first debate. Most of the interviews were completed before Hurricane Sandy hit, and the president's disaster response may have bolstered his standing a bit since then.
The 11th and final Swing States Poll, a USA TODAY series that began a year ago, finds voters increasingly excited about the election and settled in their support. They say they have a clear idea what each candidate would do if elected -- though that has caused some alarm. Most express concern that a President Romney would return to failed GOP policies and that a re-elected Obama would rely too much on Big Government.
As Election Day approaches, Obama leads 50%-46% among registered voters. That's the first time since Romney clinched the Republican nomination last spring that either candidate has reached the 50% threshold -- and it's the widest margin during that time.
The poll was taken in the dozen battlegrounds most likely to determine the outcome in the Electoral College: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin. In a sign of their importance, one or both of the presidential candidates held events during the campaign's final days in nine of those 12 states -- and neither stumped anywhere else.
In polls of individual states, aggregated by RealClearPolitics.com, Obama has an edge in nine battlegrounds, including a narrow 2.8-point lead in crucial Ohio. Romney leads in two, Florida and North Carolina, and Virginia is essentially even. Combined national polls put Obama at 47.5%, Romney at 47.3%.
Senior strategists in both campaigns saw encouraging signs in the USA TODAY findings.
Jim Messina, Obama's campaign manager, said the president has gained momentum and now leads narrowly in statewide polls in most battlegrounds because a stark economic choice has "crystallized" for voters, especially in the three debates. "People understand that this president is on their side," he said in an interview. "People know he's going to fight for them every single day."
Neil Newhouse, Romney's pollster, notes the closeness of the race. "The bottom line is, we're looking at this as a dead heat, a jump-ball kind of race that's tied right now, and we've got an intensity advantage. That kind of enthusiasm advantage translates into a turnout advantage on Election Day," he said in an interview. "The election now comes down to turnout, to intensity, to ground game."
Obama has improved his standing in the past few weeks by regaining support among women in the swing states. The gender gap -- that is, the disparity between the way men and women vote -- stands at historically high levels after narrowing in the early October. Obama now leads among women by 16 points; Romney leads among men by 10.
Romney leads among white men by a yawning 27 points; the two candidates divide white women evenly. The former Massachusetts governor leads among independent voters by a single point.
'Sending a message'
Allison Fitzwater, 42, of Viroqua, Wis., voted for Obama four years ago and, despite some disappointments, was determined to support him again from the opening days of the campaign. "I like the changes I've seen so far and I want them to continue," the high-school science teacher, who was among those polled, said in a follow-up interview.
Scott Cunningham, 28, a chemist from Sparks, Nev., decided in just the past week or two to cast his vote for Romney and against the president.
"It has everything to do with sending a message that, like any other job, if you get hired to do a four-year job or a six-month contract, if you're not doing a good job at the end of that period, you're going away," he said. "In the beginning, (Obama's) message was, 'Give me a shot, coach; put me in; I can play.' Well, you got your chance. You can't say, 'I need a little more time.'"
Obama has lost some luster over the past four years -- perhaps no surprise after a tenure launched during an economic crisis.
He won all 12 of the swing states in 2008, carrying 53.9% of their combined vote over Republican John McCain. This time, given the divide between solidly Republican and solidly Democratic states elsewhere, he needs to claim close to half of their 151 electoral votes to amass the 270-vote total that will give him four more years in the White House.
Registered voters are less likely to identify themselves as Democrats now than they were four years ago. In the Swing States survey, 37% call themselves Democrats, down 4 points from 2008; 29% call themselves Republicans, up 3 points. The percentage of independents is 34% now, 32% then.
At the end of the 2008 campaign, 63% of registered voters in the battlegrounds had a favorable impression of Obama; now, 55% do.
The percentage who see him as a strong leader has declined 11 points, to 53%. Those who say he understands the problems Americans face in their daily lives has dropped 14 points, to 60%.
Romney continues to hold an advantage on the economy, which Americans identify as the most important issue this year by far. Voters prefer him over Obama in handling the economy by 3 points and in handling the federal budget deficit by 10 points. The former Massachusetts governor is seen as a stronger leader and the candidate who could do a better job managing the federal government.
"I just feel like the economy will recover a bit faster if he were to become president," says Raymond Perez, 33, a registered nurse from Miami who plans to vote for the Republican.
In what is one of this year's enduring puzzles, however, Romney has struggled to pull decisively ahead with voters despite their preference for him on their most important issue -- perhaps because he hasn't convinced many of them that he understands their lives and will protect their interests.
"He just doesn't really have a clue about how others live," Fitzwater says, mentioning the secretly recorded video in which Romney spoke dismissively of the 47% of Americans who don't pay federal income taxes. "He seems to think that people with money need to keep their money, while I see people with money having a responsibility to help those who aren't as well off as they are."
Obama is favored in handling everything except the economy and the deficit -- on foreign affairs, national security, energy, health care and taxes. And the president continues to be viewed as more empathetic than Romney. Six in 10 say Obama "understands the problems Americans face in their daily lives."
Just 45% say that of Romney.
How are you feeling?
A year ago, voters in the battlegrounds weren't particularly excited about this presidential race.
In the first Swing States Poll, in October 2011, fewer than half said they were enthusiastic about the election. That number rose only to 51% in late January, during the heat of the battle for the Republican nomination.
That's 10 points lower than at that point in 2008, when there were nomination fights in both parties.
The percentage of voters who said they had given "quite a lot" of thought to the election was significantly lower at the beginning of the year as well.
Now, though, Americans are as engaged in the election as they were in the groundbreaking contest four years ago, which featured the first African-American candidate for president on the Democratic ticket and Sarah Palin for vice president on the GOP side. Eighty-six percent of registered voters say they have given quite a lot of thought to the election, just about the same percentage who said that at the end of the campaigns in 2008 and 2004. It's considerably higher than the number who felt that way in 2000 and 1996.
Increased voter interest generally could signal another high-turnout election.
The increase in enthusiasm is particularly pronounced among women, especially middle-aged and senior women. The proportion of women who say they are extremely enthusiastic has more than doubled in the past year; it has nearly tripled among those 50 and older.
Overall, Republicans continue to have an enthusiasm advantage, though it has narrowed in the past year. In October 2011, a third of Republican voters were extremely enthusiastic about the presidential election, more than double the number of Democrats who felt that way.
Now, 51% of Republicans and 44% of Democrats say they're excited about it.
Ann Freund, 47, a homemaker from Hudson, Ohio, who supports Obama, acknowledges his campaign is less electrifying this time than it was four years ago.
"As a country, we've all been through some rough times, so it's hard to generate that same enthusiasm," she says. "It's like when you get married, and four years later, the stars aren't in your eyes anymore. You lost your job; you had a baby; you had to move across the country or whatever. You have those bumps in the road with your life together. And with President Obama, right off the bat we had tons of (trouble)."
When Romney clinched the GOP nomination last spring, there were a lot of undecided voters for the two candidates to battle for: Nearly a third said they hadn't made up their minds. Now, fewer than one in 10 say it's possible they'll change their minds. In fact, 22% already have cast ballots in early or absentee voting; they broke narrowly for Romney.
What has influenced voters' decisions?
More than six in 10 cite the debates, and half say editorials or commentary mattered. More than a third were affected by the political conventions. But to the skepticism of experts, voters downplayed the power of all those campaign ads. Fewer than one in four say the TV spots affected their vote.
"Seeing the debates kind of solidified my decision," says Lori Cook, 49, a human-resources manager from Roanoke, Va., who was among those surveyed. "After seeing the debates, I felt more comfortable with my decision." She is backing Romney, though she sounds less than thrilled by her options. "Well, there's only the two to choose from," she notes.
The Swing States Poll of 1,183 registered voters, including 1,077 likely voters, was taken Oct. 27-31 by landline and cellphone. The national survey of 1,447 registered voters was taken Nov. 1-2 for comparison purposes. Each has an error margin of +/-4 points. The head-to-head matchup is based on interviews with 2,192 registered voters and 1,984 likely voters in the Swing States Poll and the Gallup daily poll taken in those 12 states from Oct. 22-28. It has a margin of error of +/-3 points.
Swing states residents describe being deluged by campaign ads on TV and courted by volunteers on the phone and at the front door. Freund has gotten robo-calls from Mitt Romney and from Ann Romney. Freund's 12-year-old son, Alex, managed to shake hands with former president Bill Clinton at a rally Thursday.
Fifty percent of voters in the battlegrounds say the Romney campaign has contacted them by e-mail, phone, mail or in person; 49% say they've heard from the Obama campaign. (In contrast, just a third of Americans nationwide say they've had personal contact from each campaign.)
The impact of all that attention isn't always positive.
Carol Mack, 63, is principal of the Matthew Thorton Elementary School in Londonderry, N.H., where the students made voting booths from refrigerator boxes and held a mock election Friday.
"I noticed that the children were quoting sound bites from the commercials," Mack said with dismay. "One child says to me, 'You should vote for Romney; Obama is destroying the country!'"
Their ballots will be counted Monday, a day before those cast by adults across the country.
Worries about Washington
In follow-up interviews, voters of all stripes express concerns about the country's direction and the ability of Washington to fix the country's woes.
Judy Sessoms, 67, an Obama supporter from Bladen County, N.C., hopes there will be less of the sharp partisanship that has divided Washington. "I hope it'll change with the election," she says, but she worries it won't. "Some people seem to be very entrenched in their desire to just continue to say 'no'" to the other side, she says.
"I feel like there's more at stake this time than usual," says Cook, who supports Romney in part because he was able to work across party lines as governor of Democratic-dominated Massachusetts. "There's a lot of gridlock in Congress, and it's too bad that there can't be more partisan efforts made on a lot of things."
When voters in the swing states were asked in an open-ended question to describe the long campaign in a word or two, they divided about evenly between positive words ("intense," "good") and negative ones ("nasty," "lies").
The most frequent response was "interesting," and the second was "important."
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USA TODAY
November 5, 2012 Monday
FINAL EDITION
Era of national division yields a need for problem-solvers;
Voters' priorities differ, so no single choice fits everybody
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 10A
LENGTH: 691 words
Looked at through a pessimistic lens -- the one so relentlessly applied by the producers of political commercials -- voters face a dreary choice Tuesday.
Should they cast their ballots for President Obama, who has racked up record debt, gotten the economy moving at only a limping pace, and generally failed to bring Washington to the kumbaya moment that he promised in 2008?
Or should they spurn the incumbent in favor of the Republican nominee, who has changed positions so many times that his core beliefs are hard to discern? Is Mitt Romney the pragmatic moderate of the recent presidential debates, or the conservative hard-liner of the primaries?
There's no denying the negatives in either case. The records are clear.
But dwelling on them is mostly a distraction. It obscures the bigger question voters face Tuesday, which is not just about the individuals but also about which direction the country should move.
Not since the post-Civil War era has the nation been so politically divided for so long. If the polls are right, this will be the third election of the last four with a winning margin of fewer than 4 percentage points -- doubling the total for the past 100 years. It could also be the second time since 2000, and just the third since 1888, that a candidate has won the popular vote and lost the national election.
The trend in Congress is the same. Majorities have been consistently smaller over the past two decades than at any time since women were given the right to vote. And, as everyone knows, the parties are increasingly polarized.
Small wonder, then, the country has worked itself into such a mess -- deep in debt, divided on a host of social issues, and deadlocked on the current version of the USA's centuries-long argument about the role of the federal government.
Unless the polls are wildly off, the fight won't be settled Tuesday. But one side or the other will get an upper hand at a pivotal moment, with weighty consequences.
ObamaCare will live or die with the result. Romney says he'd gut it by executive order; Obama's re-election would preserve it until 2014, when many of its provisions take force.
Roe v. Wade may live or die, as well. One more conservative vote on the Supreme Court would likely spell its demise. On other hand, should a conservative be replaced by a liberal, the court's 5-4 majorities on a host of issues could tip the other way.
In foreign affairs, Romney has steadily narrowed his differences with Obama, but in the spring he struck a more bellicose stance. The outcome could decide whether to launch a war with Iran and how to end the one in Afghanistan, as well as the fate of relations with the Middle East and China.
The list goes on.
Unlike other publications, we do not presume to tell our readers which choice is right for them. We've expressed opinions on all those issues. But telling readers how to balance them is another matter. The family of a soldier in Afghanistan is likely to have different priorities from a worker struggling to find a job or a young woman trying to cope with an unwanted pregnancy. There isn't one universal right choice, even for members of our ideologically diverse Editorial Board. Nor do we care to be aligned with either party. We routinely criticize both and try to point a path to consensus, because if Congress does not find one soon, few American lives will be unharmed.
All by itself, failure to reach a compromise that would avoid the so-called fiscal cliff, not just two months away, would plunge the nation back into recession. With power so closely divided, chances that either side will get to dictate the solution are zero.
So our advice to voters is this: Stay true to your convictions, whether or not they happen to match ours, but vote for the candidates who you believe will respect the voters' choice and govern, not just shout from the ideological ramparts in the false belief that they can win all at once.
This extraordinary period of national division will end one day. The challenge is to elect candidates who can steer the nation there without creating the sort of cataclysm that has sometimes ended such divisions in the past.
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USA TODAY
November 5, 2012 Monday
FINAL EDITION
On campaign's last day, Obama heads to Iowa;
Final-hour rallies also set for Ohio and Wisconsin
BYLINE: David Jackson, USA TODAY,
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 4A
LENGTH: 637 words
President Obama will end his last day of campaigning today in the state where his presidential drive began: Iowa.
Obama hosts a rally the eve of Election Day in Des Moines exactly four years, 10 months and two days after his victory in the 2008 Iowa Democratic caucuses propelled him to his party's nomination, and on to the White House.
"I started my presidential journey right here," Obama said during a Saturday re-election rally in Dubuque, another frequently visited Iowa city.
Before Iowa, Obama also headlines last-day rallies in Wisconsin and Ohio. Right around midnight, Obama is scheduled to travel back to his home in Chicago, where he is scheduled to spend Election Day.
The Des Moines event caps a frantic stretch run in which the incumbent president has focused on eight swing states that will likely decide his race against Republican challenger Mitt Romney: Iowa, Ohio, Wisconsin, Virginia, Florida, Colorado, Nevada and New Hampshire.
On Sunday, from the blustery winds here in Concord to the sunny skies of Hollywood, Fla., Obama echoed a "final argument" stump speech in which he said his domestic policies are reviving an economy near collapse in 2008, and that his foreign policies are forging a safer world.
During an outdoor rally at the old state courthouse in chilly Concord, Obama told 14,000 supporters that "we have made real progress," citing job increases, the health care law, new financial regulations and education and energy programs. He promoted the end of the war in Iraq, the winding down of the war in Afghanistan and the 2010 raid that killed terrorist leader Osama bin Laden.
Obama also sought to revive warm memories of the economic boom of the 1990s, saying his policies are basically the same as those of Democratic predecessor Bill Clinton. The former president joined Obama on the stump in New Hampshire, as well as during a Saturday event at a music pavilion in Northern Virginia.
Meanwhile, Obama sought to link Romney to Republican George W. Bush. Obama said that, like Bush, Romney would cut taxes for the rich and reduce regulations on business, and again cripple the economy. Tuesday's election is a choice "between a return to the top-down policies that crashed our economy, and an economy that's built from the middle out and the bottom up and creates a strong, growing middle class," Obama said in New Hampshire.
In his final weekend dash, Obama said he is creating change, while Romney wants to return to a discredited Republican past. "We know what change looks like, and what he's selling ain't it," Obama said of Romney during his stop in Hollywood, Fla.
The final day begins with a rally in Madison. While Wisconsin has been a Democratic state in recent presidential elections, Obama is trying to fend off a late charge by Romney and running mate Paul Ryan, a Badger State native. The president plays the celebrity card in Madison; singer/songwriter Bruce Springsteen is scheduled to perform there.
He and his entourage then journey to what may be the biggest state of all: Ohio. A rally at Nationwide Arena in Columbus will also feature Springsteen, as well as musician Jay-Z.
The president then takes the sentimental journey to Iowa. First lady Michelle Obama will introduce her husband at the rally in the historic Des Moines commercial and residential area known as East Village.
Obama has often expressed his fondness for the Hawkeye State. His 2008 win there established him as a formidable national candidate. He rode that momentum all the way to the White House.
Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt said Iowa is a place of "special importance" for the president and his supporters. "That's where we proved in 2008 that people coming together to organize their communities was still the most powerful force in American politics and the way to bring change," he said.
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Washington Post Blogs
Election 2012
November 5, 2012 Monday 10:55 PM EST
John Boehners got nothing on me
BYLINE: Ed O'Keefe
LENGTH: 463 words
COLUMBUS -- Mitt Romney's state headquarters was buzzing Monday morning, with volunteers handing out tickets for Monday night's campaign rally at the airport and about 20 volunteers making last-minute phone calls to voters.
Amid the scrum, a constant presence: Rick Datchuk, 62, who lives down the street and has been volunteering for Romney since February. His commitment to the campaign is perhaps best captured in a Post photograph, used frequently in recent weeks, of Datchuk gripping two phones to make simultaneous calls to potential supporters. For this reporter, Datchuk was instantly recognizable, and meeting him here was mere coincidence.
"It's not as hard as it looks, making two calls at once," he said Monday."I'm doing my small part to save America."
After making about 20,000 phone calls -- many of which led to expletive-laden hangups -- Datchuk will be rewarded Monday night with the task of leading Romney supporters at the campaign rally in the Pledge of Allegiance.
That is, if he can hold it together.
Datchuk is a tall, burly man, a former Marine with a career as a commercial construction manager and architect. But he's also a "teddy bear," his fellow volunteers said, a frequentcrier who chokes up regularly as he thinks of the prospects of a Romney victory, of what it would mean to put the country back on course after four years of unkept promises and unanswered questions from President Obama.
"There's so much money outtherewaiting to be spent, and people don't know what to do," Datchuk said. "There's a lot of fear out there."
He recalled meeting Ann Romney a few weeks ago at the campaign office: "I told her I don't have enough money to donate $1 million or do bundle for them," he said. "So I told her that all I can do is donate my energy, my time and my talent."
And with that, the tears started flowing.
"John Boehner's got nothing on me," he said, referring to the tear-prone Speaker of the House. "There's two things I care about: My kids and my country."
If Romney wins on Tuesday, "I'm going to be crying," he said.
And if President Obama wins? "You don't want to be around. You'll need high-water boots," he said.
Datchuk said he's met volunteers who traveled from California, Oregon, Texas and New Jersey to make phone calls, knowing that they need to help Romney in Ohio in order to win the White House.
Datchuk's mix of emotions -- pride, hope and exhaustion -- appeared to personify what many in the room were feeling Monday: That enough Republicans and independents will vote Tuesday to help Romney win. If it happens, they'll know they did their part.
But few will react as emotionally as Datchuk.
"You see that bumper sticker over there: Believe in America.' That's not a bumper sticker for me. That's reality," he said.
The tears flowed again.
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Washington Post Blogs
She the People
November 5, 2012 Monday 10:34 PM EST
Arkansas misses Bill Clinton as he campaigns for Obama
BYLINE: Suzi Parker
LENGTH: 725 words
Arkansas seems like the most boring state in the country right now.
2012 is so vastly different from various other years. For decades, a political junkie here always had a healthy dose of Bill Clinton and Mike Huckabee.
We have to catch glimpses of our native son on television giving rousing speeches and losing his voice in support of President Obama. On Saturday night in Virginia, Clinton gave a lengthy speech before introducing Obama at a rally. After the campaign event, Clinton joined the president on stage with Clinton's 1992 campaign anthem Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow blaring over the loud speakers.
Arkansas is not a swing state, with its measly six electoral votes, but it's amazing how unimportant the place has become to national politicians in a mere few years.
Four years ago, Arkansans were immersed in the middle of the Hillary Clinton primary against Obama. Meanwhile, Huckabee, the state's former governor, was also giving John McCain a run for his money.
Obama hasn't visited Clintonland since 2006 when as a U.S. senator he campaigned for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mike Beebe. In 2010, Michelle Obama gave a commencement speech at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff. But since then, national Democrats have been far and few between visiting the Natural State.
Then again, so have Republicans.
Mitt Romney popped into Arkansas earlier this year for a private high dollar fundraiser. He took the money and ran without meeting voters or reporters. Mike Huckabee attended a Republican fundraiser last Saturday in Little Rock but the focus was on state legislative races. That's because the Arkansas GOP has a very good chance of taking control of both chambers of the legislature for the first time in 138 years, and the Koch brothers have invested heavily in Arkansas for this to happen.
Back in 2004, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) made a campaign appearance in Little Rock, and Bill Clinton appeared the weekend before Election Day for a get-out-the-vote event. John and Elizabeth Edwards visited Arkansas several times, too. Even before Kerry became the Democratic nominee, Arkansas was psyched to have home state candidate General Wesley Clark running in the Democratic primary.
George W. Bush and Dick Cheney didn't ignore Arkansas either. They made numerous appearances in 2004 and 2000. So did Al Gore, who could have easily ignored it because part of his campaign strategy was to distance himself from Clinton. Gore even appeared in a stuffy American Legion Hut, giving a speech under a sparkly disco ball while John Mellencamp songs blasted.
Even in the 1980s, Ronald Reagan visited Arkansas twice. Jimmy Carter did, too, in 1975 and 1980. John F. Kennedy visited four times. Other presidents -- Harry Truman, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Benjamin Harris -- also came to Arkansas. And as far back as 1841, Zachary Taylor visited the western part of the state.
Arkansans don't even have hotly contested congressional races this year. For the first time in decades, all four congressional seats are likely to swing Republican. No one seems terribly excited or worried about this.
The only issue anyone is discussing and discussing is putting it strongly is a ballot initiative that would make medical marijuana legal. Arkansas would be the first state in the South to legalize the drug for medicinal purposes. Polls show that the measure is likely to fail, but it may be the one issue that gets people to the polls on Tuesday. Candidates certainly won't.
Clinton hasn't forgotten his state completely as he criss-crosses the country for Obama. He has cut a radio ad for the Arkansas Black Political Caucus that supports Democratic candidates. He also condemns the pro-slavery writings and racist leanings of three GOP candidates. On Monday, Clinton also endorsed an old Dem friend, Herb Rule, who is running for Congress against Republican incumbent Tim Griffin.
But most Arkansans are gearing up for 2016. They hope Hillary Clinton will run for president or even that Huckabee may give it another shot. Arkansans are hungry for attention. But they just may have to wait until Chelsea Clinton turns 35 and makes a bid for the White House.
Suzi Parker is an Arkansas-based political and cultural journalist and author of Sex in the South: Unbuckling the Bible Belt. Follow her on Twitter at @SuziParker
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Washingtonpost.com
November 5, 2012 Monday 8:12 PM EST
With the end near, still some unknowns
BYLINE: Chris Cillizza
SECTION: A section; Pg. A02
LENGTH: 928 words
In 48 hours we will (probably) know the identity of the man who will be president of the United States for the next four years.
Even though the end of this long, strange trip is nearly here, questions remain about the size and shape of the electorate, the true swing-state battlefield on which President Obama and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney will fight over these next two days, and the factors that will ultimately push the sliver of undecided voters to make up their minds.
We lay out five of the most pressing questions.
1.Enthusiasm or organization? Most polls suggest that Republican voters are more amped to vote in this election than are Democrats. According to Washington Post-ABC News tracking-poll data, 80 percent of Republican adults are registered to vote and are absolutely certain to vote or have already voted, compared with 70 percent of Democratic adults. But even the most loyal Romney allies acknowledge privately that the ground operation Obama has built over the past six years - and honed over the past four - is superior to what the Republican presidential nominee has been able to put together since emerging as his party's pick in April. What Tuesday will prove is what matters more: an enthusiasm advantage or an organizational edge. Conventional wisdom dictates that either could boost a candidate's showing by a point or two. But if enthusiasm is working for Romney and organization is working for Obama, do they offset each other and turn this question into a push? And if organization and enthusiasm cancel each other out, then who wins?
2.Is the playing field expanding? In the last 10 days of the campaign, Romney and his allies have made investments of time and money in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Minnesota amid polling that suggests all three are single-digit contests. (Pennsylvania appears to be the closest, while Michigan still looks like a long-ish shot.) Romney staged a rally in Pennsylvania on Sunday - his first of the general-election campaign - and his campaign is spending nearly $2 million on TV ads in the Keystone State in the final week. But Pennsylvania has proved to be a Republican trap in recent presidential elections - GOP candidates have been able to earn 48 percent but never 50 percent plus one. (The last Republican to win Pennsylvania was George H.W. Bush in 1988; in the five elections since then, Republican nominees have averaged 43 percent of the vote.) Without Pennsylvania, Romney faces a narrow path to 270 electoral votes - he all but has to win Florida, North Carolina, Virginia and Ohio. A win in Pennsylvania broadens that path considerably.
3.Where do independents end up? The story of the past several elections has been the wide swings among independent voters. In 2004, George W. Bush (R) lost independents by one point to Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.). Four years later, Obama carried unaffiliated voters by eight points over Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). (The independent swings have been even more pronounced in midterm elections; in 2006, independents voted for Democratic candidates by 18 points but four years later went for Republican candidates by 19 points.) In Post-ABC tracking polls over the past 10 days, Obama has regularly trailed Romney among independents by double digits. But in Saturday's tracking, the incumbent had pulled into a tie with these voters. If independents do move to Obama in the race's final hours, expect much focus to fall on Hurricane Sandy and Obama's handling of the disaster. Independents love the idea of politicians working together to solve problems, and Obama's trip to New Jersey to tour the devastation with Republican Gov. Chris Christie could have moved some unaffiliated voters to his side.
4.Will young people support Obama again?And in what numbers? One of the biggest myths of the 2008 election was that Obama drastically increased the number of 18-to-29-year-olds who voted. In 2004, 18-to-29-year-olds constituted 17 percent of the electorate. They made up 18 percent of it in 2008. The difference? Kerry won that youthful age group by nine points nationally; Obama won it by 34 points. Given that, the key for Obama on Tuesday is not to expand the share of the electorate that 18-to-29-year-olds make up but rather to ensure that it doesn't dip significantly, with the young people who vote doing so in something close to the percentages they did four years ago. Polling suggests that enthusiasm (as measured by likelihood to vote) among 18-to-29-year-olds has drifted off from four years ago, but the Obama campaign has placed a giant bet on being able to motivate and turn out these younger voters.
5.How big is the gender gap? Democrats have spent lots of time in this election driving a narrative that Republicans are conducting a "war on women," pointing to some of the policies espoused by GOP candidates on contraception and abortion - not to mention decidedly impolitic comments made by Senate candidates in Missouri and Indiana on rape. But national polling suggests that Romney is trailing Obama by mid- to high single digits among women - a margin that would rank among the smallest gender gaps in modern presidential history if it holds. McCain lost women by 13 points in 2008, George W. Bush lost them by 11 points in 2000, and Bob Dole lost the female vote by a whopping 16 points in 1996. Democrats insist - and some polling data confirm - that Romney is having more trouble among female voters in targeted swing states where the Obama ad onslaught on Romney's record has been focused.
chris.cillizza@wpost.com
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Washingtonpost.com
November 5, 2012 Monday 8:12 PM EST
SECTION: A section; Pg. A02
LENGTH: 415 words
QUOTE OF THE WEEK "If you hadn't had the storm, there would have been more of a chance for the Romney campaign to talk about the deficit, the debt, the economy. There was a stutter in the campaign. When you have attention drawn away to somewhere else, to something else, it is not to his advantage."
- Karl Rove, in an interview Friday with The Washington Post's Michael Leahy
BY THE NUMBERS
1 million The campaigns of President Obama and Mitt Romney and their allies have aired more than 1 million TV ads this cycle, according to a Wesleyan Media Project analysis, a figure that easily outpaces all previous elections. As many residents of swing states are realizing in the final days of the race, it's hard to turn on a television without immediately being bombarded by campaign commercials.
1.6 millionThe number of Ohioans who had voted by mail or in person as of Friday, according to the secretary of state's office there. The tally puts the Buckeye State on a trajectory to surpass 2008 totals. Democrats waged a high-profile legal battle to keep polls open to all voters this weekend and believe their victory in the fight will pay dividends for Obama.
0The number of times a Republican presidential nominee has won the White House without carrying Ohio. Obama's slight lead in recent polling in the state underscores the difficult map Romney is facing. If he doesn't carry the Buckeye State, Romney will have to defy history to win the White House.
BEST THING THATHAPPENED TO REPUBLICANS
The map expanded. Polls in some blue-leaning states got tighter, and GOP groups began launching ads in Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Michigan and New Mexico. For Mitt Romney, whose electoral-college math is difficult, the prospect of expanding the map is a welcome one. The question is whether Romney and his allies are doing it because he desperately needs to or because the opportunity is there.
BEST THING THATHAPPENED TO DEMOCRATS
President Obama earned praise for his response to Hurricane Sandy. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), a top surrogate for Romney's campaign, even praised Obama, and by the weekend, big-name Republicans such as Karl Rove and Haley Barbour acknowledged that Obama's response to the storm had effectively cost Romney votes. This has been a great opportunity for Obama to be presidential, and he has passed the test so far.
- Aaron Blake and Sean Sullivan
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Washingtonpost.com
November 5, 2012 Monday 8:12 PM EST
Political films' timing tightrope
BYLINE: Ann Hornaday
SECTION: Style; Pg. C01
LENGTH: 1672 words
The release of a politically themed movie at the height of a contentious election is nearly always fraught with peril, even when the subject is perhaps the most transcendent figure in American political history. But Steven Spielberg, whose movie "Lincoln" opens in Washington on Friday, believes the timing couldn't be better.
"This is a good time to reintroduce Lincoln to the country," the director argued at his New York office recently, "in a period of time when the ground will still be smoldering after the first Tuesday in November."
There's little question that "Lincoln" - which revisits the highly charged period when Lincoln faced down a fractious Congress to bully through the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, permanently abolishing slavery - will draw large audiences curious to see how actor Daniel Day-Lewis inhabits the title role and eager to commune, at least cinematically, with one of the country's most cherished leaders.
Still, it's just as likely that "Lincoln" will resonate very differently with some viewers Nov. 9 depending on what happens Nov. 6. (The film hits theaters throughout the country Nov. 16.) If President Obama is reelected, his most ardent supporters may well see an allegory for their own candidate's last four years of navigating partisan rancor to effect sweeping change. If he loses, Lincoln will embody the very character and political genius that Obama's detractors insist he lacked throughout an administration marked by squandered promise and ideological gridlock.
With both parties claiming the 16th president as their own, doesn't that mean that half the electorate might avoid "Lincoln" as a painful reminder of what might have been?
Spielberg doesn't think so. "I think the timing is the right way to go," he said. "Either way, the film, I think, will hopefully have some kind of soothing or even healing effect."
"Lincoln" screenwriter Tony Kushner agreed, noting that, "whatever happens, one of the lessons you take from the life of Lincoln is that you have to have faith in the democratic process," he said. "And you have to keep faith with it. Had the South not seceded at that moment, had they stayed in and fought [politically] . . . 600,000 people might not have gone to their deaths on a battlefield. An easy recourse to despair and contempt for the system was as active and virulent in the days of the Civil War as it is now . . . but if you believe in equality and justice and really, in a certain sense, in government, you have to keep working towards building a better society that our still-functioning democracy allows."
The dynamics of when to release a politically themed film can be dicey, with millions of dollars in production and marketing budgets at stake. Oliver Stone brought out "W.," his satirical portrait of George W. Bush, in the waning months of Bush's second administration, and viewers stayed away - not only was such an assessment of his presidency premature, most observers agreed, but it wasn't nearly as compelling as the Obama-McCain campaign unfolding in real life. In 2000, "Thirteen Days," a movie about the Cuban Missile Crisis, arrived in theaters in the toxic aftermath of the Bush v. Gorere-count. The film was only a modest success, perhaps because audiences were exhausted after a season of political strife. But "Thirteen Days" wound up being politically pivotal, playing an important role in Bush's nascent first term when he invited Sen. Edward M. Kennedy to a private screening in the White House.
Philip Zelikow, whose book about the missile crisis inspired the film and who attended the White House screening, says he didn't realize how pivotal the occasion would become, both substantively and symbolically. "Ted Kennedy would become perhaps [Bush's] single most important congressional ally in the months before 9/11" on health reform, Zelikow says. "So as an icebreaker with Ted Kennedy, I think [the screening] mattered. And the Bush people certainly picked it up and handled it in the appropriately graceful way. The movie gave them the occasion to remind people that the president is bigger than a political party."
Politics have threaded their way through a number of movies that were or are about to be released this year. On Sunday, the National Geographic Channel aired "SEAL Team Six: The Raid on Osama bin Laden," a docu-drama that's hard not to see as timed by its producer - Obama supporter Harvey Weinstein - to remind voters of one of the president's greatest strategic successes. (Last month, Weinstein released the conservative-tweaking political satire "Butter," starring Jennifer Garner as a thinly veiled amalgam of Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin.)
Weinstein and National Geographic officials have insisted that the air date of "SEAL Team Six" wasn't intended to sway the election but instead to head off "Zero Dark Thirty," a theatrical feature about the search for bin Laden due out later this year. That film ran into its own political buzz saw in 2011 when U.S. Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.) accused the White House of leaking classified details of the mission to screenwriter Mark Boal and director Kathryn Bigelow in order to burnish Obama's image. "Zero Dark Thirty" was scheduled for release in October until its distributor, Columbia Pictures, pushed the film back to December. (It will now open in New York and Los Angeles in December before opening throughout the country in January. The Weinstein Company similarly repositioned "Killing Them Softly," a crime thriller starring Brad Pitt that alternates scenes of pulverizing violence with lacerating critiques of the current economy that spare neither Bush nor Obama.)
Boal insists that neither he or Bigelow have discussed how the election results will impact "Zero Dark Thirty," either at the box office or as a cultural milestone. The question "hasn't come up at all," he wrote in an e-mail. Noting that the film is about career intelligence and military professionals, not the White House, Boal added, it "has no partisan agenda whatsoever. To me, the charges otherwise were completely bogus. But I hope people will see the movie and judge for themselves."
As for the shifts in release dates, Boal says that decision was purely commercial; opening a movie in a few theaters in December and into January is a time-honored strategy for garnering award nominations and capitalizing on the ensuing buzz.
Still, it can't hurt that "Zero Dark Thirty" will be appearing on screens after this year's political rancor has dissipated. Studios rarely leave such things to chance: Marketing campaigns for big-studio films routinely engage focus groups and other research strategies to predict whether and how a film will resonate with viewers. Even if filmgoers make present-day comparisons through a partisan lens while watching "Lincoln," for example, the filmmakers are banking on patriotism transcending politics, as viewers encounter one of the country's most beloved historical figures at the height of his powers and personal charisma.
In fact, "Lincoln" contains all the elements that spell success for a political-themed movie, according to director Rod Lurie, who has made a career-long study of what makes such films succeed. "It has to be about a president, not someone in the legislature or the Supreme Court, because anything other than president is petty," Lurie said. "It has to be aspirational. We don't want to go see movies about bad presidents who are dark and evil - we get enough of that at home. And usually it has to be nonpartisan."
In October 2000, Lurie released his political thriller "The Contender," just as the Bush-Gore campaign was nearing its breathless conclusion. Although the film was a critical success and earned Oscar nominations for Jeff Bridges and Joan Allen, Lurie believes that its left-leaning sensibility, as well as negative sniping from the likes of Rush Limbaugh and critic Michael Medved, alienated conservative filmgoers.
"It was almost a political statement not to have gone to that film," he said.
Dustin Lance Black, who wrote "Milk," about gay rights leader Harvey Milk, said that he and director Gus Van Sant had wanted the film to come out before the election in 2008, and perhaps influence the debate surrounding California's Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in the state.
Instead, "Milk" came out just after the election. But, Black notes now, "It served as something I never expected it to. It served as a refocusing and education tool for the younger generation, to start fighting this struggle differently. . . . A lot of individuals and certain organizations took a moment and looked back to Milk's era to examine why he was winning in a more homophobic time. We started to correct some of the missteps we were making in the '90s, and I think 'Milk' was a piece of that."
As for films currently in the pipeline, it's an open question what impact this week's election will have on their resonance with audiences.
In the case of the Secret Service thriller "White House Down," which stars Jamie Foxx as a fictional president and is scheduled to come out in June, "I personally don't think it's going to matter," says producer Brad Fischer. "Whether Obama or Romney wins, I think the same people are going to show up and see our movie and hopefully have a really great time, regardless of who's in the White House."
But director Lee Daniels is watching the election results with more anxiety. His film "The Butler," which dramatizes the story of longtime White House butler Eugene Allen, comes out next year. The film - based on an article by Washington Post staff writer Wil Haygood - ends with the main character, an African American who has served eight presidents, seeing Obama in the White House.
If Obama wins, Daniels says simply, "We'll feel the butler's journey was worth it." If Obama loses, Daniels predicts, "the movie will land completely differently. There will be a bittersweetness and a sadness about his journey. And I think the audience will feel it."
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November 5, 2012 Monday 8:12 PM EST
Enjoying the spotlight - but enough already
BYLINE: Amy Gardner
SECTION: A section; Pg. A07
LENGTH: 1405 words
RICHMOND - The motorcades have made his daughter late for work and left him stuck on the highway for half an hour. The TV ads - well, don't get him started about the TV ads. Still, John Valentine brims with pride every time he sees his hometown skyline on the national news after another presidential candidate has come to town.
"It's always fun when you've been put on the map," said Valentine, who runs a small recording studio in Richmond. "It's like, wow - these guys are here three times a week! It's been tiring seeing all the commercials. But it's cool."
"These guys," of course, are President Obama and Republican Mitt Romney, the candidates who have courted Virginia this year with an intensity never before seen in the Old Dominion.
No matter who wins here Tuesday, the heavy focus on Virginia has left a mark on the state and those who live in it. Voters say they feel a closer connection to the candidates and the campaign. The stature of Virginia politicians has gotten a boost. A state filled with history got a little more when Romney chose Norfolk as the site of his announcement that Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) would be his running mate. And then there's the money - tens of millions poured into TV ads, radio spots, rallies, mailings, campaign offices and every other little thing that comes with a modern presidential campaign.
"It may be annoying at times, like when the traffic is stopped on I-81 because 15,000 people are leaving an event in Fishersville," said Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II (R), who plans to run for governor next year and has campaigned with Romney and Ryan. "But before this, we watched it all on the news, and we read about it on the Internet and in newspapers, and it was happening somewhere else. Well, now it's happening right here, and that has a vibrancy to it. It's energizing."
Virginia had a touch of swing to it in 2008, when Obama spotted an opportunity and set up a campaign apparatus that helped turn the state blue for the first time in 40 years. But attention turned to the state late and the battle, such as it was, was one-sided.
Not so this year, when Virginia is one of the big three - right up there with Florida and Ohio as the most fought-over and valuable commodities on Election Day. The outcome is so uncertain that the two candidates, their spouses and their running mates have logged more than 90 appearances in Virginia in 2012 - nearly a dozen of those since Friday.
Virginians are not used to this sort of thing. Some of it they seem to like, some not so much. They are weary of the traffic jams, one thing the state does not need to import. And they are tired of the ads and the phone calls and the knocks on their doors.
Jordan and Morgan Mauck, 19-year-old twins and sophomores at Randolph-Macon College, are Republicans but have been getting phone calls and e-mails from the Obama campaign - a reflection, possibly, of their age and the fact that they are college students, a heavily targeted group for Obama.
They're not happy that the Democrats have their e-mail addresses, and they don't know how they got them, "but I'd sure like to know," Morgan Mauck said. "Never have I ever led anyone to believe that I support Obama."
Dixie Mauck, the twins' mother, said the family receives many phone calls from both sides at home, too. "It's pretty even," she said. "We're one of the stupid people who haven't canceled their home phone line yet."
Civic engagement
But Virginians like seeing the candidates on the local news or, better yet, meeting them in person. They like it when issues such as military spending or the federal workforce gain national attention. They see civic engagement on the rise.
"It does go on and on," said Richard Russey, 60, of Alexandria, who volunteers a few hours a week for the Obama campaign and was one of 24,000 at the president's rally in Prince William County late Saturday. "But what's exciting about being in a state that makes a difference is putting in as many hours as I can to make sure it goes in the direction that I want it to. That's actually possible."
Virginia is bested only by Florida and Ohio in money spent, visits paid, importance awarded: a populous, diverse, mercurial bellwether that's part of every analysis of how Romney or Obama will win on Tuesday.
The road from no-doubt-about-it Republican to tossup began a decade ago, when Virginia was growing at breakneck speed. Booming federal contractors attracted more independent-minded and moderate voters to the suburbs and exurbs of Northern Virginia. The Hispanic population grew. The long-dominant conservatism of rural Virginia receded in influence, and Democrats began winning statewide elections.
Virginia first appeared in presidential sightlines in 2004, when the Democratic nominee, Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), made an early play in the Old Dominion by installing a small staff. But it became clear as the year went on that Virginia was still out of reach, and Kerry eventually diverted the staff elsewhere. Kerry lost the state by eight points.
Scott Surovell, a Democratic state lawmaker from Fairfax County, remembers volunteering for Kerry eight years ago, when no field staff, no money, not even yard signs were forthcoming from the national campaign. "I had to basically invent a presidential campaign in my neighborhood," he said.
Virginia's new status can be measured in many ways: how many times the Secret Service has asked Fairfax County police to provide security at campaign events (16); the number of pages the Roanoke Times added to its print edition this week to accommodate campaign-related letters (three); the number of Obama and Romney yard signs crammed into the medians along busy highways everywhere (thousands and thousands).
For Virginia politicians, nothing beats being from a swing state. Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R) has risen to prominence as a top Romney surrogate (and once-leading contender for the vice-presidential spot) in large part because of where he's from.
Big money
The money is another measure. According to data compiled by Kantar Media/CMAG, the two presidential campaigns and their allies have spent nearly $131 million on television advertising in Virginia. Tens of millions more have been spent on dozens of rallies that involve expensive staging equipment, security, even catering and hotel rooms for campaign staffs. And there are hundreds of campaign workers on the candidates' payrolls; Obama opened more than 60 offices across the commonwealth.
Although much of the money is going straight into the coffers of television stations, the other expenditures are probably having an effect, particularly at a time when Virginia's roughly $450 billion economy remains fragile, said Stephen Fuller, an economist with George Mason University.
"It's fairly narrow, and if this were a really booming economy, you wouldn't care," Fuller said. "But when you're still trying to gain traction and the recovery has lost steam around the nation, there is a benefit."
Still, even the most enthusiastic politicos - or economic boosters - appear to have had their fill of the ads. To say onslaught is an understatement; according to CMAG, the campaigns and their allies have aired 186,555 TV spots in Virginia television markets this election season.
Here's an even more dramatic illustration, compiled by Lauren Rubenstein of the Wesleyan Media Project: In the first three weeks of October 2004, the presidential campaigns and their allies aired seven ads in the D.C. television market. That's a mere 7,739 fewer ads than in the same period this year.
At the Roanoke Times, Publisher Debbie Meade has been delighted at the increase in volume of letters, leading the newspaper not only to expand the printed letters section but also to publish dozens more online.
"The election is at the top of people's minds," Meade said. "There's hardly any place you can go in town where people don't want to talk about it, speculate about it. It's wonderful for the media to have people so engaged, regardless of how they vote."
Don't wax too idealistic, however, about the increase in civic engagement. Letters on the Times Web site over the weekend included one calling for a shorter election season, another lamenting the nasty TV ads and another suggesting holding presidential contests only every eight years.
Virginians, in other words, are ready for it to be over.
gardnera@washpost.com
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November 5, 2012 Monday 8:12 PM EST
Taking no chances in Pennsylvania
BYLINE: Ann Gerhart
SECTION: A section; Pg. A06
LENGTH: 1120 words
JENKINTOWN, Pa. - Joshua Shapiro woke up at 5:30 a.m. Friday, grabbed his iPhone and from his bed started answering e-mails about power outages in Sandy-slammed Montgomery County. He had 800,000 people and public facilities to worry about as the top elected executive of this county in Philadelphia's suburbs, and he also had polling places to get back in operation as the top Democratic leader here.
His Democrats were rattled. They have been smacked around statewide since conservatives set up a permanent tea party in the capital, Harrisburg, but they have persisted in believing that the state was proudly and permanently blue in presidential elections. And yet, Pennsylvania is suddenly being treated like a battleground.
Polls have tightened, and President Obama's lead is now just slightly larger than the statistical margin of error. Some $10 million in ads for Republican challenger Mitt Romney flooded in last week, large Romney-Ryan yard signs have sprouted on the spacious lawns of these affluent suburbs, and Romney swooped in Sunday for a rally that drew 30,000 to a farm in neighboring Bucks County.
If the GOP nominee hopes to be the first in nearly a quarter-century to pick off Pennsylvania's 20 electoral votes, he'll have to eat into the fat margin that Montgomery County delivered to Democrats in 2008. The Obama campaign is concerned enough about the state that it has reserved ad time during the "Monday Night Football" game in which the beloved Philadelphia Eagles are playing, and former president Bill Clinton is packing in four rallies Monday.
The gritty hand-to-hand combat to turn out voters, always intense on the weekend before Election Day, has taken on a frenzied quality this year in a state with no early voting and a requirement that a voter must really be absent to get an absentee ballot.
The hurricane messed up the careful calibrations of the vaunted Obama get-out-the-vote operation. About 25 polling places, most in the eastern part of the state, remained without electricity late Sunday. Some 81,000 customers were in their seventh day with no power. Each day brings another legal skirmish over access to the polls in a state whose Republican-controlled legislature enacted one of the most restrictive voter-identification laws in the country.
"Having Romney come here, does it mean we are at risk?" asked Allyson Schwartz, a Democratic congresswoman seeking her fifth term. She was one of the candidates Shapiro had led into the drab basement of a condo building here, the first event in a long weekend of energizing an electorate distracted by toppled trees, lost power and a deferred Halloween.
"I'm nervous," said Shirley Curry, a longtime local Democratic leader. "Did you hear that new Romney radio ad? It's good."
People deconstructed, nervously, what former governor and Democratic National Committee head Edward G. Rendell said recently about the possibility of a "startling upset" in the state: Was he acknowledging Romney's appeal? Or was that a head fake, a way to get people fired up?
Turnout at this point is everything, Schwartz told the 60 or so people, mostly retirees, when she took the mike. "With some people being stressed out, we worry about that. You're worried about your freezer. You're worried about your children and your house."
Every four years for the past 20, Pennsylvania has looked tempting at the last minute to Republicans. It has a bedrock of rural conservatism that may be harder than ever in its center, even as Pittsburgh and the eastern counties have softened their blue hue to violet. The last Republican presidential candidate to win the Keystone State was George H.W. Bush in 1988. His son George W. Bush came to the same farm where Romney appeared, on the same Sunday before the 2004 election, to declare he would take the state - and lost by more than 140,000 votes.
White House senior adviser David Plouffe on television Sunday morning said it was a "desperate ploy" to have Romney travel to a state "he's not going to win."
But where Democrats see desperation, Republicans see opportunity.
Romney "relates better to those folks in the collar counties than any other recent GOP candidate," said Billy Pitman, the Romney campaign communications director for Pennsylvania. "The day after they saw him unfiltered in that first debate, we had a couple hundred people volunteer across the state."
The Republicans took note that about 85,000 Democrats who voted in the state's primary didn't cast a ballot for Obama, an undervote that they theorize shows a lack of confidence in the president's leadership that they can build upon, particularly in the coal counties bordering Ohio, Pitman says.
Shapiro, who never voices anything but confidence, doesn't buy it.
"I really don't think this race has changed that much," he said. Citing Romney's attempt to court moderates and independents, he said: "He has extreme positions on choice and on gay marriage, and there is vast regional distaste for that here, including with moderate Republican women. I don't see him catching fire in the suburbs, and if you don't catch fire here" in the four counties ringing Philadelphia, with their third of the total state vote, "you don't win."
Obama won Montgomery County by 20 percentage points - and nearly 87,000 votes - in 2008. He won Pennsylvania by 10 points, and the votes that piled up just in Montgomery, Delaware and Philadelphia counties compensated for his losses elsewhere in the state.
At 39, Shapiro is the first Democrat in 140 years to chair the three-person board of commissioners that runs the state's third most populous county.
That is why he brought candidates including Schwartz, Sen. Robert P. Casey Jr. and state candidates for attorney general and auditor general to the condo building's basement and later led them into the shops of nearby Keswick Village.
On Saturday, he made two appearances with second lady Jill Biden to pump up voters and continued to campaign with Casey, who has seen slippage in his reelection lead over Republican Tom Smith, a coal-mining executive who is a tea party favorite. On Sunday, there were three more events, including a rally at the University of Pennsylvania that drew a crowd of 25,000.
At the Keswick Tavern on Friday, where Halloween lights were still strung and the sandbags still piled up outside, and where grateful Hurricane Sandy refugees had availed themselves of the 24 beer labels on tap through a hard week, the retail politicking paused for a toast.
Tasting glasses of ale were poured. The politicians lifted theirs into the air.
"To Election Day!" said Leslie Richards, vice chairman of the board of commissioners. "And to having power at all the polling places."
gerharta@washpost.com
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The Fact Checker
November 5, 2012 Monday 4:46 PM EST
The biggest Pinocchios of Election 2012;
It has been a long and brutish campaign. Here's a list of the lowlights.
BYLINE: Glenn Kessler
LENGTH: 1599 words
It's hard to believe this nasty and brutish presidential campaign has come to an end.
According to our Pinocchio Tracker, through most of the race President Obama and former governor Mitt Romney were neck and neck for the average number of Pinocchios, averaging about 2 Pinocchios each. But then, in the final months, Romney suddenly pulled ahead (so to speak) with a series of statements and commercials that stretched the limits. Obama's average also got worse - and was nothing to be proud of.
In the end, Romney finished with an average ranking of 2.4 Pinnochios, compared to 2.11 for Obama. Not counting debates (when we awarded no Pinocchios), we rated 92 statements by Obama and 77 by Romney, as well as more than 200 claims made by surrogates and interest groups, as well as Republican presidential contenders.
Among the primary aspirants, Rep. Michele Bachmann (Minn.) finished with the worst rating overall of any candidate - an average of 3.08 Pinocchios.
Here are some of the lowlights of the 2012 campaign.
Most Absurd 'Fact' - Republican version
Former House speaker Newt Gingrich's claim that Ronald Reagan never got a break from the "elite media" as an actor. As an example, Gingrich said only one of Reagan's movies - "King's Row" - got a good review from the New York Times. First of all, Reagan was a Democrat when he was in show business, so Gingrich's point was nonsensical. Second, four of Reagan's top 10 movies got raves from the New York Times - and King's Row was panned.
Most Absurd 'Fact' - Democratic version
Making a pitch for the president's jobs bill, Vice President Biden repeatedly claimed that rape in Flint, Mich., had tripled after the police force was cut, as part of a dubious argument that there was a connection between the crime rate and the number of police. He even asserted that rapes and other crime would increase if the GOP did not vote for the jobs bill. But you need to have your facts straight if you are going to make incendiary charges. We investigated and it turned out that incidents of rape in Flint, Mich., actually fell after the number of police was cut.
Worst SuperPac Ad - Republican version
A pro-Gingrich SuperPac released a 29-minute video titled "King of Bain," which portrayed Romney as a greedy job-killer ruining the lives of Americans. It foreshadowed the Obama attacks on Romney's record as chief of Bain Capital, but was so over the top that it made many of those later ads seem tame. One "case study" featured selectively edited footage of interviews of workers - who later said they were misled about the purpose of the film. They actually had no complaints about Romney or Bain at all.
Worst SuperPac Ad - Democratic version
Priorities USA Action, a pro-Obama group, aired a provocative ad that suggested that Romney was responsible for the cancer death of the wife of a former steelworker who had lost his health insurance. But it turned out she died of cancer five years after the closure of the plant - and had her own health insurance for a period after the steelworker, Joe Soptic, lost his job. As we put it, "On just every level, this ad stretches the bounds of common sense and decency."
Silliest Blooper - Republican version
Until we highlighted this claim, Mitt Romney had made this line a regular staple of his campaign stump speech: "We are the only people on the Earth that put our hand over our heart during the playing of the national anthem." We easily disproved this by randomly searching YouTube and finding numerous examples of sports figures and school children from around the world placing their hands on their hearts during the playing of their national anthems. Apparently, Romney was trying to ding Obama for once failing to do so during the 2008 campaign, but his belief in American exceptionalism was misplaced.
Silliest Blooper - Democratic version
President Obama's claim that President Rutherford B. Hayes was so averse to new ideas that he had asked of the telephone: "Who would ever use one?" It turns out that the 19th president was such an advocate of new technology that not only did Hayes think the telephone was "wonderful," but he installed the first telephone in Washington, in the White House, just four months after it was introduced. His telephone number was "1."
Most Baseless Accusation - Republican version
The repeated claim that Obama said that government, not people, built successful businesses. The truncated quote "you didn't build that," drawn from a late-night rally with ungrammatical phrasing by Obama, became the basis of repeated attack ads and even the first night of the GOP convention. But any fair reading of Obama's comments showed he was making a standard Democratic argument about community success - and that "that" referred to roads and bridges.
Most Baseless Accusation - Democratic version
Harry Reid's repeated claim, made with zero evidence, that Romney "hadn't paid any taxes for 10 years." Reid said he knew this was true because a person who had invested with Bain Capital had called his office and told him this "fact." We couldn't find a single expert who thought there was any credibility to Reid's reckless claim. Romney eventually released a summary prepared by his accountants showing he had paid federal and state taxes in each of the past 20 years.
Claim that would not die - Republican version
Nearly two years ago, we looked deeply at Mitt Romney's claim that Obama had gone on an "apology tour" as a new president - and we found no evidence to back up the assertion. Yet a version of that claim appeared in almost every speech by the GOP nominee, and Romney defended it in the final presidential debate. Then his campaign cut a new ad from his remarks, skillfully snipping out the fact that Romney incorrectly said the offending speeches were made in the Middle East.
Claim that would not die - Democratic version
The Obama campaign repeatedly asserted that Romney, while at Bain Capital, had outsourced jobs to foreign countries such as China, and had also sent jobs to India as governor of Massachusetts. The evidence was slim, at best, and often turned on such obscure issues as whether Romney still ran Bain Capital while taking a leave to manage the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. Few nonfacts ever received as much ink and television time.
'Mediscare' - Republican version
Republicans initially claimed that Obama raided $500 billion from Medicare to fund the health-care law - a figure that later jumped to more than $700 billion for arcane budget reasons. But these were reductions in projected spending, mainly aimed at providers, and would not affect traditional Medicare benefits. Moreover, Republicans had adopted virtually the same "cuts" in their own budgets.
'Mediscare' - Democratic version
Democrats repeatedly charged that seniors would pay $6,400 extra a year in Medicare premiums under the overhaul plan promoted by Romney's running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.). But this was a figure far in the future, based on an early and less generous version of the plan. A recent study of the "premium support" model suggested that any actual increase in premiums would be far less.
Worst Math Skills - Republican version
Romney's math showing how he would add 12 million jobs in his first term as president. He cited three studies, which collectively added up to 12 million jobs, but the studies had 10-year time frames, not four. Moreover, two of the studies did not even evaluate Romney's own plans.
Worst Math Skills - Democratic version
Obama's claim that "90 percent" of the current deficit is due to Bush policies, such as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama certainly inherited a mess, but any reasonable accounting showed that as his term wore on, Obama's policies increasingly were responsible for the deficit. By our estimate, by 2011, about 44 percent was due to Obama's policies. Bush's policies were responsible for about 10 percent, and the rest was due to the recession and forecasting errors.
'Plan' that Doesn't Exist - Democratic version
The Obama campaign claimed that Romney would raise taxes on the middle class by $2,500. This was based on a nonpartisan study trying to figure out how Romney could cut tax rates by 20 percent but still make his tax plan revenue neutral. The study concluded that eventually the elimination of tax deductions for the wealthy would also affect the middle class. So Romney's math may not have added up, but he never had a plan to raise taxes.
'Plan' that Doesn't Exist - Republican version
The Romney campaign countered that attack by charging that, instead, Obama would raise taxes by $4,000 on the middle class. This was also based on a study, which calculated the distribution of the debt burden on Americans. Obama's budget fell in a middle range, and Romney's budget would likely have a similar impact. But this was not evidence of a planned tax increase - far from it.
Most complex subject for spinning - bipartisan effort
The Obama administration's memo saying it would accept welfare waivers related to worker participation targets prompted bipartisan spinning. The Romney campaign aired an over-the-top ad that accused Obama of gutting the welfare reform law, even though no waivers have been issued. But the Democratic counterspin was also questionable, leaving largely unanswered what the administration hoped to accomplish with the new rules.
(About our rating scale)
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Track each presidential candidate's campaign ads
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Election 2012
November 5, 2012 Monday 3:21 PM EST
Souls to the Polls aims to turn out early voters in Ohio
BYLINE: Ed O'Keefe
LENGTH: 862 words
COLUMBUS -- As he concluded his sermon at Faith Ministries Church in Columbus Sunday, Pastor Dexter Wise asked how many people had voted already. Only about a third of his 500 members raised their hands.
"The way stuff is happening here, they'll have some law by tomorrow that says none of us can vote Tuesday," Wise joked as he urged his followers to join him in a vehicle caravan after services that would take them to a nearby shopping center.
After fighting traffic and struggling to find a parking spot, dozens of Wise's followers joined thousands of other Columbus-area voters in a line that stretched for almost two hours. Many of the voters in line -- an overwhelmingly Black and Democratic crowd -- learned for the option through the "Souls to the Polls" project, a critical element of President Obama's voter outreach strategy here that supporters hope will lift him to victory once again in Ohio.
Nearly 230 churches across the state joined the Obama campaign Sunday in using church vans and car pools to drive people to the polls. The churches also recruited local restaurants and gospel singers to provide nourishment and entertainment.
Sharon Saunders, 57, said Wise's offer of a ride to the polls made her decision to vote much easier.
"It was a blessing, I didn't have a ride otherwise," Saunders said. "It worked and it would have been hard for me, because I have to work."
Saunders has to work a late shift at a nearby Bath and Body Works assembly plant Tuesday and stood in linewithher sister, Wanda Panton, who had already voted.
Panton said she voted almost 10 days ago as forecasters began warning of possible local damage caused by Hurricane Sandy. "I heard there was a hurricane coming, so I got out and just did it. Besides, the machines might not work on Tuesday," Panton said.
Both women said they received several phone calls and mailings about early voting from the Obama campaign, but Panton also angrily recalled receiving several calls from Romney supporters "and 12 pieces of mail."
"I'm getting it from both sides, but I don't like that Romney is sending me mail," Panton said. "I'm not a Republican."
A few spots back in line stood Chaya Mazur, 29, who said she had planned to vote for Obama on Tuesday until an Obama campaign volunteer knocked on her door last week.
"I'm from Michigan originally and I never thought I could do this," she said. But with a busy day of work on Tuesday, Sunday made more sense.
Mazur said she was undecided until she learned of Romney's plans to cut federal funding to Planned Parenthood: "As soon as I heard about that, I said forget it, I'm going with Obama."
Outside the department store, the line snaked for about 100 yards in the direction of a Value City Furniture. A store employee, who declined to give his name, said Sunday's crowd was the biggest over the course of the almost 35 days of early voting at the site.
Amid the crowd, dozens of Obama supporters were handing out flyers promoting Monday's finalcampaignstop by the president, where he will be joined by Bruce Springsteen and Jay-Z. Among those handing out the flyers was Matthew Lesko, the Washington-based author and activist who has used his books and loud TV commercials to raise awareness about tax breaks available to millions of ordinary Americans.
Though his views and life's work skew more Libertarian, Lesko said Obama was the better choice for Americans.
"We have too many rich people in this country, we don't need one running the country," he said.
As if the sight of Lesko in his famous corduroyquestion-mark outfit wasn't enough, an Abraham Lincoln impersonator was prowling the crowd looking for any irregularities.
"I'm 203 years old and hard of hearing," the impersonator, Robert Brugler, joked to one woman. Turning serious, Brugler said he's a strong proponent of the early voting process. "Just voting on one day is silly," he said. "There can be too many problems on that one day."
Marveling at the large crowd, Dana Walch, deputy director of the Franklin County Board of Elections, confirmed that the popularity of early voting far exceeds levels reached in 2008. Since early voting began on Oct. 2, at least 60,000 county residents had cast early ballots by Saturday. Every day more people have cast ballots early in person than the total number of early ballots cast four years ago, he said.
"You know how we've heard the candidates talk a lot this year about the New Normal?' Well, this is an Ohio elections official's version of the New Normal," Walch said.
Closer to the street, Obama supporters dressed as Sesame Street characters Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch, Bert and Ernie stood waving signs. Romney's presence was scarce: A reporter's attempt to find a Romney voter over the course of 30 minutes came up empty. A single delivery truck plastered in Romney signs drove around the parking lot and only two Romney campaign volunteers were spotted handing out sample Republican ballots.
And near the street, Wise reconvened his followers next to a food truck and offered a prayer: "We thank you Lord, for the joy of being involved in this election," he said, adding that he hoped the result "might not be wrought with deceit and fraud."
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November 5, 2012 Monday
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With the end near, still some unknowns
BYLINE: Chris Cillizza
SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A02
LENGTH: 928 words
In 48 hours we will (probably) know the identity of the man who will be president of the United States for the next four years.
Even though the end of this long, strange trip is nearly here, questions remain about the size and shape of the electorate, the true swing-state battlefield on which President Obama and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney will fight over these next two days, and the factors that will ultimately push the sliver of undecided voters to make up their minds.
We lay out five of the most pressing questions.
1. Enthusiasm or organization? Most polls suggest that Republican voters are more amped to vote in this election than are Democrats. According to Washington Post-ABC News tracking-poll data, 80 percent of Republican adults are registered to vote and are absolutely certain to vote or have already voted, compared with 70 percent of Democratic adults. But even the most loyal Romney allies acknowledge privately that the ground operation Obama has built over the past six years - and honed over the past four - is superior to what the Republican presidential nominee has been able to put together since emerging as his party's pick in April. What Tuesday will prove is what matters more: an enthusiasm advantage or an organizational edge. Conventional wisdom dictates that either could boost a candidate's showing by a point or two. But if enthusiasm is working for Romney and organization is working for Obama, do they offset each other and turn this question into a push? And if organization and enthusiasm cancel each other out, then who wins?
2.Is the playing field expanding? In the last 10 days of the campaign, Romney and his allies have made investments of time and money in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Minnesota amid polling that suggests all three are single-digit contests. (Pennsylvania appears to be the closest, while Michigan still looks like a long-ish shot.) Romney staged a rally in Pennsylvania on Sunday - his first of the general-election campaign - and his campaign is spending nearly $2 million on TV ads in the Keystone State in the final week. But Pennsylvania has proved to be a Republican trap in recent presidential elections - GOP candidates have been able to earn 48 percent but never 50 percent plus one. (The last Republican to win Pennsylvania was George H.W. Bush in 1988; in the five elections since then, Republican nominees have averaged 43 percent of the vote.) Without Pennsylvania, Romney faces a narrow path to 270 electoral votes - he all but has to win Florida, North Carolina, Virginia and Ohio. A win in Pennsylvania broadens that path considerably.
3. Where do independents end up? The story of the past several elections has been the wide swings among independent voters. In 2004, George W. Bush (R) lost independents by one point to Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.). Four years later, Obama carried unaffiliated voters by eight points over Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). (The independent swings have been even more pronounced in midterm elections; in 2006, independents voted for Democratic candidates by 18 points but four years later went for Republican candidates by 19 points.) In Post-ABC tracking polls over the past 10 days, Obama has regularly trailed Romney among independents by double digits. But in Saturday's tracking, the incumbent had pulled into a tie with these voters. If independents do move to Obama in the race's final hours, expect much focus to fall on Hurricane Sandy and Obama's handling of the disaster. Independents love the idea of politicians working together to solve problems, and Obama's trip to New Jersey to tour the devastation with Republican Gov. Chris Christie could have moved some unaffiliated voters to his side.
4.Will young people support Obama again?And in what numbers? One of the biggest myths of the 2008 election was that Obama drastically increased the number of 18-to-29-year-olds who voted. In 2004, 18-to-29-year-olds constituted 17 percent of the electorate. They made up 18 percent of it in 2008. The difference? Kerry won that youthful age group by nine points nationally; Obama won it by 34 points. Given that, the key for Obama on Tuesday is not to expand the share of the electorate that 18-to-29-year-olds make up but rather to ensure that it doesn't dip significantly, with the young people who vote doing so in something close to the percentages they did four years ago. Polling suggests that enthusiasm (as measured by likelihood to vote) among 18-to-29-year-olds has drifted off from four years ago, but the Obama campaign has placed a giant bet on being able to motivate and turn out these younger voters.
5.How big is the gender gap? Democrats have spent lots of time in this election driving a narrative that Republicans are conducting a "war on women," pointing to some of the policies espoused by GOP candidates on contraception and abortion - not to mention decidedly impolitic comments made by Senate candidates in Missouri and Indiana on rape. But national polling suggests that Romney is trailing Obama by mid- to high single digits among women - a margin that would rank among the smallest gender gaps in modern presidential history if it holds. McCain lost women by 13 points in 2008, George W. Bush lost them by 11 points in 2000, and Bob Dole lost the female vote by a whopping 16 points in 1996. Democrats insist - and some polling data confirm - that Romney is having more trouble among female voters in targeted swing states where the Obama ad onslaught on Romney's record has been focused.
chris.cillizza@wpost.com
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November 5, 2012 Monday
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QUOTE OF THE WEEK
"If you hadn't had the storm, there would have been more of a chance for the Romney campaign to talk about the deficit, the debt, the economy. There was a stutter in the campaign. When you have attention drawn away to somewhere else, to something else, it is not to his advantage."
- Karl Rove, in an interview Friday with The Washington Post's Michael Leahy
BY THE NUMBERS
1 million The campaigns of President Obama and Mitt Romney and their allies have aired more than 1 million TV ads this cycle, according to a Wesleyan Media Project analysis, a figure that easily outpaces all previous elections. As many residents of swing states are realizing in the final days of the race, it's hard to turn on a television without immediately being bombarded by campaign commercials.
1.6 millionThe number of Ohioans who had voted by mail or in person as of Friday, according to the secretary of state's office there. The tally puts the Buckeye State on a trajectory to surpass 2008 totals. Democrats waged a high-profile legal battle to keep polls open to all voters this weekend and believe their victory in the fight will pay dividends for Obama.
0The number of times a Republican presidential nominee has won the White House without carrying Ohio. Obama's slight lead in recent polling in the state underscores the difficult map Romney is facing. If he doesn't carry the Buckeye State, Romney will have to defy history to win the White House.
BEST THING THATHAPPENED TO REPUBLICANS
The map expanded. Polls in some blue-leaning states got tighter, and GOP groups began launching ads in Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Michigan and New Mexico. For Mitt Romney, whose electoral-college math is difficult, the prospect of expanding the map is a welcome one. The question is whether Romney and his allies are doing it because he desperately needs to or because the opportunity is there.
BEST THING THATHAPPENED TO DEMOCRATS
President Obama earned praise for his response to Hurricane Sandy. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), a top surrogate for Romney's campaign, even praised Obama, and by the weekend, big-name Republicans such as Karl Rove and Haley Barbour acknowledged that Obama's response to the storm had effectively cost Romney votes. This has been a great opportunity for Obama to be presidential, and he has passed the test so far.
- Aaron Blake and Sean Sullivan
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November 5, 2012 Monday
Suburban Edition
Political films' timing tightrope
BYLINE: Ann Hornaday
SECTION: STYLE; Pg. C01
LENGTH: 1672 words
The release of a politically themed movie at the height of a contentious election is nearly always fraught with peril, even when the subject is perhaps the most transcendent figure in American political history. But Steven Spielberg, whose movie "Lincoln" opens in Washington on Friday, believes the timing couldn't be better.
"This is a good time to reintroduce Lincoln to the country," the director argued at his New York office recently, "in a period of time when the ground will still be smoldering after the first Tuesday in November."
There's little question that "Lincoln" - which revisits the highly charged period when Lincoln faced down a fractious Congress to bully through the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, permanently abolishing slavery - will draw large audiences curious to see how actor Daniel Day-Lewis inhabits the title role and eager to commune, at least cinematically, with one of the country's most cherished leaders.
Still, it's just as likely that "Lincoln" will resonate very differently with some viewers Nov. 9 depending on what happens Nov. 6. (The film hits theaters throughout the country Nov. 16.) If President Obama is reelected, his most ardent supporters may well see an allegory for their own candidate's last four years of navigating partisan rancor to effect sweeping change. If he loses, Lincoln will embody the very character and political genius that Obama's detractors insist he lacked throughout an administration marked by squandered promise and ideological gridlock.
With both parties claiming the 16th president as their own, doesn't that mean that half the electorate might avoid "Lincoln" as a painful reminder of what might have been?
Spielberg doesn't think so. "I think the timing is the right way to go," he said. "Either way, the film, I think, will hopefully have some kind of soothing or even healing effect."
"Lincoln" screenwriter Tony Kushner agreed, noting that, "whatever happens, one of the lessons you take from the life of Lincoln is that you have to have faith in the democratic process," he said. "And you have to keep faith with it. Had the South not seceded at that moment, had they stayed in and fought [politically] . . . 600,000 people might not have gone to their deaths on a battlefield. An easy recourse to despair and contempt for the system was as active and virulent in the days of the Civil War as it is now . . . but if you believe in equality and justice and really, in a certain sense, in government, you have to keep working towards building a better society that our still-functioning democracy allows."
The dynamics of when to release a politically themed film can be dicey, with millions of dollars in production and marketing budgets at stake. Oliver Stone brought out "W.," his satirical portrait of George W. Bush, in the waning months of Bush's second administration, and viewers stayed away - not only was such an assessment of his presidency premature, most observers agreed, but it wasn't nearly as compelling as the Obama-McCain campaign unfolding in real life. In 2000, "Thirteen Days," a movie about the Cuban Missile Crisis, arrived in theaters in the toxic aftermath of the Bush v. Gore re-count. The film was only a modest success, perhaps because audiences were exhausted after a season of political strife. But "Thirteen Days" wound up being politically pivotal, playing an important role in Bush's nascent first term when he invited Sen. Edward M. Kennedy to a private screening in the White House.
Philip Zelikow, whose book about the missile crisis inspired the film and who attended the White House screening, says he didn't realize how pivotal the occasion would become, both substantively and symbolically. "Ted Kennedy would become perhaps [Bush's] single most important congressional ally in the months before 9/11" on health reform, Zelikow says. "So as an icebreaker with Ted Kennedy, I think [the screening] mattered. And the Bush people certainly picked it up and handled it in the appropriately graceful way. The movie gave them the occasion to remind people that the president is bigger than a political party."
Politics have threaded their way through a number of movies that were or are about to be released this year. On Sunday, the National Geographic Channel aired "SEAL Team Six: The Raid on Osama bin Laden," a docu-drama that's hard not to see as timed by its producer - Obama supporter Harvey Weinstein - to remind voters of one of the president's greatest strategic successes. (Last month, Weinstein released the conservative-tweaking political satire "Butter," starring Jennifer Garner as a thinly veiled amalgam of Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin.)
Weinstein and National Geographic officials have insisted that the air date of "SEAL Team Six" wasn't intended to sway the election but instead to head off "Zero Dark Thirty," a theatrical feature about the search for bin Laden due out later this year. That film ran into its own political buzz saw in 2011 when U.S. Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.) accused the White House of leaking classified details of the mission to screenwriter Mark Boal and director Kathryn Bigelow in order to burnish Obama's image. "Zero Dark Thirty" was scheduled for release in October until its distributor, Columbia Pictures, pushed the film back to December. (It will now open in New York and Los Angeles in December before opening throughout the country in January. The Weinstein Company similarly repositioned "Killing Them Softly," a crime thriller starring Brad Pitt that alternates scenes of pulverizing violence with lacerating critiques of the current economy that spare neither Bush nor Obama.)
Boal insists that neither he or Bigelow have discussed how the election results will impact "Zero Dark Thirty," either at the box office or as a cultural milestone. The question "hasn't come up at all," he wrote in an e-mail. Noting that the film is about career intelligence and military professionals, not the White House, Boal added, it "has no partisan agenda whatsoever. To me, the charges otherwise were completely bogus. But I hope people will see the movie and judge for themselves."
As for the shifts in release dates, Boal says that decision was purely commercial; opening a movie in a few theaters in December and into January is a time-honored strategy for garnering award nominations and capitalizing on the ensuing buzz.
Still, it can't hurt that "Zero Dark Thirty" will be appearing on screens after this year's political rancor has dissipated. Studios rarely leave such things to chance: Marketing campaigns for big-studio films routinely engage focus groups and other research strategies to predict whether and how a film will resonate with viewers. Even if filmgoers make present-day comparisons through a partisan lens while watching "Lincoln," for example, the filmmakers are banking on patriotism transcending politics, as viewers encounter one of the country's most beloved historical figures at the height of his powers and personal charisma.
In fact, "Lincoln" contains all the elements that spell success for a political-themed movie, according to director Rod Lurie, who has made a career-long study of what makes such films succeed. "It has to be about a president, not someone in the legislature or the Supreme Court, because anything other than president is petty," Lurie said. "It has to be aspirational. We don't want to go see movies about bad presidents who are dark and evil - we get enough of that at home. And usually it has to be nonpartisan."
In October 2000, Lurie released his political thriller "The Contender," just as the Bush-Gore campaign was nearing its breathless conclusion. Although the film was a critical success and earned Oscar nominations for Jeff Bridges and Joan Allen, Lurie believes that its left-leaning sensibility, as well as negative sniping from the likes of Rush Limbaugh and critic Michael Medved, alienated conservative filmgoers.
"It was almost a political statement not to have gone to that film," he said.
Dustin Lance Black, who wrote "Milk," about gay rights leader Harvey Milk, said that he and director Gus Van Sant had wanted the film to come out before the election in 2008, and perhaps influence the debate surrounding California's Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in the state.
Instead, "Milk" came out just after the election. But, Black notes now, "It served as something I never expected it to. It served as a refocusing and education tool for the younger generation, to start fighting this struggle differently. . . . A lot of individuals and certain organizations took a moment and looked back to Milk's era to examine why he was winning in a more homophobic time. We started to correct some of the missteps we were making in the '90s, and I think 'Milk' was a piece of that."
As for films currently in the pipeline, it's an open question what impact this week's election will have on their resonance with audiences.
In the case of the Secret Service thriller "White House Down," which stars Jamie Foxx as a fictional president and is scheduled to come out in June, "I personally don't think it's going to matter," says producer Brad Fischer. "Whether Obama or Romney wins, I think the same people are going to show up and see our movie and hopefully have a really great time, regardless of who's in the White House."
But director Lee Daniels is watching the election results with more anxiety. His film "The Butler," which dramatizes the story of longtime White House butler Eugene Allen, comes out next year. The film - based on an article by Washington Post staff writer Wil Haygood - ends with the main character, an African American who has served eight presidents, seeing Obama in the White House.
If Obama wins, Daniels says simply, "We'll feel the butler's journey was worth it." If Obama loses, Daniels predicts, "the movie will land completely differently. There will be a bittersweetness and a sadness about his journey. And I think the audience will feel it."
hornadaya@washpost.com
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November 5, 2012 Monday
Met 2 Edition
Enjoying the spotlight - but enough already
BYLINE: Amy Gardner
SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A07
LENGTH: 1396 words
DATELINE: RICHMOND
RICHMOND - The motorcades have made his daughter late for work and left him stuck on the highway for half an hour. The TV ads - well, don't get him started about the TV ads. Still, John Valentine brims with pride every time he sees his hometown skyline on the national news after another presidential candidate has come to town.
"It's always fun when you've been put on the map," said Valentine, who runs a small recording studio in Richmond. "It's like, wow - these guys are here three times a week! It's been tiring seeing all the commercials. But it's cool."
"These guys," of course, are President Obama and Republican Mitt Romney, the candidates who have courted Virginia this year with an intensity never before seen in the Old Dominion.
No matter who wins here Tuesday, the heavy focus on Virginia has left a mark on the state and those who live in it. Voters say they feel a closer connection to the candidates and the campaign. The stature of Virginia politicians has gotten a boost. A state filled with history got a little more when Romney chose Norfolk as the site of his announcement that Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) would be his running mate. And then there's the money - tens of millions poured into TV ads, radio spots, rallies, mailings, campaign offices and every other little thing that comes with a modern presidential campaign.
"It may be annoying at times, like when the traffic is stopped on I-81 because 15,000 people are leaving an event in Fishersville," said Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II (R), who plans to run for governor next year and has campaigned with Romney and Ryan. "But before this, we watched it all on the news, and we read about it on the Internet and in newspapers, and it was happening somewhere else. Well, now it's happening right here, and that has a vibrancy to it. It's energizing."
Virginia had a touch of swing to it in 2008, when Obama spotted an opportunity and set up a campaign apparatus that helped turn the state blue for the first time in 40 years. But attention turned to the state late and the battle, such as it was, was one-sided.
Not so this year, when Virginia is one of the big three - right up there with Florida and Ohio as the most fought-over and valuable commodities on Election Day. The outcome is so uncertain that the two candidates, their spouses and their running mates have logged more than 90 appearances in Virginia in 2012 - nearly a dozen of those since Friday.
Virginians are not used to this sort of thing. Some of it they seem to like, some not so much. They are weary of the traffic jams, one thing the state does not need to import. And they are tired of the ads and the phone calls and the knocks on their doors.
Jordan and Morgan Mauck, 19-year-old twins and sophomores at Randolph-Macon College, are Republicans but have been getting phone calls and e-mails from the Obama campaign - a reflection, possibly, of their age and the fact that they are college students, a heavily targeted group for Obama.
They're not happy that the Democrats have their e-mail addresses, and they don't know how they got them, "but I'd sure like to know," Morgan Mauck said. "Never have I ever led anyone to believe that I support Obama."
Dixie Mauck, the twins' mother, said the family receives many phone calls from both sides at home, too. "It's pretty even," she said. "We're one of the stupid people who haven't canceled their home phone line yet."
Civic engagement
But Virginians like seeing the candidates on the local news or, better yet, meeting them in person. They like it when issues such as military spending or the federal workforce gain national attention. They see civic engagement on the rise.
"It does go on and on," said Richard Russey, 60, of Alexandria, who volunteers a few hours a week for the Obama campaign and was one of 24,000 at the president's rally in Prince William County late Saturday. "But what's exciting about being in a state that makes a difference is putting in as many hours as I can to make sure it goes in the direction that I want it to. That's actually possible."
Virginia is bested only by Florida and Ohio in money spent, visits paid, importance awarded: a populous, diverse, mercurial bellwether that's part of every analysis of how Romney or Obama will win on Tuesday.
The road from no-doubt-about-it Republican to tossup began a decade ago, when Virginia was growing at breakneck speed. Booming federal contractors attracted more independent-minded and moderate voters to the suburbs and exurbs of Northern Virginia. The Hispanic population grew. The long-dominant conservatism of rural Virginia receded in influence, and Democrats began winning statewide elections.
Virginia first appeared in presidential sightlines in 2004, when the Democratic nominee, Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), made an early play in the Old Dominion by installing a small staff. But it became clear as the year went on that Virginia was still out of reach, and Kerry eventually diverted the staff elsewhere. Kerry lost the state by eight points.
Scott Surovell, a Democratic state lawmaker from Fairfax County, remembers volunteering for Kerry eight years ago, when no field staff, no money, not even yard signs were forthcoming from the national campaign. "I had to basically invent a presidential campaign in my neighborhood," he said.
Virginia's new status can be measured in many ways: how many times the Secret Service has asked Fairfax County police to provide security at campaign events (16); the number of pages the Roanoke Times added to its print edition this week to accommodate campaign-related letters (three); the number of Obama and Romney yard signs crammed into the medians along busy highways everywhere (thousands and thousands).
For Virginia politicians, nothing beats being from a swing state. Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R) has risen to prominence as a top Romney surrogate (and once-leading contender for the vice-presidential spot) in large part because of where he's from.
Big money
The money is another measure. According to data compiled by Kantar Media/CMAG, the two presidential campaigns and their allies have spent nearly $131 million on television advertising in Virginia. Tens of millions more have been spent on dozens of rallies that involve expensive staging equipment, security, even catering and hotel rooms for campaign staffs. And there are hundreds of campaign workers on the candidates' payrolls; Obama opened more than 60 offices across the commonwealth.
Although much of the money is going straight into the coffers of television stations, the other expenditures are probably having an effect, particularly at a time when Virginia's roughly $450 billion economy remains fragile, said Stephen Fuller, an economist with George Mason University.
"It's fairly narrow, and if this were a really booming economy, you wouldn't care," Fuller said. "But when you're still trying to gain traction and the recovery has lost steam around the nation, there is a benefit."
Still, even the most enthusiastic politicos - or economic boosters - appear to have had their fill of the ads. To say onslaught is an understatement; according to CMAG, the campaigns and their allies have aired 186,555 TV spots in Virginia television markets this election season.
Here's an even more dramatic illustration, compiled by Lauren Rubenstein of the Wesleyan Media Project: In the first three weeks of October 2004, the presidential campaigns and their allies aired seven ads in the D.C. television market. That's a mere 7,739 fewer ads than in the same period this year.
At the Roanoke Times, Publisher Debbie Meade has been delighted at the increase in volume of letters, leading the newspaper not only to expand the printed letters section but also to publish dozens more online.
"The election is at the top of people's minds," Meade said. "There's hardly any place you can go in town where people don't want to talk about it, speculate about it. It's wonderful for the media to have people so engaged, regardless of how they vote."
Don't wax too idealistic, however, about the increase in civic engagement. Letters on the Times Web site over the weekend included one calling for a shorter election season, another lamenting the nasty TV ads and another suggesting holding presidential contests only every eight years.
Virginians, in other words, are ready for it to be over.
gardnera@washpost.com
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November 5, 2012 Monday
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Taking no chances in Pennsylvania
BYLINE: Ann Gerhart
SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A06
LENGTH: 1118 words
DATELINE: JENKINTOWN, PA.
JENKINTOWN, Pa. - Joshua Shapiro woke up at 5:30 a.m. Friday, grabbed his iPhone and from his bed started answering e-mails about power outages in Sandy-slammed Montgomery County. He had 800,000 people and public facilities to worry about as the top elected executive of this county in Philadelphia's suburbs, and he also had polling places to get back in operation as the top Democratic leader here.
His Democrats were rattled. They have been smacked around statewide since conservatives set up a permanent tea party in the capital, Harrisburg, but they have persisted in believing that the state was proudly and permanently blue in presidential elections. And yet, Pennsylvania is suddenly being treated like a battleground.
Polls have tightened, and President Obama's lead is now just slightly larger than the statistical margin of error. Some $10 million in ads for Republican challenger Mitt Romney flooded in last week, large Romney-Ryan yard signs have sprouted on the spacious lawns of these affluent suburbs, and Romney swooped in Sunday for a rally that drew 30,000 to a farm in neighboring Bucks County.
If the GOP nominee hopes to be the first in nearly a quarter-century to pick off Pennsylvania's 20 electoral votes, he'll have to eat into the fat margin that Montgomery County delivered to Democrats in 2008. The Obama campaign is concerned enough about the state that it has reserved ad time during the "Monday Night Football" game in which the beloved Philadelphia Eagles are playing, and former president Bill Clinton is packing in four rallies Monday.
The gritty hand-to-hand combat to turn out voters, always intense on the weekend before Election Day, has taken on a frenzied quality this year in a state with no early voting and a requirement that a voter must really be absent to get an absentee ballot.
The hurricane messed up the careful calibrations of the vaunted Obama get-out-the-vote operation. About 25 polling places, most in the eastern part of the state, remained without electricity late Sunday. Some 81,000 customers were in their seventh day with no power. Each day brings another legal skirmish over access to the polls in a state whose Republican-controlled legislature enacted one of the most restrictive voter-identification laws in the country.
"Having Romney come here, does it mean we are at risk?" asked Allyson Schwartz, a Democratic congresswoman seeking her fifth term. She was one of the candidates Shapiro had led into the drab basement of a condo building here, the first event in a long weekend of energizing an electorate distracted by toppled trees, lost power and a deferred Halloween.
"I'm nervous," said Shirley Curry, a longtime local Democratic leader. "Did you hear that new Romney radio ad? It's good."
People deconstructed, nervously, what former governor and Democratic National Committee head Edward G. Rendell said recently about the possibility of a "startling upset" in the state: Was he acknowledging Romney's appeal? Or was that a head fake, a way to get people fired up?
Turnout at this point is everything, Schwartz told the 60 or so people, mostly retirees, when she took the mike. "With some people being stressed out, we worry about that. You're worried about your freezer. You're worried about your children and your house."
Every four years for the past 20, Pennsylvania has looked tempting at the last minute to Republicans. It has a bedrock of rural conservatism that may be harder than ever in its center, even as Pittsburgh and the eastern counties have softened their blue hue to violet. The last Republican presidential candidate to win the Keystone State was George H.W. Bush in 1988. His son George W. Bush came to the same farm where Romney appeared, on the same Sunday before the 2004 election, to declare he would take the state - and lost by more than 140,000 votes.
White House senior adviser David Plouffe on television Sunday morning said it was a "desperate ploy" to have Romney travel to a state "he's not going to win."
But where Democrats see desperation, Republicans see opportunity.
Romney "relates better to those folks in the collar counties than any other recent GOP candidate," said Billy Pitman, the Romney campaign communications director for Pennsylvania. "The day after they saw him unfiltered in that first debate, we had a couple hundred people volunteer across the state."
The Republicans took note that about 85,000 Democrats who voted in the state's primary didn't cast a ballot for Obama, an undervote that they theorize shows a lack of confidence in the president's leadership that they can build upon, particularly in the coal counties bordering Ohio, Pitman says.
Shapiro, who never voices anything but confidence, doesn't buy it.
"I really don't think this race has changed that much," he said. Citing Romney's attempt to court moderates and independents, he said: "He has extreme positions on choice and on gay marriage, and there is vast regional distaste for that here, including with moderate Republican women. I don't see him catching fire in the suburbs, and if you don't catch fire here" in the four counties ringing Philadelphia, with their third of the total state vote, "you don't win."
Obama won Montgomery County by 20 percentage points - and nearly 87,000 votes - in 2008. He won Pennsylvania by 10 points, and the votes that piled up just in Montgomery, Delaware and Philadelphia counties compensated for his losses elsewhere in the state.
At 39, Shapiro is the first Democrat in 140 years to chair the three-person board of commissioners that runs the state's third most populous county.
That is why he brought candidates including Schwartz, Sen. Robert P. Casey Jr. and state candidates for attorney general and auditor general to the condo building's basement and later led them into the shops of nearby Keswick Village.
On Saturday, he made two appearances with second lady Jill Biden to pump up voters and continued to campaign with Casey, who has seen slippage in his reelection lead over Republican Tom Smith, a coal-mining executive who is a tea party favorite. On Sunday, there were three more events, including a rally at the University of Pennsylvania that drew a crowd of 25,000.
At the Keswick Tavern on Friday, where Halloween lights were still strung and the sandbags still piled up outside, and where grateful Hurricane Sandy refugees had availed themselves of the 24 beer labels on tap through a hard week, the retail politicking paused for a toast.
Tasting glasses of ale were poured. The politicians lifted theirs into the air.
"To Election Day!" said Leslie Richards, vice chairman of the board of commissioners. "And to having power at all the polling places."
gerharta@washpost.com
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November 4, 2012 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
With Time as Tight as Race, Obama and Romney Zero In
BYLINE: By JEFF ZELENY and JIM RUTENBERG
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1668 words
MILWAUKEE -- President Obama and Mitt Romney entered their final weekend of campaigning on Saturday facing a stubborn landscape of competitive states that right to the end are producing equal shares of hope and fear amid conflicting signals about the outcome.
The president, fighting to avoid being turned out of office four years after a rousing and historic victory, sought to shore up his standing in Midwestern states that had backed him enthusiastically last time. He assumed a defensive posture in Iowa and here in Wisconsin, two states where his advisers had openly scoffed at his rival's chances only a few months ago.
Mr. Romney, in the closing days of his second quest for the White House, worked to harness the enthusiasm running through the Republican Party to overcome the challenges he confronts in building an Electoral College majority. He fought to secure critical states like Florida and Virginia without allowing others to slip away.
But after hundreds of millions of dollars in television commercials, months of campaigning and three widely viewed debates, the race was locked in the same dynamic that has defined it from the start: Mr. Obama, burdened by four years of economic struggle and partisan animosity but still an inspiration to his party, holding the slightest of edges in Ohio and other swing states, and Mr. Romney, bearer of the hopes of conservatives and voters convinced the nation is on the wrong path, fighting to overtake him.
The last defining question was whether Mr. Romney's support had hit a ceiling -- blunted by Mr. Obama's opportunity to show leadership in the deadly aftermath of Hurricane Sandy -- or whether he was on the verge of unseating a president in a dramatic finale.
Supporters, donors and advisers to Mr. Romney, in battleground states and at the campaign headquarters in Boston, said in conversations over the last two days that they had hoped to be closing the campaign in a stronger position, with clear leads in at least some contested states. Now, several of them said, their optimism comes from the uncertainty in the closing hours of a contest, rather than any affirmative command of the race.
Mr. Obama raced through four states on Saturday as he tried to build enthusiasm among Democrats, appearing after a performance here by the singer Katy Perry to urgently tell a crowd of thousands, ''We have come too far to turn back now; we have come too far to let our hearts grow weary.''
Mr. Romney sought to tap into disappointment and discontent among voters as he rallied supporters, telling thousands of them in Engelwood, Colo., that ''throughout his campaign, President Obama has tried to convince you the last four years have been a success.''
The outlook expressed by both campaigns belied the tight nature of the contest in at least seven states. In their respective headquarters, advisers made convincing cases for why their candidate had the clearer path to 270 electoral votes, but when pressed they admitted to sleepless nights about a result that was expected to come down to only a sliver of the electorate.
The pursuit of Ohio's 18 electoral votes drew the most attention, with the candidates scheduling multiple stops there before Tuesday, but the rest of the landscape was also highly volatile. Mr. Obama had the edge in Nevada and Mr. Romney in North Carolina, strategists agreed, while Colorado, Florida, Iowa, New Hampshire, Virginia and Wisconsin were far closer.
Here in Wisconsin, Mr. Romney rallied voters on Friday as his running mate, Representative Paul D. Ryan, a native son, fought to rewrite the historical trends of a state that has not voted for a Republican presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan in 1984.
The president, who carried Wisconsin by 14 percentage points in 2008, arrived here in Milwaukee on Saturday afternoon. His campaign advisers thought the contest here was narrow enough to send him back to the state on Monday for a rally with an even bigger music star, Bruce Springsteen.
''It's always tantalizingly close for Republicans, and I assume that's where we are at with this one,'' said James E. Doyle, a former Democratic governor of Wisconsin, who was among the early supporters of Mr. Obama.
The defeat this year of an attempt to recall Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, left behind an energized contingent of voters that Mr. Romney and his team will try to return to the polls. State laws that allow same-day registration in Wisconsin and in Iowa were seen by advisers to the Obama campaign as an advantage in their efforts to turn out younger voters.
Neil Newhouse, the pollster for the Romney campaign, compared the moment in the race to a football game: ''It's a tie game, and there's a loose ball.'' Joel Benenson, the pollster for the Obama campaign, argued instead that Mr. Obama held the edge and that Mr. Romney was running out of time to overcome him.
Strategists on both sides agreed that Hurricane Sandy had at the very least interrupted Mr. Romney's late-stage prosecution of Mr. Obama in a way that may have stunted the sense of upward movement that had been surrounding his campaign.
The duel between Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney also held implications for the fight for the Senate, where Democrats are increasingly hopeful of retaining control, as well as for races in the House, where Republicans are confident of keeping a majority.
The close nature of the presidential race was underscored by the travel schedules, which left the candidates crossing paths, including stops on Saturday afternoon only a few miles apart in Dubuque, Iowa, across the Mississippi River from Wisconsin. In 2008, Mr. Obama carried Iowa and Wisconsin by wide margins, but he has struggled to lock down his support this year, creating an opening for Republicans.
''He's trying to do everything he can to rekindle what he had four years ago, but it's not there,'' said Gov. Terry E. Branstad of Iowa, a Republican. ''Initially, there were a lot of people who were against Obama and weren't that wild about Romney, but over the last few months that has changed, and now there is really genuine enthusiasm for Romney.''
The president had a five-point advantage in Iowa, according to a Des Moines Register poll released Saturday evening, which found Mr. Obama with 47 percent compared to 42 percent for Mr. Romney. The poll, conducted Tuesday through Friday, has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus four percentage points.
The candidates, as they near the end of their contest, are intimately familiar with the metrics and minutiae of the state-by-state races. In Iowa, for example, Democrats were pointing to 17,000 voter registrations in the past month, which narrowed the Republican advantage to about 1,400 voters, down from about 11,000 a month ago.
The campaign played out on Saturday entirely on the terrain that Mr. Obama won four years ago, when he expanded the battleground to Virginia and North Carolina for the first time in a generation. Republicans portrayed Mr. Romney's late push into Pennsylvania, where he was set to have a campaign rally on Sunday, as a sign of strength.
''You have to look at what they're doing now,'' said Gov. Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania, a Republican. ''They're engaging here. They're spending money here. The race is close, and that's when you try to push it over the line.''
Yet Democrats portrayed the move as an act of desperation, arguing that the state has not voted for a Republican presidential candidate since the elder George Bush in 1988.
''This is what I would describe as a Hail Mary,'' said former Gov. Edward G. Rendell, a Democrat. ''They have found out that it's not likely they'll carry Ohio, and the only way to do the electoral math is to carry Pennsylvania or a Michigan or even a Minnesota.''
An aide to Mr. Romney said the campaign had decided to compete in Pennsylvania only after taking steps to finance advertising campaigns and get-out-the-vote operations fully in other states. The indication was that advisers viewed the state as worth a try, given the deadlocked national poll numbers, but not at the expense of anything else.
In interviews, aides to Mr. Obama said he remained competitive in Florida, a state that both sides had viewed as more favorable to Mr. Romney, who would face a hard road to victory without its 29 electoral votes.
Mr. Romney's campaign officials said they were confident that he would win Florida. But they were not taking chances and scheduled a visit by Mr. Romney to the state on Monday. Each side had a poll to bolster its supporters. An NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll showed Mr. Obama with a two-point edge. A Miami Herald/Tampa Bay Times/Bay News 9 survey showed Mr. Romney with a six-point advantage.
They said they were less certain about Virginia, agreeing with Mr. Obama's strategists that a jump in polling in the state for Mr. Romney after the first presidential debate had subsided, though they still predicted a victory there. Mr. Obama increased his advertising in both states, even though ads had reached saturation levels, a sign of the uncertainty alive in the race.
Mr. Romney was scheduled to make two stops in Virginia on Monday, including one in the northern suburbs, a region that was pivotal to Mr. Obama's becoming the first Democratic presidential candidate in four decades to win the state. It is part of the Romney campaign's strategy of winning over voters who supported Mr. Obama in 2008.
Mr. Newhouse, the pollster for the Romney campaign, said the campaign had wooed enough Obama supporters nationally to make a decisive difference.
The effort has been punctuated by Mr. Romney's recent emphasis on bipartisanship and moderate policy positions after a primary season in which he called himself ''severely conservative.'' It has also included a run of advertisements telling those swept up in the promise of Mr. Obama's last campaign that he had tried but failed, and that it was time to move on.
''I think we did what we needed to do,'' Mr. Newhouse said, ''but we're going to find out Tuesday.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/04/us/politics/obama-and-romney-zero-in-on-battleground-states.html
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GRAPHIC: PHOTO: President Obama spoke on Saturday at the Delta Center in Milwaukee, where he has struggled to lock down support. He and Mitt Romney also stumped in Iowa. (PHOTOGRAPH BY DOUG MILLS/THE NEW YORK TIMES) (A16)
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November 4, 2012 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
A Gay Voice, on the Edge of History
BYLINE: By JESSE McKINLEY
SECTION: Section ST; Column 0; Style Desk; Pg. 11
LENGTH: 1265 words
THE event held late last month in the penthouse of the lawyers Barry Skovgaard and Marc Wolinsky had all the trappings of a top-flight fund-raiser, with five-star finger foods, four-finger cocktails and three-term senators, as Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, spoke -- and everyone else listened. Even the address, 252 Seventh Avenue, had a patina of glamour, being the building where Katie Holmes holed up after dumping Tom Cruise.
The only thing missing that evening was the guest of honor, another woman locked in a battle with a powerful man: Tammy Baldwin, the Democratic congresswoman who is running neck and neck with the longtime Republican lion Tommy Thompson for a United States Senate seat in Wisconsin. Scheduled to speak, Ms. Baldwin (who, like the hosts and many of the people in that room, is openly gay) was instead back home to respond to a sharp-elbowed new ad from Mr. Thompson, something that demanded the candidate's presence in Wisconsin, and not amid fawning followers in a Chelsea loft.
And it is that just that balancing act -- being a loyal, hard-working representative of her home state and an emerging national figure in the gay community -- that has Ms. Baldwin, 50, on the edge of making history, and her supporters, including some of nation's most important gay donors, on the edge of their seats.
Though a victory by Ms. Baldwin on Tuesday would represent the election of the first openly gay or lesbian person to the Senate, gay groups have been surprisingly low-key about their public support. Fund-raisers have largely been intimate affairs at people's homes; no giant fund-raising galas in gay enclaves like West Hollywood or the Castro in San Francisco. There have been no celebrity onslaughts like those unleashed in the federal court fight against Proposition 8 (California's same-sex marriage ban).
And while outside money from everywhere has been gushing in, a mere trickle of staff members from gay groups are showing up in the election's final days. Even a round of reporting phone calls to some of the country's biggest gay groups and activists, most of whom are typically eager to talk about their political support for issues and candidates, were initially greeted with requests to go off the record or speak on background.
Gay rights groups, particularly those based outside Wisconsin, seemed to have been careful not to look too involved, concerned that the appearance of outside influence on Lombardi-land politics might be used against Ms. Baldwin, particularly at the last minute.
Being out, it would seem, is not a problem. But being from outside Wisconsin could be. Such fears aren't unfounded: candidates in a few other races have seen recent attacks suggesting that national gay groups are trying to push a ''radical agenda,'' though the Wisconsin race, to date, has been largely focused on the economy.
Not that any Congressional race is really local anymore. Chad Griffin, the president of the Human Rights Campaign, the largest civil rights organization devoted to gay and lesbian issues and a backer of Ms. Baldwin, said that both she and Mr. Thompson have big-time financial supporters all over the country. But he said the race was not about national issues, per se. ''She is the candidate that has captivated the folks in that state,'' he said.
The president and chief executive of the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund and Institute, Chuck Wolfe, agreed, adding that the 2010 Citizens United case had effectively ''nationalized'' Senate races. In Wisconsin, he said his group (a nonpartisan organization that works to get gay candidates elected) had raised and spent ''seven figures'' helping Ms. Baldwin, more than it had ever spent ''on any other race.''
Then, a moment later, he joked, ''Mind you, those lines will probably appear in a tweet now.''
Mr. Wolfe noted that Mr. Thompson, a former governor, has received far more support from deep-pocket conservative groups like Karl Rove's Crossroads, based in Washington, which paid for a recent ad proclaiming ''Tommy Thompson governs the Wisconsin way.'' And indeed, giving by nongay groups, on both sides, has dwarfed money raised by groups like the Victory Fund.
For instance, Emily's List, a group that supports Democratic women who favor abortion rights, has raised $4.5 million on Ms. Baldwin's behalf.
John Kraus, a Baldwin spokesman, didn't directly answer questions about her out-of-state support from gay groups and others, but noted that 95 percent of their individual contributions had been $200 or less.
Kate Kendell, the executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights in San Francisco, said that she had heard of gay donors across the country giving generously to Ms. Baldwin but that much support was coming from the middle of the country.
''It used to be that if a gay politician wanted to get elected, they had to go to the coasts to find money to support their candidacy,'' Ms. Kendell said. ''I don't think that's true any longer.''
Sarah Schmidt, the group's chairwoman and treasurer of LPAC, a new lesbian political action committee, said she thought that Wisconsin's seeming nonchalance about Ms. Baldwin's sexuality ''is another milestone.'' Ms. Baldwin is open about her sexuality at home or on the road, where she has proved to be a popular draw. In April, for example, she was featured at the Victory Fund's National Champagne Brunch, a $150-a-seat fete held at the Washington Hilton, and at a similar Victory Fund event in Houston in March.
Fund-raising for her campaign began even earlier than that, including a cocktail reception in February held at the SoHo home of Sean Eldridge, an investor and activist, and his husband, Chris Hughes, a founder of Facebook, which drew a wide array of gay movers and shakers, including Christine C. Quinn, the openly gay City</b> <b>Council</b> (NYC)" href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/c/%3Cb%3Ecity%3C/b%3E_%3Cb%3Ecouncil%3C/b%3E_new_york_%3Cb%3Ecity%3C/b%3E/index.html?inline1=nyt-org">City Council speaker, who spoke at the event.
Big East Coast fund-raisers are a staple for most candidates, including President Obama and Mitt Romney, but Ms. Baldwin's visits have tended to be smaller affairs, including another recent New York City event (for about 25 people) at the West Village home of Lela Goren, who works in real estate development and investment.
Brian Ellner, who helped lead the charge to get same-sex marriage legalized in New York and who was at the Seventh Avenue event, said that Ms. Baldwin's campaign was ''enormously important in real terms and symbolic terms,'' for the nation's most important gay rights donors.
''I think most people have been all in,'' Mr. Ellner said.
That said, gay rights backers are also finding their pocketbooks pulled by the presidential races and three state ballot measures that would legalize same-sex marriage. So much of the grunt work has been handled by Wisconsin-based grassroots groups like Fair Wisconsin, which has been mobilizing voters on campus and online. Some out-of-state volunteers have come to help, with a handful of Victory Fund staff members, but they say their numbers are small.
Richard Socarides, a former adviser to Bill Clinton, said that Ms. Baldwin had a ''dignified, humble Midwestern approach.''
And again, he emphasized, her potential election had nothing to do with her being gay.
''Her sexual orientation is really not relevant to why she would make a great U.S. senator,'' he said in an e-mail. ''But to us it makes all the difference in the world because she is one of us.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/04/fashion/tammy-baldwin-on-the-edge-of-making-history.html
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GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: CONTENDERS: Tammy Baldwin speaking to supporters in West Salem, Wis., in September, left, and, right, in a debate with Tommy Thompson, at Marquette University last month. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY NICK CAREY/REUTERS
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The New York Times
November 4, 2012 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
Voting Against Ruffled Feathers
BYLINE: By RANDY KENNEDY
SECTION: Section AR; Column 0; Arts and Leisure Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1835 words
RALEIGH, N.C.
The Contemporary Art Museum here occupies a refurbished produce warehouse at the edge of downtown, near an auto-machine shop and a denim company, and late on weeknights the neighborhood is usually about as quiet as a library. But just after 10 on a recent Tuesday night the museum's lights spilled onto the sidewalk, and inside almost two dozen people were gathered to watch the final debate between President Obama and Mitt Romney.
Sitting cross-legged and on stools, they composed an almost comic portrait of a two-party electorate, particularly North Carolina's version: a little more than half sat on a bright red carpet, watched over by a large portrait of a smiling Mr. Romney, while the others sat on an adjoining blue carpet precisely the same size, flanked by a portrait of the president. Between the carpets, two back-to-back televisions, one usually tuned to Fox News and the other to CNN -- you can guess which direction each television faced -- beamed out the foreign-policy-focused confrontation between the candidates.
Besides these meager elements the huge gallery contained nothing, except for a computer and, on the windows, the words ''Your Land/My Land,'' the name of the rigorously neutral, rigidly minimalist installation by the New York artist Jonathan Horowitz that occasioned the gathering.
Beginning this summer Mr. Horowitz engaged in negotiations to place identical installations inside seven contemporary-art museums around the country during the prelude to the election, in solidly red states (Texas, Utah, Georgia), in solidly blue ones (New York, California) and in those like North Carolina and Missouri that have straddled the divide. Over the last few weeks -- as museumgoers have communed in the spaces or sometimes just stood at their edges, wondering if it was O.K. to walk on the art -- the installations have become a strange mélange of sculpture, town-hall-debate stage, interactive artwork and glorified television lounge.
While the works have not gotten much media attention in the places where they're being seen, they have succeeded in raising a lot of questions among museumgoers. These include the familiar: Is this art? Is it good art? Is it really the best use of a huge amount of museum space?
The more important questions, though, hover outside the institutions and go directly to art's role in America at a time when contemporary art feels increasingly disconnected from the culture at large, even as the art business and museum world have never been bigger: Should public museums be places where political argument happens? Why is this so rarely the case, especially when compared with politically engaged programming in museums in Europe, Mexico, South America and even parts of the Middle East?
After periods when many museums brought political questions to the fore -- during the Vietnam War and the at the height of the AIDS crisis -- the pendulum has swung the other way over the last decade and a half. There are exceptions, even among prominent museums. There are thriving alternative art spaces that have never lost sight of the political. And there is a new generation of artists who aggressively blur the line between activist and artist, pushing against the commercial imperatives of the gallery world.
But for many artists, curators and writers this period of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Obama presidency has shown the lack of political content -- what the art blogger Tyler Green recently described as museums' retreat into ''an apolitical bunker'' -- in sharp relief.
Elysia Borowy-Reeder, the executive director of the Contemporary Art Museum in Raleigh, which opened a year a half ago, said she was drawn to the election installation mostly because, in contemporary art's embrace of nearly every other aspect of life and culture, the absence of the political felt artificial.
''I was living in Chicago in 2008,'' she said, ''and if you went in the galleries or the art school world or into museums, you didn't know that an election was happening. It was this groundbreaking, historic event. It was something that really mattered. And four years later I still don't see much art that deals with the political.''
Mr. Horowitz, whose work over the last 15 years has dealt with political and cultural questions in stark and often disconcertingly open-ended ways, created a piece similar to the ''Your Land/My Land'' installation at Gavin Brown's Enterprise in the West Village in 2008. He said he wanted to try to move the idea into the museum world across the country this year because he believed -- in a way that he admits might be wistful or nostalgic -- that museums should play a more important civic role in American society, beyond their educational mission.
''I certainly think that museums can play a role in political discourse, and they have in the past more so than they do today,'' said Mr. Horowitz, whose installation will remain up through, and in some cases past, Election Day. ''I wouldn't say that museums have a moral obligation to engage in political discourse any more than artists have a moral obligation to make work that does. I will say, though, that hermetic art about art is generally not of that much interest to me, and this seems to be the direction that art is trending.''
He added: ''I also hope that the work bridges a little the gulf that exists between museums and the world outside of them. When I was growing up, there was a poster of Edward Hicks's 'The Peaceable Kingdom' that hung in my family's dining room. Below the image a caption read, 'The Brooklyn Museum Is for Everybody.' That message has always stuck with me.''
Whether a bare-bones idealized electoral forum created by a liberal New York artist (and Obama supporter) is the kind of art that helps make museums a place for everyone is, of course, an open question. Curators and administrators at the Raleigh museum, whose board includes Democrats and Republicans, said that connecting with conservatives to encourage them to visit and engage with the installation had not been particularly successful. ''We really tried,'' said Daniel Moskop, a board member.
On the night I visited, the sparse crowd (it had been larger for the previous debate, Ms. Borowy-Reeder said) watched quietly, with some groans or guffaws, and few people stayed to talk after the debate. It also turned out that many of the people sitting on the red-carpet side, like Christina Serafino and her friend Leilani Bissell were actually Democrats. ''We just kind of sat wherever,'' Ms. Serafino, 29, said. But she added: ''It was nice watching at a museum instead of a bar or your living room or somewhere. You go into a museum with an open mind, or you're supposed to, and that's how you should go to vote too.''
The question of why contemporary-art museums too often tiptoe around even such hot-button-less political work is more complicated. Partly it is a legacy of the '80s and '90s culture wars that threatened public funds for the visual arts and that continue to make many institutions wary of offending any constituencies. (Battles of the Jesse Helms variety have gone away, but the Smithsonian Institution's removal of a provocative David Wojnarowicz video from a National Portrait Gallery show in 2010 was a reminder that such tensions still lie just below the surface.) It is also partly a practical concern among museums about the gate -- about political art being rejected by American museumgoers as one-dimensional, as visually dull, as too divisive or as all of the above.
It may, however, also speak more fundamentally to the role of the artist in American society in the 21st century, a role whose political authority has eroded along with that of novelists, poets and philosophers. ''The figure of the artist can still be heroic, still an outsider and still transgressive in Europe and many other parts of the world, whereas that's seems less and less the case here,'' said Negar Azimi, a writer and editor at Bidoun, a New York arts and culture magazine, who examined the contradictions of international political art in an article in Frieze magazine last year.
Perhaps as a result, over the last decade or more many artists with strong political convictions have found it that much more difficult to express them in the context of a museum, where conventions and expectations can leave such work feeling toothless.
Even the kind of deft politically oriented art staged by artists like Rirkrit Tiravanija, whose best-known pieces consisted simply of providing good, free meals in SoHo galleries and in museums, has sometimes come to be seen as a gesture already ''digested by the conditions of power,'' as Nato Thompson, a curator for the public art organization Creative Time, wrote in ''Living as Form: Socially Engaged Art From 1991-2011.''
So artists like Paul Chan, Laurie Jo Reynolds and Theaster Gates -- who operate in a growing middle ground between art and activism -- end up working much more often outside the walls of the art world, in neighborhoods, through the Web, in long-term projects within activist circles.
Carin Kuoni, the director of the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at the New School in Manhattan, said she sees a fundamental paradox even for those American museums that try to engage politically. Unlike many European museums, for example, whose origins lie in royal collections and presentations of colonialist treasure, museums in America developed in tandem with the civic growth of the country. (Francis Henry Taylor, a director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the 1940s and '50s, said museums should aim to be no less than ''the midwife of democracy.'') Because of this, there has always been an expectation that museums, as educators more than anything else, must remain above, even far above, the fray.
''In other words, structure and history account for U.S. museum programs that, by and large, address a very broad public,'' Ms. Kuoni said. ''And this explains why they find explicit political pronouncements so difficult to make.'' She added, however, that several American museums, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, have begun finding ways in recent years to turn toward political programming, often of a much more strident nature than Mr. Horowitz's.
From one perspective his installation can seem to be a devious commentary on the very bind American museums face -- not a work that tries to bring genuine political debate into the halls of the art world but one that, through its utter neutrality and reductiveness, shows the near impossibility of the attempt.
In an interview several weeks ago as the locations for the work were being chosen, he insisted that this was not his intention and that he believes it is possible for the institutional art world to help people think more critically about the country's political future.
''I'm not that cynical,'' he said. ''I do really think it matters which side wins this election. There's no hidden metaphor here. The show is the election.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/04/arts/design/american-museums-tend-to-tiptoe-around-politics.html
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GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: Notice the red and blue carpets, the television sets placed back to back: It's ''Your Land/My Land,'' a Jonathan Horowitz installation at the Contemporary Art Museum in Raleigh, N.C. (PHOTOGRAPH BY JEREMY M. LANGE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES) (AR1)
Views above and left at the ''Your Land/My Land'' installation at the Contemporary Art Museum in Raleigh, N.C., where museumgoers watched the presidential debates. The work, by Jonathan Horowitz, was also presented in several other museums across the country. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY SCOTT REEDER
JEREMY M. LANGE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)
Above, from June 2008: Hillary Rodham Clinton greets her supporters at the National Building Museum in Washington. Left, the artist Jonathan Horowitz with his ''Your Land/My Land'' installation at the New Museum, running through Nov. 18 in New York. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY JIM BOURG/REUTERS
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November 4, 2012 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
How Romney Would Treat Women
BYLINE: By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
SECTION: Section SR; Column 0; Editorial Desk; OP-ED COLUMNIST; Pg. 13
LENGTH: 799 words
IN this year's campaign furor over a supposed ''war on women,'' involving birth control and abortion, the assumption is that the audience worrying about these issues is just women.
Give us a little credit. We men aren't mercenaries caring only for Y chromosomes. We have wives and daughters, mothers and sisters, and we have a pretty intimate stake in contraception as well.
This isn't like a tampon commercial on television, leaving men awkwardly examining their fingernails. When it comes to women's health, men as well as women need to pay attention. Just as civil rights wasn't just a ''black issue,'' women's rights and reproductive health shouldn't be reduced to a ''women's issue.''
To me, actually, talk about a ''war on women'' in the United States seems a bit hyperbolic: in Congo or Darfur or Afghanistan, I've seen brutal wars on women, involving policies of rape or denial of girls' education. But whatever we call it, something real is going on here at home that would mark a major setback for American women -- and the men who love them.
On these issues, Mitt Romney is no moderate. On the contrary, he is considerably more extreme than President George W. Bush was. He insists, for example, on cutting off money for cancer screenings conducted by Planned Parenthood.
The most toxic issue is abortion, and what matters most for that is Supreme Court appointments. The oldest justice is Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a 79-year-old liberal, and if she were replaced by a younger Antonin Scalia, the balance might shift on many issues, including abortion.
One result might be the overturning of Roe v. Wade, which for nearly four decades has guaranteed abortion rights. If it is overturned, abortion will be left to the states -- and in Mississippi or Kansas, women might end up being arrested for obtaining abortions.
Frankly, I respect politicians like Paul Ryan who are consistently anti-abortion, even in cases of rape or incest. I disagree with them, but their position is unpopular and will cost them votes, so it's probably heartfelt as well as courageous. I have less respect for Romney, whose positions seem based only on political calculations.
Romney's campaign Web site takes a hard line. It says that life begins at conception, and it gives no hint of exceptions in which he would permit abortion. The Republican Party platform likewise offers no exceptions. Romney says now that his policy is to oppose abortion with three exceptions: rape, incest and when the life of the mother is at stake.
If you can figure out Romney's position on abortion with confidence, tell him: at times it seems he can't remember it. In August, he abruptly added an exception for the health of the mother as well as her life, and then he backed away again.
Romney has also endorsed a ''personhood'' initiative treating a fertilized egg as a legal person. That could lead to murder charges for an abortion, even to save the life of a mother.
In effect, Romney seems to have jumped on board a Republican bandwagon to tighten access to abortion across the board. States passed a record number of restrictions on abortion in the last two years. In four states, even a woman who is seeking an abortion after a rape may be legally required to undergo a transvaginal ultrasound.
If politicians want to reduce the number of abortions, they should promote family planning and comprehensive sex education. After all, about half of all pregnancies in the United States are unintended, according to the Guttmacher Institute, which conducts research on reproductive health.
Yet Romney seems determined to curb access to contraceptives. His campaign Web site says he would ''eliminate Title X family planning funding,'' a program created in large part by two Republicans, George H. W. Bush and Richard Nixon.
Romney has boasted that he would cut off all money for Planned Parenthood -- even though federal assistance for the organization has nothing to do with abortions. It pays for such things as screenings to reduce breast cancer and cervical cancer.
Romney's suspicion of contraception goes way back. As governor of Massachusetts, he vetoed a bill that would have given women who were raped access to emergency contraception.
Romney also wants to reinstate the ''global gag rule,'' which barred family planning money from going to aid organizations that even provided information about abortion. He would cut off money for the United Nations Population Fund, whose work I've seen in many countries -- supporting contraception, repairing obstetric fistulas, and fighting to save the lives of women dying in childbirth.
So when you hear people scoff that there's no real difference between Obama and Romney, don't believe them.
And it's not just women who should be offended at the prospect of a major step backward. It's all of us.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/04/opinion/sunday/kristof-how-romney-would-treat-women.html
LOAD-DATE: November 4, 2012
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The New York Times
November 4, 2012 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
In Ohio, a Study in Contrasts As 2 Campaigns Get Out Vote
BYLINE: By MONICA DAVEY and MICHAEL WINES
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 3485 words
CINCINNATI -- Inside a peeling former nightclub here, Obama volunteers are perched on any seats they can find, trays of half-eaten sandwiches line an old mirrored bar and a hand-scrawled list of ''office needs'' includes toilet paper and Teddy Grahams.
But if this campaign office conveys a casual, ragtag feel, it belies a sprawling operation with an intricate chain of command, volunteers who have been here for years and a lexicon worthy of the military. Volunteer red, white and blue team captains bear particular duties for getting voters to the polls, not to mention ''comfort captains,'' assigned to tend to coffee, meals and sore feet.
After extensive test runs the past few weekends for this Election Day get-out-the-vote machine, an Obama staff member held one final meeting with volunteers in a back room the other night, saying, ''Next Tuesday, it's showtime!''
The Kenwood Romney Victory Center -- one of but three in this county around Cincinnati, five fewer than the Obama camp -- is 10 miles and a world away. Inside a suburban office building populated by insurance firms and walk-in medical clinics, there are no dry runs, no flowchart bureaucracy and fewer young faces; many of the 20 or so volunteers are north of middle age.
What there is, is passion.
As a marathon campaign in Ohio nears a conclusion that its weary residents surely yearn for, the contest between President Obama and Mitt Romney has devolved into political trench warfare. It is a close-quarters fight: Mr. Obama's operation, built over four years with more than a hundred offices around Ohio and hundreds more living rooms, office basements and even garages set aside as Election Day ''staging locations,'' versus the raw anger, worry and drive of a more recent set of Romney organizers.
At age 62 still as earnest as a college student, Edward R. O'Donnell left his music production company in the hands of associates to walk neighborhoods for Mr. Romney, driven by a growing panic that government debt is dragging the nation into bankruptcy. Like many here, ''I have never been involved in an election campaign before,'' he said. But, he added, ''I committed months ago to doing anything and everything I can to try to change that direction.''
The outcome rides largely on which campaign succeeds in getting its supporters to the polls by pestering, begging, calling, offering early-voting instructions or Election Day buses and then pestering some more. It is a competition that has played out here with paid workers and volunteers in a strange universe of sleep deprivation, interminable door-to-door marches through cold rains, borrowed guest rooms and donated junk food.
In Cincinnati, the signs of the showdown are everywhere -- not just from the campaigns, but also from a vast array of groups that have descended, knocking on the doors of residents so exhausted by all the knocks that one resident warded off more by posting an announcement on her front door that she had voted early and was, thank you very much, done.
The fight is bitter, with reports of yard signs stolen, run over and even set afire, political phone calls so endless that at least one man was answering his home telephone by barking ''Romney'' rather than hello, and tales of front-door confrontations ending in curse words or worse.
''There's nothing coming in this house that has the word 'Obama' on it,'' one man told Liz Ping, an Obama volunteer, when she appeared at a doorstep. After the two disagreed over who ought to be blamed for the nation's debt, Ms. Ping, who is 61 and retired, was chased from the porch and down the driveway, she recalled.
''We're the tip of the spear,'' she said.
One rejected Romney door knocker said, ''I just tell them, 'You can run me out of here, but somebody will be back next week unless you vote.' ''
Publicly, at least, strategists on both sides here claim the edge.
The Obama campaign's extensive infrastructure is intended to include as many volunteers as possible without forcing them to drive long distances to take part, a senior campaign adviser said.
''The whole goal is to allow for everyone who wants to help us to go communicate to voters who are likely to vote for the president in every corner of the state,'' said the adviser, Aaron Pickrell. ''So that's the purpose -- it's not to have muscle and show that we have a bunch of offices.''
The Romney campaign was dismissive. ''There are places in the state where we don't have bricks and mortar,'' said Scott Jennings, a public relations executive from Louisville, Ky., who directs Romney field operations in Ohio. ''But I didn't set out to build a campaign structure that had as its core function rent payments. I don't need to pay rent to somebody to achieve my door-knocking goals.''
The President's People
The Obama campaign has been here so long that there has been time to decorate.
Offices are equipped with streamers, cheery multicolored posters, piles of charging campaign cellphones labeled ''firing up'' and even the occasional goofy riddle taped to a wall. Inside an office in Forest Park, north of Cincinnati, a ''Let's Move Corner'' provides jump ropes, Hula-Hoops and instructions for stretches (''Reach down to your grass roots'') near a well-stocked snack table that on a recent morning included enough Krispy Kreme doughnuts that Michelle Obama, had she seen them, surely would have cringed.
By now, though, no one is jumping rope. Or eating much.
Any frivolity has been eclipsed in these final hours, overtaken by exhaustion, tension and an overriding focus on meeting this operation's carefully monitored numerical goals for volunteers signed up, doors knocked on, voters met. ''Can I ask you to run a marathon for us in the last four days?'' a young staff member in jeans earnestly beseeched a white-haired volunteer as he stepped into the Forest Park office.
The essential theory in Obamaland: In a world of cellphones and caller ID, a door knock from a neighbor who can say, for instance, what high school he went to around here will be far more effective at luring a voter to the polls than a call from a stranger in some faraway state.
And so, for months, neighborhood teams have canvassed at houses they have now grown thoroughly familiar with -- and some of which can expect three more inquiries on Tuesday alone, unless and until their occupants have voted.
Before then, these visits are intended, in part, to get Obama-leaning residents with histories as inconsistent voters to form a specific plan for voting this time, whether it by pondering aloud what time of day they might go on Tuesday or by remembering to mail in the absentee ballot that records show they have requested.
''When do you want to go ahead and do it?'' Irvin Carney, a 24-year-old volunteer, asked a woman at her front door on a recent evening after she said she favored Mr. Obama. ''Want to say you'll do it early next week? Monday? How're you going to get there?''
The Obama operation established itself here by 2008, winning Ohio and, to the shock of local leaders in the county that surrounds this city, Hamilton, which had long favored Republican presidential candidates. Then it never left. At least one staff organizer stayed put, keeping a desk for a while in the cluttered county Democratic office. Some in the old network of volunteers remained too, occasionally summoned to work phone banks for Mr. Obama's health care law or efforts to oppose Ohio legislation to limit early voting.
By October 2011, some among the 2008 ''Neighborhood Team Leaders,'' top local volunteers like Michele Fisher, began holding monthly meetings for the re-election effort.
''It seemed early then, but we've been going ever since,'' said Ms. Fisher, 55, an owner of bagel shops in the area. On Election Day, she will serve as director of one of this county's scores of campaign staging locations -- the volunteered living rooms, alcoves and basements where team captains responsible for polling places (red), logistics (white) and canvassing (blue) will focus on getting people to vote.
If anything, the operation here looks similar to the one from 2008, just more established, more polished.
The technology has grown elaborate: rather than using only old-fashioned printouts of addresses and maps in manila folders, some volunteers use smartphones to be directed to homes the campaign wishes to target and then send back results of their stops electronically. Campaign officials will not say how many paid staff members have flooded into Ohio by now, though they seem to be everywhere, and volunteers in Ohio number in the thousands -- some from other states but mostly, volunteers here say, locals.
''We're kicking their tails!'' Mayor Mark L. Mallory of Cincinnati, an Obama supporter, said of the comparative ground games after emerging from a last-minute meeting with a small group of Obama volunteers. One reason for Mr. Mallory's confidence about the Obama campaign's efforts: his own father, William L. Mallory Sr., a longtime former state lawmaker, got a call the other day from the campaign, which noted, accurately, that he had not yet voted early. It urged him to do so.
Still, imperfections have emerged. Some volunteers sign up to appear for door-knocking shifts but ''flake'' when a Saturday afternoon arrives cold and wet. From time to time, the campaign has shown flashes of arrogance, at least one local Democratic leader says, not always giving enough attention to its supporters and volunteers. And some addresses on what should by now be a carefully culled list turn out not to be homes at all, like a shuttered industrial building the other night.
''I don't feel like I've been overly effective,'' Skip Tate, 50, said a little gloomily after volunteering for a long afternoon of climbing steps in a steep-hilled neighborhood. So few people answered their doors that Mr. Tate finally accosted a passer-by just to have someone -- anyone -- he could urge to vote.
The entire task of building this largely volunteer operation has changed since four years ago as the novelty of Mr. Obama's first run has faded some. Caleb Faux, the executive director of the Hamilton County Democratic Party, said he had observed an increase among black volunteers, but a drop among some white liberals who helped Mr. Obama four years ago.
Among the pack of outside groups on both sides leading their own parallel campaigns here, unions say they have seen an increase in volunteers -- passions driven more now perhaps by fury over Republican state leaders' recent efforts to reduce early voting hours and to limit collective bargaining rights. ''If Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan get elected, woe be to us!'' Robert H. Baker, a transit union leader, told a room full of union members who gulped coffee as they prepared to head out into drizzle on a recent morning to knock on labor's own list of doors.
For the Obama campaign itself, there is no shortage of volunteers now, people here insist, but the wild, rushing emotions of 2008 have been replaced for some with a sense of determination and seriousness.
''It was sort of like a giddy high school kind of thing,'' Ms. Fisher said of the first Obama election. ''You were so excited. It was just something new, that you were really going to make a change. And we did. And we're going to keep it going. But I think a lot of people this time around, they definitely still want to see him stay, but their lives are a lot different now.''
The Challenger's Effort
Mr. Romney's Kenwood Victory Center, like the five others in metropolitan Cincinnati, is the antithesis of funky, the inverse of cool.
Its phone bank workers often connect to empty houses when even advocacy groups let computers do the dialing, and find the actual humans their workers talk to. The neighborhood door-knockers record their successes and failures in pencil, when many others have long switched to smartphones tied wirelessly to databanks.
But neither advanced technology nor uber-organization nor a carpeting of campaign offices drive Mr. Romney's campaign. Rather, it is people like Henry and Donna Peters, a stream of volunteers that swelled to a flood after Mr. Romney's strong showing in last month's presidential debates.
''For a 67- and 65-year-old to get out of bed every Saturday morning -- and other mornings -- you have to feel very strongly about supporting a man who can make changes,'' Mr. Peters said.
He and Ms. Peters were driving to Blue Ash, a northeast Cincinnati suburb, to target likely Republican voters. She held a clipboard stuffed with campaign handouts and sheets of addresses to visit.
The Peterses are the ideal next-door neighbors, soft-spoken people so courteous that they assiduously avoided stepping on the lawns of the homes they visited. But they had intensity: political newcomers, they regularly trek from Kentucky, a safe Romney state, in hopes of tipping Ohio into the Republican column. And they are not alone.
''We focus on quality, not quantity,'' said Alex Triantafilou, the Hamilton County Republican chairman.
Mr. Triantafilou and campaign officials insist that Mr. Romney has overcome Republicans' early ambivalence to become his party's favorite, not just its nominee. ''No one I'm talking to is complaining we've got the wrong guy,'' he said.
Maybe. In talks with grass-roots conservatives, Mr. Romney seems considerably less beloved than his opponent is despised. It is too late for conservatives to find a perfect candidate, George Brunemann, who is head of the Cincinnati Tea Party, said over a recent coffee. But ''Obama can get people as different as white supremacists and Black Panthers to walk in the same direction,'' he added.
At Kenwood this particular Friday, a wall of sign-up sheets held names of nearly 300 volunteers, local residents and loyalists from afar. Lloyd Kelley, a 72-year-old retired administrative law judge, came to Kenwood from St. Louis, on the heels of workers from California and Tennessee and Louisiana. At the Westwood center in western Cincinnati, Nancy Pennell, a stay-at-home mother from Greenville, S.C., who came on impulse, was knocking on doors with volunteers from Kentucky and California.
And there are flashes of over-the-top ardor, the sort suggesting that a campaign feels it is gaining the edge.
At a long table, Luke and Moriah Swanger, ages 10 and 11, worked the phones after finishing their home-schooling. ''They don't like what's going on with the economy,'' said their father, Kraig, ''and I said, 'If you don't like it, then do something about it.' ''
Mr. Triantafilou said he had seen internal surveys that give Mr. Romney's supporters a wide edge in enthusiasm over Mr. Obama's. ''We didn't have it in '08. We didn't have it in '06; we got creamed,'' he said. ''But we've got it back.''
For both the Romney and Obama campaigns, this is the culmination of a long winnowing of the voter rolls, a political gold-panning of Hamilton County's 800,000 residents and 347,000 households that washes away the unconvertible until only the nuggets -- the persuadable and the committed -- remain.
Here, the harvest of new information from data-mining, polls, focus groups and telephone and door-to-door surveys culls those households where an appeal for support would be wasted.
''The point is to try to build yourself a get-out-the-vote list in which, if everyone on the list voted, you'd win the election,'' said Mr. Jennings, the Ohio field operations director.
Now, with the end in sight, the time for persuasion has passed. The volunteers' single goal is to ensure that every known Romney supporter votes.
Most join an army of foot soldiers who have slogged the northeast suburbs since early summer. By last Wednesday, the campaign had knocked on doors 151,887 times in Hamilton County -- an imposing figure, but deceptive, as many knocks went unanswered and many households were covered more than once.
Thousands more were to be blitzed before Election Day.
''This is the first time in many cycles that the Republican presidential campaign has emphasized door-knocking over phone banks,'' Mr. Jennings said. Across Ohio, he said, Mr. Romney's campaign is knocking on 19 times as many doors as Senator John McCain's campaign did four years ago.
In large part, of course, that is because Mr. McCain's Ohio campaign was starved for money. But it also reflects reality: land lines are being replaced by cellphones that canvassers cannot reach, and those landlines that remain are so overwhelmed that owners have become deadened to appeals.
''Look, everybody in Ohio with a phone and a pair of scissors is going to figure it out sooner or later,'' Mr. Jennings said. ''They're being bombarded. Everyone in Ohio has a robo-dialer.''
Indeed, as of six days before the election, Mr. Romney's telephone banks had made 397,741 calls in Hamilton County alone, albeit far fewer were successfully completed.
Consider a recent evening at the Kenwood center, where Mr. Kelley punched buttons on a telephone linked to a computer database of numbers of likely Republican voters.
''Is this Mr. Weaver?'' he asked.
The person on the other end immediately hung up.
The second call went better: ''I'm calling to remind you and your husband to vote in this election,'' Mr. Kelley said, then exclaimed ''Great!'' when his target pledged to back Mr. Romney.
The third call reached an answering machine. Nobody answered the fourth. The fifth, sixth and seventh reached more answering machines.
''This is the fifth phone bank I've worked on,'' he said later. ''I'd say that out of 10 people, on average, four aren't at home, one is undecided, three are Romney and one's Obama.''
The Targets
It is the most expensive and technically sophisticated campaign in American history. But in the end, after months of work, after hundreds of hours of commercials and hundreds of thousands of front-porch visits and millions of telephone calls -- after focus groups, fliers, yard signs and rallies -- Shelley and Dennis Russell are unmoved.
Days before the polls open they are still undecideds, targets in the cross hairs of a yearlong political cannonade who somehow, miraculously have yet to be persuaded by either side.
Yet on closer inspection, it is no miracle. To the contrary, they personify the angst that defines the dying days of this especially bitter contest, an emotion that the campaigns have longed to capitalize on, but have never captured.
The Russells live with their three children in a white clapboard house in Blue Ash, in middle-class east Cincinnati. She is a payroll supervisor; he works for a towing company. Their oldest son, 18, heads to boot camp next February because military service will pay for a college education that his family cannot afford.
Their pay is steady, but even low inflation has eaten away their income. They wonder openly whether the system is broken. They say they doubt either candidate can fix it.
Mr. Obama, they say, is honest and has good ideas, but no spine to carry them out. ''Obama says he's going to put more out for education,'' said Mr. Russell, who wants to improve his skills but lacks money for more schooling. ''But like his medical plan, I highly doubt that what comes out the other end is going to be what went in.
''If you're willing as a leader to say, I'll get 100 percent -- oh, I'll take 60 -- you're not accomplishing what you set out to do. Do you really believe he's going to do it in next four years?''
Mr. Romney might run the country better, they say, but he is clueless about the average person's needs. Witness, Ms. Russell said, his comments about the 47 percent of Americans who pay no taxes or depend on government handouts. ''Me personally, I've never been on public assistance,'' she said. ''But I definitely have friends who are single mothers who could not go to work without it.
''To me, it shows he's in a different wage bracket than the rest of us,'' she said.
Mr. Russell scoffed at Mr. Romney's suggestion that children should borrow from their parents to pay college tuition instead of seeking government loans. It is a notion, he said, that only someone with wealthy parents would propose.
Then again, Ms. Russell said: ''I don't know that that will make him worse than Obama -- that he can do enough good that it will trickle down to us.''
The Russells concede that their indecision is not for lack of information. Like virtually every family in Ohio, they have watched the debates, talked with friends and read the material hung on their doorknobs, although they have drawn the line at listening to robo-calls. In short, they have been drenched by a fire hose of creative persuasion of the quality and volume that only two billion-dollar campaigns could muster.
Still, Ms. Russell mused, it is not altogether clear what this monumental ground game has added up to.
''I think this is one of those races that could go either way,'' she said. ''They both have enough money backing them.
''If they'd put some of that money to work instead, it'd be amazing.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/04/us/politics/in-ohio-2-campaigns-offer-a-study-in-contrasts.html
LOAD-DATE: November 4, 2012
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: Volunteer campaign workers at an Obama office in Cincinnati. (A1)
HELP FROM THE NEIGHBORS: Henry and Donna Peters canvassing for Mitt Romney in Cincinnati. They regularly trek from Kentucky in hopes of tipping Ohio into the Republican column.
LAST-MINUTE APPEALS: Volunteers for President Obama working a phone bank. The focus is on trying to make sure supporters vote.
A DIFFERENT APPROACH: The Romney campaign makes do with fewer offices in the state.
A LONG EFFORT: Michele Fisher began holding meetings last fall for Mr. Obama's campaign. (A24)
THE TOOLS OF WAR: Inside an Obama office. The president's campaign operation first established itself in Ohio for the 2008 election, winning the state to the shock of some local leaders. Then it never left. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY TODD HEISLER/THE NEW YORK TIMES) (A25)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company
53 of 2097 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
November 4, 2012 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
At a Loss? There's Always Canada
BYLINE: By JOHN ORTVED
SECTION: Section ST; Column 0; Style Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 825 words
IT'S a refrain heard every four years: ''If [insert Republican name] is elected president, I'm moving to Canada.''
The pledge comes mostly from left-leaning Americans who view Canada, with its universal health care and cultural progressiveness, as a liberal refuge from Red State America. Celebrities, in particular, seem prone to such declarations.
Cher recently declared on Twitter (and later deleted) that she could not ''breathe the same air'' as Mitt Romney. Susan Sarandon and George Lopez have both cited Canada as a potential escape.
But has anyone asked the Canadians what they might think of a sudden influx of lefty Americans?
''Every Canadian I know will take exile in Florida,'' joked Craig Offman, the foreign editor of The Globe and Mail. ''A massive influx of Americans would generate widespread fear and terror.''
In truth, many Canadians would welcome the influx of disenchanted Obama supporters. ''In Canada we're happy to provide a safe haven for next-door neighbors in the middle of a marital dispute,'' said Douglas Coupland, the writer and artist. ''And if anyone trips while crossing the border, we're happy to set their broken bones for free.''
The sentiment is echoed in business circles.
''The more the better is my view,'' added Robert Prichard, chairman of the Bank of Montreal. ''That said, President Obama is going to win, and we won't be getting a special dividend on Nov. 7.''
The image of Canada as a political haven for Americans goes back centuries. ''Canada began receiving U.S. emigrants at the time of the Revolutionary War, when the United Empire Loyalists left everything behind to build lives in the north,'' said John Manley, a former deputy prime minister of Canada. ''In that case, they were conservatives wanting to live under the king.''
But recent history suggests that few actually follow through.
While the number of United States citizens who annually chose to permanently reside in Canada doubled during George W. Bush's presidency (from 5,800 in 2000 to 11,200 in 2008, according to Citizenship and Immigration Canada, a government agency), researchers say it had little to do with the elections.
''Relatively few people make the difficult decision to uproot themselves and their families,'' said Dr. Janice Gross Stein, the director of the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs. ''The one big exception was the desire to avoid the draft during the Vietnam War.''
These days, pocketbook issues outweigh politics. ''By far the most common reason for migration between Canada and the U.S. is the labor market,'' said Jeffrey Reitz, a professor of immigration studies at the Munk School.
Indeed, few took Rush Limbaugh seriously when he and other conservatives borrowed a page from the liberal playbook and threatened to move if Obamacare passed in 2010.
While Mr. Limbaugh pledged to move to Costa Rica, he might consider Canada the next time Democrats pass a big piece of legislation. Rather than a leftist sanctuary, Canada has recently swung to the right, which may give liberals-in-exile pause.
''We've got a right-wing government up here too, eh,'' said Matthieu Aikins, a Canadian journalist who lives in Kabul, Afghanistan. ''And our prime minister's policy on Israel and Palestine makes Romney look like Jimmy Carter.''
Since 2006, the Canadian government has been dominated by the Conservative Party, a result of the 2000 merger between the Progressive Conservatives and the right-wing Canadian Alliance. ''People would have to come with their eyes wide open,'' said Stockwell Day, former leader of the Canadian Alliance. ''We're engaged in a program of significant fiscal restraint.''
Of course, right-wing is a relative concept. ''It's Canadian conservatism,'' said Margaret Wente, a widely read columnist for The Globe and Mail. That means few abortion restrictions, strong bank regulations and no capital punishment. ''We also have gay marriage,'' she said.
Left-leaning Americans will still find plenty to savor. ''Even though Canada is now in one of its most conservative periods in decades, which I hate, the situation would still pale considerably in terms of threatened civil liberties,'' said the musician Rufus Wainwright, who was raised in Montreal and now lives in New York.
Yet some Canadian progressives think it would be ultimately self-defeating, for their cause and for the continent, for like-minded Americans to decamp north.
''My plea would be for American liberals and progressives to fight the good fight at home,'' said Bob Rae, the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada.
''Stick it out,'' said Jeremy Laing, a fashion designer in Toronto whose American husband emigrated in 2005 to be with Mr. Laing. ''The margin between left and right in the U.S. is so slight that even a small exodus could swing the future balance.
''What would help is if more of us liberal Canadians moved to the U.S.,'' Mr. Laing added. ''But I won't do that until my marriage is federally recognized.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/04/fashion/canada-would-welcome-election-losers.html
LOAD-DATE: November 11, 2012
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTO: MONEY TALKS: The labor market is the most common reason for migration. (PHOTOGRAPH BY ROBERT NICKELSBERG/GETTY IMAGES) (ST11)
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The New York Times Blogs
(The Caucus)
November 4, 2012 Sunday
The 'Ryan Effect' Proves Limited in Wisconsin
BYLINE: TRIP GABRIEL
SECTION: US; politics
LENGTH: 633 words
HIGHLIGHT: A variety of factors have led Wisconsin to be considered a tossup at the vote nears.
GREEN BAY, Wis. - How many points does Representative Paul D. Ryan put up on the Republican scoreboard in his native Wisconsin?
It is unclear as the presidential campaigns lavish attention on the state in the final days, with President Obama returning on Monday to a battleground his team once thought safe, while the Romney-Ryan ticket also includes Wisconsin in its heavy rotation.
On Sunday Mr. Ryan participated in one of the state's sacred rituals, tailgating before a Green Bay Packers game in a clear play to Wisconsin pride.
"What's the spread today? Anybody know?" Mr. Ryan asked a crowd outside the Sideline Sports Bar and Restaurant near Lambeau Field before the game with the Arizona Cardinals. "Ten," people shouted back.
He tossed beanbags in a game of cornhole with his children as a few supporters chanted "Two more days!"
In interviews with several dozen Wisconsin voters casting early ballots in recent days in Mr. Ryan's home district, which is along the Illinois border in the south to Wausau in the northern tier, neither those supporting Mr. Romney nor President Obama cited Mr. Ryan as a top reason for their choice.
"It's basically tied right now," said Mark Smith, an accountant who voted for the Republican ticket in Appleton. Hoping Mr. Ryan "will help us win the state," he said the bigger factor would be the fierce partisan divide over the failed recall of Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, in June. "I'd like to think the holdover from the Governor Walker vote will carry the day," he said.
Although Mr. Ryan's selection by Mr. Romney in August energized conservatives nationally and seemed apparent in a narrowing of Wisconsin polls at the time, since then there has been no clear "Ryan factor" influencing Wisconsin surveys, polling experts said.
"We have not seen any polling with Romney ahead," said Charles Franklin, a political scientist who runs the Marquette University Law School poll of the state.
Leaders of the Romney-Ryan campaign in the state point out that even as Mr. Ryan's national stature has soared, the majority of Wisconsinites have never had a chance to vote for Mr. Ryan, a seven-term congressman, and that Tuesday will give them the opportunity.
But Democrats say Mr. Walker's seven-point margin in which he won the June recall vote has not translated into an edge for Mr. Romney, nor has the Ryan selection.
"He's a bit player," said Paul Maslin, a Democratic pollster based in Madison, of Mr. Ryan. "It'll make a little marginal impact in the First District, but not substantial" statewide.
Mr. Ryan was appealing to more than Wisconsin pride by visiting Green Bay on game day. Surrounding Brown County and the Fox Valley to the south are a swing region, without the deep partisan loyalty of either the liberal haven of Madison or the Republican ring of suburbs around Milwaukee.
In a recent week Green Bay was the No. 1 media market for political advertisements in the country. Its residents have switched teams regularly - from Bill Clinton to George W. Bush to Mr. Obama to Mr. Walker.
Mr. Ryan's visit was a brief one on a day that also includes campaign stops in Ohio, Minnesota and Colorado.
"The only problem is that I don't have tickets for the game," he said to a fan, departing before the kickoff.
As he shook hands with Packers fans, he grasped the hand of a reporter for Politico, Juana Summers. "Hey, hey there," he said. "Why don't you have any Packers flair?"
On Monday evening, Mr. Ryan will hold his final rally in Milwaukee, before heading home to Janesville to vote the following morning.
Ryan Cites Policy Kinship With Bill Clinton
New Ad Attacks Obama on Medicare
Poll Finds Tight Senate Races in Virginia and Wisconsin
Romney Raises More Than Obama in May
Bill Clinton Campaigns Against Walker in Wisconsin Recall Election
LOAD-DATE: November 5, 2012
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
DOCUMENT-TYPE: News
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog
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All Rights Reserved
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November 4, 2012 Sunday
Biden Tells Crowd, 'We Need Ohio' to Win
BYLINE: RICHARD A. OPPEL JR.
SECTION: US; politics
LENGTH: 561 words
HIGHLIGHT: Joseph R. Biden Jr. highlighted the auto bailout in a last-ditch plea for the votes of Ohio residents.
LAKEWOOD, Ohio - On the last day he was to campaign in the state that might decide the election, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. called for a return to an earlier bipartisan era - but warned that Mitt Romney was not the man to get there - and exhorted more than a thousand supporters at a high school gymnasium near Cleveland to turn out to vote on Tuesday because "we need Ohio, we need you. We win Ohio, we win this election."
Mr. Biden was expected to later travel to Fremont, southeast of Toledo, and Lancaster, near Columbus, before flying to Washington so that he could spend a final day campaigning in Virginia on Monday and then vote in his home state of Delaware on Tuesday.
But the outcome of the race may ride on turnout in Ohio, where Mr. Biden told supporters on Sunday that the Romney-Ryan ticket was stuck in the 1950s or 1960s on women's issues. "As hard as they try, they can't bring themselves to climb into the 21st century," he said.
And in a play on one of the main arguments of the Republican campaign - that the Obama administration favors a big brother approach to government that is too expensive - Mr. Biden argued that something like the opposite was actually true: A Romney administration, he suggested, would usher in a plutocracy run by moneyed elites dictating what they think is best for Middle America.
"I think they do not have confidence in the average American," Mr. Biden said of the Republicannominees. "They somehow think that everything has to be run from the top down, the people with the most power, the people with the most money. Not because they think they are bad, but they think that's what has to be done in order to be able to run this country."
The vice president hit on many of the themes that have dominated his campaign stump speeches in the closing weeks, like what he characterizes as Mr. Romney's "shameless" fiscal and budget policies in the service of tax cuts for the wealthy. He also reminded the crowd of Mr. Romney's secretly recorded statement that there are "47 percent" of Americans who "are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them."
He also praised President Obama's support of the $80 billion auto company bailout, which is popular in Ohio. (Mr. Biden slipped up in describing a Romney campaign advertisement about the bailout, mistakenly saying the commercial had attacked "President Clinton.")
Mr. Biden suggested that he yearned for a time when Republicans and Democrats worked together more easily in Washington, citing Republican leaders including former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell; Senators Richard G. Lugar of Indiana and Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, both of whom are leaving the Senate; and former Senators Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, Alan K. Simpson of Wyoming and Bob Dole of Kansas.
"It used to work," Mr. Biden said. "When this election is over, we've got to get back to doing it again."
But he said Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan appeared committed to turning everything they could to their political advantage. "I've never met two guys who are more negative about the country," he said.
Clinton Assails Romney on Swing Through Ohio
Obama and Romney Campaigns Face Off in Ohio
Republican Voters in Ohio Give Romney Another Look
The 'Ryan Effect' Proves Limited in Wisconsin
Rocking the Vote, Meat Loaf Endorses Romney
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What We Already Know
BYLINE: THOMAS B. EDSALL
SECTION: OPINION
LENGTH: 2029 words
HIGHLIGHT: There's quite a bit we can tote up before the returns come in.
There are a number of conclusions that can be drawn from the 2012 presidential contest without trying to predict the winner. As the polls are about to open, let's look at some of these developments, which fall into four broad categories that will shape the future of politics.
Demographic Trends : The first major development (or non-development) revealed by this year's campaign is that the pro-Democratic demographic tidal wavethreatening to swamp the Republican Party has not crested. The overwhelmingly white Republican Party remains competitive.
The primary factor keeping Romney within reach of President Obama is his decisive margin among white voters. African-Americans and Hispanics remain solidly Democratic. Blacks back Obama by the same 91 point margin that he had in 2008. Obama's margin of support among Hispanics, 69-21, is substantially larger than his 67-31 margin 4 years ago. (The 2008 data is from exit polls in which by definition there are no undecided voters; the 2012 data still have a bloc of the undecided.)
The demographic threat to the Republican Party grows out of the fact that every four years the electorate becomes roughly two percent less white and two percent more minority, primarily as a result of the increase in the Hispanic and Asian-American populations and the relatively low birth rate among whites. By my computation, this translates into a modest 0.85 percentage point gain for Democrats and 0.85 percentage point loss for Republicans every four years. In other words, the changing composition of the electorate gives Democrats an additional built-in advantage of 1.7 percentage points every four years.
Many analysts and strategists were convinced that Obama's victory with 53 percent of the vote in 2008 marked the tipping point in terms of this demographic transition, but in 2010 Republicans reaffirmed the continuing viability of the party's "white" strategy, winning with 62 percent of the white votes cast, the highest margin in a non-presidential year since the start of exit polling in 1972.
The white strategy will be tested once again on Tuesday, when election-day exit polls will provide a verdict. (In general, election-day exit polls are more conclusive than pre-election surveys, with 44 percent of those questioned in 2008 responding, in contrast to a 9 percent response rate in pre-election polls this year.)
Even if Obama wins, however, the Republicans are unlikely to change course on immigration policy in order to court Hispanic votes. Instead, a Romney loss will encourage party leaders to blame his ideological inconsistency, his lack of charisma and his moderate past for the defeat, rather than to swiftly initiate a major re-evaluation of the party's approach to ethnic or racial minorities.
The election-day exit polls will be the most conclusive, with response rates of 44 percent in 2008 much higher than for pre-election polling, which had response rates of 9 percent in 2012. The Republican commitment to remaining a predominantly white party has been profoundly reinforced by growing evidence of declining white support for Obama. Survey data from both the Washington Post and the Pew Research Center show white backing of Obama dropping from 43 percent in 2008 to 37 percent by the end of this October.
There is another crucial demographic issue: Obama's decision to devote huge blocks of time and resourcesto winning the votes of women may backfire, accentuating Democratic liabilities as the party of race and gender preferences and accelerating defections among men. My Times colleague Ross Douthat has written incisively about the shortcomings of Obama's approach to targeting women voters.
There are, I think, additional risks to Obama's approach. Forget race and gender for a moment: focusing on any particular demographic group is likely to revive the image of the Democratic Party as a collection of "special interests" seeking advantage, rather than a coalition supportive of a broader policy agenda. There is some evidence that the strategy of courting women may have done more to alienate males than to win over females. For example, Frank Newport, the editor in chief of the Gallup poll, found in an Oct. 23 survey that:
Barack Obama's support is down seven percentage points among men versus three points among women. In Gallup's latest 21-day rolling average of likely voter preferences, based on interviewing conducted Oct. 1-21, Romney leads Obama by 14 points among men, whereas Obama and John McCain were tied among men in Gallup's final pre-election estimate in 2008. Obama currently leads Romney by eight percentage points among women, whereas he led McCain by 14 among women in 2008.
Obama's tactics vis-à-vis women also risk the loss of some support among economically liberal but socially conservative Catholic voters who find the focus on contraception and abortion - under the rubric of women's rights - problematic.
Health Care: The second major development of the 2012 campaign has been the failure of Paul Ryan to emerge as the white hot ideological flash point that many on the left and right expected. Instead, from a purely political vantage point, Ryan has not only turned out to be an acceptable running mate - his home state, Wisconsin is unexpectedly in play - but his March 20, 2012 proposal to turn Medicare into a "premium support" (or voucher) plan has not, in and of itself, doomed Republican chances.
In practice, the Ryan Medicare proposal did not become a dagger aimed at the heart of the Republican Party. The Pew Research Center has found that the expected Republican-Romney vulnerability on Medicare never materialized: in a Sept. 12-16 survey, Pew noted that voters, by a 51-38 margin - a 13-point difference - believed that Obama would deal with Medicare better than Romney. By October 24-28, however, Obama's advantage had fallen to 48-43 - just 5 points.
The same survey showed that from 2008 to 2012, Obama experienced his largest declines in backing from two specific age groups: the young, whose support for the president dropped by 13 points from a 34 point advantage in 2008 (66-32), to a 21 point advantage in 2012 (56-35); and the elderly, who supported John McCain in 2008 by 8 points, 53-45, and who now support Romney over Obama by a robust 19 points, 57-38.
This suggests a couple of things. First, that the Republican attacks on Obamacare, particularly the charge that Obamacare will cut $716 billion from Medicare over ten years, have had a substantial impact.
Perhaps more significant, the survey suggests that Democrats may have lost much of their overwhelming advantage among voters on the broad issue of health care, including Medicare. Less than four years ago, Democrats held an impressive lead on this issue. An Ipsos-Reuters survey conducted after the 2008 election in late November found that voters trusted Democrats over Republicans to reform health care by a 62-23 margin, a 39-point difference.
Truth: An equally significant development has been the strategic decision of the Romney campaign to set new standards in the use of untrue campaign claims.
The ultimate test case of whether it is possible to lie and get away with it will be the outcome in Ohio, where Romney is running ads in open disregard of the truth.
Over the past two weeks, with Ohio once again a key battleground, the Romney campaign has falsely alleged in speeches and in television commercials that Chrysler plans to shift Jeep manufacturing and jobs from the United State to China.
"I saw a story today that one of the great manufacturers in this state, Jeep, now owned by the Italians, is thinking of moving all production to China," Romney told a rally in Defiance, Ohio on Oct. 25. His commercial declares:
Obama took GM and Chrysler into bankruptcy and sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China. Mitt Romney will fight for every American job.
Glen Kessler, the Washington Post fact checker, gave Romney his worst rating, four Pinocchios, for the speech and the ad. Ohio newspapers have written tough editorials and news stories challenging Romney.
If Romney wins Ohio, every campaign in future elections is going to give much more serious consideration to lying and to open defiance of media rebuttals as a legitimate campaign expedient.
Ideological Conflict: The most important development in the 2012 presidential election is something that did not happen. Many observers expected that the contest this year would draw a clear ideological line between the two parties.
This expectation grew out of the fact that House Republicans, with backing from their partisan allies in the Senate, twice approved budgets radically cutting back the American welfare state that has expanded steadily since the 1930s.
Romney's decision during the Republican primaries to endorse the 2012 Republican budget and his continuing warnings that America is in danger of becoming an "entitlement state" further signaled an ideological battle. Romney's selection of Ryan - the author and leading advocate of the Republican budget - as his running mate further raised the ideological stakes. Democrats at all levels geared up for a counterattack.
The groundwork was laid for a confrontation of unprecedented proportions. But the candidates and the campaigns decided against doing battle on such high ground.
The Obama forces focused on Bain Capital instead of on the Ryan Budget. In the crucial first presidential debate, when Obama had the chance to force Romney to provide specifics and defend his domestic spending cuts, Obama chose instead not to challenge his opponent on this front.
Romney, in turn, has clearly decided that his best chance lies in moving toward the center, muting the Republican call for a shrunken safety net, ducking the Republican commitment to end abortion rights, and avoiding discussion of the belief he expressed behind closed doors that nearly half the population, 47 percent, has been corrupted by government dependency - a conviction widely shared in the conservative community.
Looking back, an election measuring support for the conservative agenda was too much to hope for. Politicians, especially those as malleable as Romney, are inherently adverse to risky strategies, and especially averse to testing voters by giving them an accurate assessment of the costs of their favored policies.
Sharp ideological choices are alien to the American political tradition. Republicans in the House of Representatives have been pushing the margins in this area, but the current contest shows that backpedaling still dominates the post-convention stage of presidential elections.
If Republicans retain control of the House as expected, the same major question will arise regardless of who wins the White House:
Will it be possible to constrain the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party, the wing that has effectively dominated policy making since the 2010 midterm election? This faction has demonstrated a willingness to risk economic collapse in its determination to reject compromise.
The country faces the larger danger of going over the "fiscal cliff" this winter if it fails to address the issues of pending tax hikes and the sequestration of $100 billion in defense and domestic spending.
Both Obama and Romney have demonstrated a relatively insipid leadership style. It is difficult to imagine either of them controlling the destructive forces within the conservative movement or the crisis of government spending vastly exceeding its income. Whichever party steps forward with real solutions will inevitably get kicked in the teeth by voters. At a time when both parties have consigned themselves to a politics of equivocation and retreat, the far right is the only force in Washington with a kamikaze commitment to a defined agenda. The presidential election does not appear likely to produce an effective counterforce.
Thomas B. Edsall, a professor of journalism at Columbia University, is the author of the book "The Age of Austerity: How Scarcity Will Remake American Politics," which was published earlier this year.
Google's Crystal Ball
'Do You Trust Politicians?'
Liberty to Lie
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Making the Election About Race
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Welcome to the best - or worst? - Pinocchios of this presidential race
BYLINE: Glenn Kessler
SECTION: A section; Pg. A24
LENGTH: 1674 words
It's hard to believe this nasty and brutish presidential campaign is coming to an end.
According to our Pinocchio Tracker, through most of the race President Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney were neck and neck for the average number of Pinocchios, about two each. But then in the final months of the campaign, Romney pulled ahead (so to speak) with a series of statements and commercials that stretched the limits. Obama's average also got worse - and was nothing to be proud of.
In the end, Romney finished with an average ranking of 2.4 Pinocchios, compared with 2.11 for Obama. Not counting debates (when we awarded no Pinocchios), we rated 92 statements by Obama and 77 by Romney - as well as more than 200 claims made by surrogates and interest groups, as well as other GOP candidates. Among the primary aspirants, Rep. Michele Bachmann (Minn.) finished with the worst rating overall of any candidate - an average of 3.08 Pinocchios.
Here are some of the lowlights of the 2012 campaign.
Most Absurd 'Fact' - Republican version
Former House speaker Newt Gingrich's claim that Ronald Reagan never got a break from the "elite media" as an actor. As an example, Gingrich said only one of Reagan's movies - "King's Row" - got a good review from the New York Times. First, Reagan was a Democrat when he was in show business, so Gingrich's point was nonsensical. Second, four of Reagan's top 10 movies got raves from the New York Times - and "King's Row" was panned.
Most Absurd 'Fact' - Democratic version
Making a pitch for the president's jobs bill, Vice President Biden repeatedly claimed that incidents of rape in Flint, Mich., had tripled after the police force was cut, as part of a dubious argument that there was a connection between the crime rate and the number of police. He even asserted that rapes and other crime would increase if the GOP did not vote for the jobs bill. But you need to have your facts straight if you are going to make incendiary charges. We investigated, and it turned out that incidents of rape in Flint actually fell after the number of police was cut.
Worst Super PAC Ad - Republican version
A pro-Gingrich super PAC released a 29-minute video titled "King of Bain," which portrayed Romney as a greedy job killer ruining the lives of Americans. It foreshadowed the Obama attacks on Romney's record as chief of Bain Capital, but it was so over the top that it made many of those later ads seem tame. One "case study" featured selectively edited footage of interviews of workers, who later said they were misled about the purpose of the film. They actually had no complaints about Romney or Bain at all.
Worst Super PAC Ad - Democratic version
Priorities USA Action, a pro-Obama group, aired a provocative ad that suggested Romney was responsible for the cancer death of the wife of a former steelworker who had lost his health insurance. But it turned out she died from cancer five years after the closure of the plant - and had her own health insurance for a period after the steelworker, Joe Soptic, lost his job. As we put it, "On just every level, this ad stretches the bounds of common sense and decency."
Silliest Blooper - Republican version
Until we highlighted this claim, Romney had made this line a regular staple of his campaign stump speech: "We are the only people on the Earth that put our hand over our heart during the playing of the national anthem." We easily disproved this by randomly searching YouTube and finding numerous examples of sports figures and schoolchildren from around the world placing their hands on their hearts during the playing of their national anthems. Apparently, Romney was trying to ding Obama for once failing to do so during the 2008 campaign, but his belief in American exceptionalism was misplaced.
Silliest Blooper - Democratic version
Obama's claim that President Rutherford B. Hayes was so adverse to new ideas that he had asked of the telephone: "Who would ever use one?" It turns out that the 19th president was such an advocate of new technology that he not only thought the telephone was "wonderful" but also installed the first one in Washington, in the White House, just four months after it was introduced. His telephone number was "1."
Most Baseless Claim - Republican version
The repeated claim that Obama said that government, not people, built successful businesses. The truncated quote "you didn't build that," drawn from a late-night rally with ungrammatical phrasing by Obama, became the basis of repeated attack ads and even the first night of the GOP convention. But any fair reading of Obama's comments showed he was making a standard Democratic argument about community success - and that "that" referred to roads and bridges.
Most Baseless Claim - Democratic version
Sen. Harry M. Reid's repeated claim, made with zero evidence, that Romney "hadn't paid any taxes for 10 years." The Nevada Democrat said he knew this was true because a person who had invested with Bain Capital had called his office and told him this "fact." We couldn't find a single expert who thought there was any credibility to the Senate majority leader's reckless claim. Romney eventually released a summary prepared by his accountants showing he had paid federal and state taxes in each of the past 20 years.
Claim That Would Not Die - Republican version
Nearly two years ago, we looked deeply at Romney's claim that Obama had gone on an "apology tour" as a new president - and we found no evidence to back up the assertion. Yet a version of that claim appeared in almost every speech by the Republican nominee, and Romney defended it in the final presidential debate. Then his campaign cut a new ad from his remarks, skillfully snipping out the fact that Romney incorrectly said the offending speeches were made in the Middle East.
Claim That Would Not Die - Democratic version
The Obama campaign repeatedly asserted that Romney, while at Bain Capital, had outsourced jobs to foreign countries such as China and had also sent jobs to India as governor of Massachusetts. The evidence was slim, at best, and often turned on obscure issues as whether Romney still ran Bain Capital while taking a leave to manage the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. Few non-facts ever received as much ink and television time.
'Mediscare' - Republican version
Republicans initially claimed that Obama raided $500 billion from Medicare to fund the health-care law - a figure that later jumped to more than $700 billion for arcane budget reasons. But these were reductions in projected spending, mainly aimed at providers, and would not affect traditional Medicare benefits. Moreover, Republicans had adopted virtually the same "cuts" in their own budgets.
'Mediscare' -Democratic version
Democrats repeatedly charged that seniors would pay $6,400 extra a year in Medicare premiums under the overhaul plan promoted by Romney's running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.). But this was a figure far in the future, based on an early and less-generous version of the plan. A recent study of the "premium support" model suggested any actual increase in premiums would be far less.
Worst Math Skills - Republican version
Romney's math showing how he would add 12 million jobs in his first term as president. He cited three studies, which collectively added up to 12 million jobs, but the studies had 10-year time frames, not four. Moreover, two of the studies did not even evaluate Romney's own plans.
Worst Math Skills - Democratic version
Obama's claim that "90 percent" of the current deficit is due to President George W. Bush's policies, such as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama certainly inherited a mess, but any reasonable accounting showed that as his term wore on, Obama's policies increasingly were responsible for the deficit. By our estimate, by 2011, about 44 percent was due to Obama's policies. Bush's policies were responsible for about 10 percent, and the rest was due to the recession and forecasting errors.
A 'Plan' That Doesn't Exist - Democratic version
The Obama campaign claimed that Romney would raise taxes on the middle class by $2,500. This was based on a nonpartisan study trying to figure out how Romney could cut tax rates by 20 percent but still make his tax plan revenue-neutral. The study concluded that eventually the elimination of tax deductions for the wealthy would also affect the middle class. So Romney's math may not have added up, but he never had a plan to raise taxes.
A 'Plan' That Doesn't Exist - Republican version
The Romney campaign countered that attack by charging that, instead, Obama would raise taxes by $4,000 on the middle class. This was also based on a study, which calculated the distribution of the debt burden on Americans. Obama's budget fell in a middle range, and Romney's budget would probably have a similar effect. But this was not evidence of a planned tax increase. Far from it.
Most Complex Subject to Spin - bipartisan effort
The Obama administration's memo saying it would accept welfare waivers related to worker participation targets prompted bipartisan spinning. The Romney campaign aired an over-the-top ad that accused Obama of gutting the welfare reform law, even though no waivers have yet been issued. But the Democratic counterspin was also questionable, leaving largely unanswered what the administration hoped to accomplish with the new rules.
kesslerg@washpost.com
To read previous Fact Checker columns, go to washingtonpost.com/factchecker.
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50 st ates, 11th h our
BYLINE: Dan Balz;Chris Cillizza
SECTION: A section; Pg. A01
LENGTH: 1989 words
On the final weekend of a fiercely fought presidential campaign, President Obama holds a narrow advantage over Mitt Romney in the crucial contest for the electoral votes needed to win the White House, even as national polls continue to show the candidates in a virtual tie for the popular vote.
In Congress, despite record levels of disapproval with the institution, voters seem likely to opt for the status quo - Democrats in charge of the Senate and Republicans in the House.
Democrats are expected to gain seats in the House but not the 25 needed to recapture the majority lost in the Republican sweep of 2010. In the Senate, Democrats hold a 53-47 majority, including two independents who caucus with them. Although 10 or more races were considered too close to call through much of the fall, Democrats are now in a position to maintain their majority, although perhaps barely.
This election assessment, along with reports on all the states, is based on interviews by a team of Washington Post reporters with strategists in the two parties and both presidential campaigns, as well as state and local officials and independent analysts. The assessment includes an analysis of polls on individual states and races that have poured forth over the final weeks before the election.
In the presidential campaign, the biggest and most consequential unknowns at this point are the size and shape of the voting population. An electorate that resembles or even slightly exceeds 2008 in terms of the share of minority voters vs. white voters would clearly benefit Obama. A slight decline in the minority share of the electorate and a more even split between Democrats and Republicans - closer to the 2004 electorate than 2008 - would greatly help Romney. Obama, however, may do better among white voters in some of the battleground states than he will do nationally.
The latest Washington Post-ABC News national poll shows a dead heat this weekend, with Obama and Romney both at 48 percent among likely voters. The survey has barely fluctuated.
Obama spent part of this past week in his official capacity as commander in chief as Hurricane Sandy devastated the Atlantic Coast, pummeling New Jersey and New York the hardest. His attention to the cleanup earned praise from New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a Romney supporter who delivered the keynote address at the Republican National Convention.
Almost half of all Americans said Obama's hurricane response would be a factor in their vote, according to the latest Post-ABC tracking poll. An earlier survey found that 79 percent rated his handling of the situation excellent or good. Another wild card is whether the latest jobs report will have a demonstrable effect on an electorate deeply polarized and with few undecided voters left. The report, released Friday, showed that 171,000 jobs were added while the unemployment rate ticked up to 7.9 percent.
Presidential
Through much of the fall campaign, nine states have defined the presidential battleground: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin.
Obama began the general-election race with a base of 18 states plus the District, totaling 237 electoral votes. Romney began with a base of 23 states, totaling 191 electoral votes. North Carolina is tipping toward Romney and Nevada toward Obama, putting the president at 243 and Romney at 206.
Romney is making a late play in Pennsylvania and Minnesota and will campaign in the Keystone State on Sunday. Both states continue to lean toward the president, but Obama's campaign has decided to send former president Bill Clinton to Pennsylvania on Sunday for extra measure.
Assuming those states continue to stay in Obama's column, the president would need only 27 of the remaining 89 electoral votes to win. Romney would need 64 of the 89, which explains why Obama still has an easier - but by no means certain - path to an Electoral College majority. For example, he could win a second term simply by winning Florida, which remains competitive.
If the Sunshine State goes for Romney, then much will depend on Ohio, which is why it is the focus of so much campaign activity in the final days. Its 18 electoral votes represent the bulwark of Obama's Midwestern line of defense against Romney.
If the president were to carry Ohio - and he continues to hold a narrow lead in public polls there - he could win an electoral majority by adding Virginia (13 electoral votes) or Wisconsin (10) or Colorado (nine), or by winning Iowa (six) and New Hampshire (four).
If Romney does not win Ohio, his path to victory would have to include Colorado, Florida, Virginia, Wisconsin and either Iowa or New Hampshire. But if he does capture the Buckeye State, he could become president by taking Florida and Virginia and then just one other contested state.
Poll
The Post-ABC tracking survey underscored the closeness of the race nationally. During two weeks of polling, the largest lead by either candidate was 50 percent to 47 percent, favoring Romney. Obama's biggest was one point. Neither was statistically significant.
Obama's job approval rating continues to hold at 50 percent, with 34 percent saying they strongly approve and 39 percent saying they strongly disapprove. Romney holds a statistically insignificant three-point edge on who is trusted more to handle the economy. Obama has a six-point advantage on who better understands Americans' economic problems.
Through most of the campaign and as recently as October, more voters offered unfavorable than favorable impressions of Romney. Today a majority of likely voters has a favorable view. In fact, he and Obama are virtually tied on this measure: 54 percent say they have a favorable impression of the president, while 53 percent say the same of Romney.
For the first time in the Post-ABC poll, independent voters are evenly split between the two candidates, at 46 percent each. Until now, Romney has held an advantage ranging from three to 20 points. Obama leads among women by six points, Romney among men by seven points.
Obama is winning 38 percent of white voters and 78 percent of non-whites. He gets 33 percent of whites without college degrees and 44 percent of whites with college degrees.
Campaign
Obama's hopes for a second term rest on his ability to reassemble and motivate a coalition of African Americans, Hispanics, young voters and women, despite disappointment and diminished enthusiasm since his historic 2008 victory.
In Ohio, he is aided by the success of the auto-industry bailout and the campaign's attacks on Romney's business background, which have bolstered the president's support among white working-class voters. Beyond that, Romney has been hammered in Ohio for an ad suggesting that Chrysler's new owners plan to shift production of Jeeps to China, which the chief executive denied.
Romney has a motivated base, with Republicans eager to defeat a president they think is taking the country in the wrong direction. But he needs both a turnout that is large enough to make the GOP share of the electorate almost equal to that of the Democrats. He also needs an edge among independent voters.
For the past week, Obama's advisers have expressed confidence that the race is theirs to lose and that they will not lose it. "The economic debate has crystallized," campaign manager Jim Messina said Saturday. "We have picked up steam and now what we have to do is turn out our vote. We continue to lead or are tied in every battleground state and have the ability to get to 270 electoral votes in a variety of ways."
Romney advisers have said their polls show that the battlegrounds, particularly Ohio, are closer than public surveys suggest. They also say that an incumbent who is not above 50 percent in the polls in the final days is in a precarious position.
"When you take a look at the big three - Florida, Virginia and Ohio - we feel very good," said Romney senior adviser Russ Schriefer. "Ohio is tight but it's tied and I think we've got some advantages there. I think then you look at the rest of the map that, in a million years, the Obama campaign never thought they would be campaigning in these states the weekend before the election."
He added: "We're going to win this thing."
Senate
Democrats appear poised to hold on to their narrow Senate majority on Tuesday, a prospect that as recently as a year ago seemed far more difficult, given the disparity in the number of seats Democrats (23) and Republicans (10) had to defend.
The turning point for Democrats may have been the surprise decision by Republican Sen. Olympia J. Snowe (Maine) not to seek another term. Snowe was considered a shoo-in for reelection but in her absence, former governor Angus King, an independent who would caucus with Democrats, has emerged as a favorite.
Then Republicans made a series of self-inflicted mistakes, two centering on the subject of rape. Indiana Treasurer Richard Mourdock, who ousted longtime Sen. Richard G. Lugar in the GOP primary, gave Democratic Rep. Joe Donnelly an opening. Then Mourdock's comments at a late October debate - where he said a woman who becomes pregnant by rape is carrying a "gift from God" and therefore must have the child - turned the race from a tossup to one that favors Donnelly.
In Missouri, Rep. Todd Akin won the GOP nomination and days later made a comment about "legitimate rape" rarely causing pregnancy that created a national firestorm. Much of the party establishment abandoned Akin, but he refused to drop out of the race. Sen. Claire McCaskill (D) is favored to win reelection.
Democrats have growing confidence that former Obama administration official Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard law professor, will beat Sen. Scott Brown (R) in Massachusetts. The contest is the premier Senate race in the country for the seat long held by the late Edward M. Kennedy (D).
Republicans have a number of opportunities to pick up seats held by retiring Democrats. Races in Nebraska and North Dakota, where Democrats are retiring, seem likely to fall for Republicans. Virginia has a very tight race between two former governors: Democrat Timothy M. Kaine and Republican George Allen. In Montana, Sen. Jon Tester (D) and Rep. Denny Rehberg (R) have been tied for months.
Even if several of those races tip to Republicans in the final hours, it still seems unlikely that the GOP will add the four seats it would need to control the Senate if Obama is reelected or the three it would would need if Romney wins. The most likely outcome is no net change, or Republican gains of one or two seats.
House
In the battle for control of the House, it has become clear over the past few months that the wave of elections that roiled the chamber in 2006, 2008 and 2010 will not be repeated Tuesday. Democrats need 25 seats to regain the majority. Not even their most optimistic strategists think that is anything more than a remote possibility.
Because of the decennial redistricting process, both parties will score heavy gains in certain states. Republicans look poised to pick up at least three and maybe four seats in North Carolina. Democrats could take five seats from Republicans in Illinois.
After taking control of more governorships and state legislatures in 2010, Republicans had the political muscle to carve up new congressional districts to their advantage. They shored up some of their most vulnerable incumbents and drew difficult districts for Democrats.
The result: Republicans are now likely to gain at least 10 Democratic seats simply because of the partisanship of redrawn districts, and Democrats are fighting from behind in their effort to win back the House. That is why overall Democratic gains may be held to the mid-single digits.
balzd@washpost.com
chris.cillizza@washingtonpost.com
Aaron Blake, Sean Sullivan, Jon Cohen and Scott Clement contributed to this report.
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P red iction ad d icti on
BYLINE: Erik Wemple
SECTION: Outlook; Pg. B01
LENGTH: 1593 words
On MSNBC's "The Daily Rundown" on Wednesday, host Chuck Todd was presenting a variety of electoral college outcomes for the Nov. 6 presidential election. With the aid of a clever interactive monitor, Todd was shifting around various battleground states to explain Mitt Romney's most plausible route to a White House-clinching 270 electoral votes.
In the middle of it all, his voice exasperated, he issued this caveat: "When I'm doing this, I'm not saying this is where NBC says the race is right now. I'm going through scenarios, so don't overreact on Twitter."
Compounded by a treatable case of socialmediaphobia, Todd was displaying a bit of old-fashioned caution, ducking behind the curtain of "I'm just a reporter, folks." How out of touch. Campaign 2012 has seen news outlets go ever more deeply into making news, not merely reporting on it. They don't just conduct polls, as they have for years. They have embraced the art of computer modeling, generating a constantly revised picture of the national political scene.
More noise than illumination, you might suppose. Perhaps, but only if you ignore all the noise that the media's long-standing pundit-centric product has churned out for decades.
Watch for it: Just as fact-checking operations have gone viral across journalism in recent years, modeling and forecasting franchises are poised for multiplication. These days, the New York Times, Real Clear Politics and the Huffington Post run highly trafficked poll-aggregation machines offering a look at toss-up states, who's got the lead and a lot of other stuff you didn't realize you were curious about. Other organizations that matter in political coverage - from the major networks, including NBC, to cable outlets to newspapers and universities - sponsor their own polling, offer their own number-crunching services on polls or both.
Bruises attach as easily to the pollsters and forecasters as they do to the fact-checkers and political reporters, all of whom sustain bias allegations and general nastiness in the course of business. The hazard of these occupations is that, at some point, you'll have to issue information that displeases one side or the other. When you do, there are a bunch of people on Twitter ready to overreact.
Nate Silver, the brain behind the mile-deep polling analysis at the New York Times' FiveThirtyEight blog, has made news this election cycle as both modeling guru and punching bag. Silver's blog aggregates and analyzes massive amounts of poll data and organizes them into clean, snapshot impressions of who's up and who's down in the presidential race and other contests. The FiveThirtyEight model has consistently favored President Obama over Romney, creating an obvious opening for critics. MSNBC morning host Joe Scarborough, in a remark that reflects many conservatives' reactions to Silver's oeuvre, recently suggested that the poll aggregator was an ideologue and a joke.
The swell of Silver-centric commentary in the campaign's home stretch leaves search engines with a bit of sorting to do. When he's not getting slammed for putting out results that favor Obama, he's being applauded for his quantitative rigor or his understanding of his craft. Politico, AtlanticWire, BuzzFeed, The Post and others have all weighed in.
Knocking those who deal in polling data and voter demographics isn't a towering intellectual challenge. There's always disparity in survey numbers. In 2008, for example, pollsters whiffed on the New Hampshire Democratic primary, showing then-newcomer Obama with the edge over eventual winner Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Pollsters have never promised precision. That's why their surveys come equipped with margins of error. Paul J. Lavrakas, president of the American Association for Public Opinion Research, cautions that polling is "not pure science . . . it's subject to a lot of threats," including imprecision and "biases." For example, pollsters have yet to lick the problem of accounting for the growing number of cellphone-only citizens, which increases the inaccuracy of surveys that tend to reach land-line users only.
To its eternal discredit, polling is never omniscient, especially in a tight race such as this one. "The interesting dynamic in this race is the number of toss-up states has expanded in the last three weeks," says John McIntyre, founder of Real Clear Politics. "It reflects the uncertainty out there. We don't know what's going to happen. No one knows what's going to happen."
The churn of polling results, too, feeds a fast-twitched Internet not known for sowing a deep understanding of our country. State polls, national polls and surveys of all kinds keep landing, multiple times per day, giving Linkville just what it's built for: a never-ending string of revisions, corrections, annotations and amplifications, each one worth more page views.
Yet whatever its drawbacks, a media world populated by more and more Nate Silvers and their reams of data promises a brighter future than the one to which Americans had resigned themselves: the world of the pundit. As Silver himself says, "I think we represent a counterweight to a lot of the BS, frankly, that you hear in the mainstream media."
One example here: "momentum," a poisonous word for Silver but one frequently used by pundits to describe a campaign's ups and downs. "When the term 'momentum' is used, I think that's a red flag that the coverage you're reading is suffering from bias," Silver says, noting that the bias could take any form, from a pundit's political leanings to simply a desire for a close contest that's more fun to cover.
Everyone agrees that Romney secured "momentum" around the time of his shellacking of the president in the first debate on Oct. 3. But how long did it last? In an Oct. 25 post, Silver argued that if public opinion mattered in computing momentum, Romney's version would have petered out a week or two after the debate. However, he said, pundits kept referring to it as an active dynamic in the race for weeks.
On the "Today" show on Oct. 27, Scarborough minted this take on the election: "So for Romney, I think he's going to be hoping more for this momentum that is sweeping from the first debate to continue forward and carry him over the finish line. And it's just momentum versus the Obama ground game."
There's some perfect punditry for you. In 40 words, Scarborough managed to weave a few strands of conventional wisdom into a compelling-sounding, even-handed wrap-up of where things stand.
Silver himself sometimes envies the wishy-washiness afforded to pundits. "I'd be more comfortable if Obama were a slight favorite [in his modeling]. . . . But that's not where the math - it's not where I think it takes you," he says.
On Thursday, Silver's model was giving Obama a 79 percent chance of winning the election. The luxury of his contraption is its built-in defense against being wrong. He's not calculating the size of an Obama victory, only the probability that the president will end up on top. If Obama loses, Silver can always say, "Well, that's okay, my model gave Romney a 21 percent chance of pulling it out."
When Silver says that 80 to 90 percent of punditry contributes nothing of journalistic value, his modeling is being charitable by about 10 percentage points. On television, the goal is to panel up and talk, with the hope of stirring a disagreement that gets shared like crazy on Facebook. On the Web, the goal is volume, and nothing yields volume quite like political analysis. Politico, the king of volume and analysis, printed this paragraph before the debate between Vice President Biden and Paul Ryan:
"The best case scenario for each? A clear win. The worst case scenario for each? A clear loss. The murkiest scenario for each? A debate that gets fought to a draw, which the press will interpret in different ways but which also likely won't stop the GOP ticket's momentum."
That's important context. Because no matter your view of polling, no matter how biased you deem the people behind the questions and the modeling, think of the choice: impression-based horse-race coverage by pundits vs. data-based horse-race coverage by statisticians.
Given Silver's new fame, there's an 84 percent chance that media outlets will christen at least 10 new poll-modeling gizmos in time for election 2016. "I think I'm taking advantage, in part, of an underserved market," Silver says. "The fact that I get kind of undeserved attention, both negative and mostly positive, would suggest there's a market deficiency - that you have a gang of maybe 500 pundits."
And not enough modelers.
Much has been made of the possibility that pollsters and even modelers will be proved wrong come Nov. 7. Lavrakas says that outcome would be a "major setback" with "dire consequences."
Silver has a milder take. "I know as a matter of practice that I'm going to have more opportunities if my prediction looks good and fewer if it doesn't," he says.
When's the last time a cable pundit had to face such consequences?
I'm more forgiving on the forecasting models. If the model doesn't work, tweak it. If that one doesn't work, tweak it again. But keep the reality-based analysis coming. I'll take a deeply explained essay on the eccentricities of New Hampshire political forecasting or a disquisition on the house biases of polling organizations over conventional punditry every time.
wemplee@washpost.com
Erik Wemplereports and writes about the media in his Washington Post opinion blog.
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November 4, 2012 Sunday 8:12 PM EST
Fearless forecasts for our elections
BYLINE: Robert McCartney
SECTION: Metro; Pg. C01
LENGTH: 847 words
For a predominantly Democratic region, the Washington area has a surprisingly high number of close, nail-biter races in Tuesday's elections.Virginia, a genuinely critical national battleground, could go either way in the presidential and U.S. Senate campaigns. (Northern Virginia will go for the Democrats, but not necessarily by enough to offset GOP advantages downstate.)
In Maryland, polls are all over the place on whether voters will say "yes" to expanding casino gambling. The contest over same-sex marriage reportedly has tightened.
Even the District, which will probably vote 9-to-1 for President Obama, has a hot race for an at-large D.C. Council seat. The result will help gauge the public's current distaste with city politicians' ethics controversies.
Given such uncertainty, a sensible columnist would avoid making predictions that might embarrass him Wednesday morning. But that's no fun.
Instead, here are fearless forecasts on the tightest and most interesting races, based on polls and interviews with hopefully well-informed observers.
Virginia presidential: Most recent polls are within the margin of error in the struggle for the Old Dominion's 13 electoral votes. Obama was leading Mitt Romney until the president's disastrous performance in the first debate, when Romney surged. Now there are signs that Obama has regained momentum.
African American turnout will be robust for the Democrat, as in 2008, when he carried the state by six percentage points. But polls show that his support has eroded among white independents disillusioned about the economy.
The GOP's ground organization is much improved from four years ago, but the Democrats are confident that theirs is still superior.
Fearless forecast: Obama squeaks through. (Incidentally, on election night, look for Virginia's results as an early sign of who's winning the presidency.)
Virginia U.S. Senate: In a fascinating example of ticket-splitting, a small but highly influential slice of deep purple voters is preparing to cast ballots for Republican Romney for president and Democrat Tim Kaine for the Senate.
Kaine has been consistently polling a couple of points better than Obama statewide. He has particular strength around Richmond, where he was a popular mayor.
That's bad news for GOP Senate candidate George Allen. Kaine has followed the classic Virginia Democratic strategy of running slightly to the right of the national ticket. He also has scored by emphasizing his willingness to bridge Congress's partisan divide.
Forecast: Kaine.
Maryland Dream Act (Ballot Question 4): Moving to the Free State, let's start with an easy one. Practically everybody agrees voters will endorse the measure to grant in-state tuition at state universities to undocumented immigrants whose families have been paying Maryland taxes.
Forecast: Approved.
Maryland congressional redistricting(Question 5): Little attention has been paid to the measure that would approve a new electoral map designed by Democrats to wrest away a Republican U.S. House seat.
Forecast: Approved.
Maryland same-sex marriage (Question 6): Polls showed gay nuptials were comfortably ahead in mid-October, but some say the margin has narrowed.
Supporters are worried about a last-minute ad blitz by opponents. They're also concerned that polls could be misleading, as some people might have given pollsters the "politically correct" answer, endorsing same-sex marriage only to vote the other way.
However, cultural attitudes on this issue have reached a tipping point, especially among young people. Obama's endorsement has been a huge help in the African American community.
Forecast: Approved.
Maryland expanded casino gambling(Question 7): This one truly is anybody's guess. Polls have varied wildly, showing trends for and against.
The Democratic Party's organizational support, plus a desire in the Washington suburbs to create jobs in Prince George's County by building a new casino there, could carry the day.
But I think many will vote "no" because they're sick of the issue and the ads. Also, there's no guarantee that the casino money will add to spending on education.
Forecast: Rejected.
D.C. Council: The big question is whether voters unhappy with shoddy ethics and financial missteps overall at the D.C. Council will oust Michael A. Brown (I-At Large) in favor of strong challenger David Grosso (I).
(The other at-large incumbent, Vincent Orange, will win because he's the Democratic nominee in the heavily Democratic city.)
Brown has a record of personal financial problems, including missed tax payments, and recently got in an embarrassing dispute with a top aide over embezzled or misallocated campaign funds. Grosso has mounted a well-financed campaign and should benefit from votes of new residents looking for change in the District.
Forecast: Grosso.
So here I am, out on some limbs. At the end of Thursday's column, I'll crow about my successes and stoically acknowledge the bum calls. I only hope the former are well in the majority.
mccartneyr@washpost.com
For previous Robert McCartney columns, go to washingtonpost.com/mccartney.
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November 4, 2012 Sunday 8:12 PM EST
Ryan makes a final campaign push in swing Va.
BYLINE: Laura Vozzella
SECTION: A section; Pg. A25
LENGTH: 400 words
RICHMOND - Paul Ryan jumped aboard the Republican ticket on a battleship in Norfolk. With three days to go in the campaign, he made an airport hangar in Richmond part of his final push.
"Virginia is important," Ryan told hundreds Saturday at Richmond International Airport. "Virginia and just a handful of states hold the key to this."
Ryan, in choosing to make the commonwealth one of his last stops in the campaign, hardly needed to say that out loud. Both sides are making a flurry of last-minute stops in the state, where the race for president is running neck-and-neck.
That's on top of scores of visits made since the summer, which have made Virginia the third-most-visited state.
The presidential candidates, their running mates and spouses have logged 88 visits to Virginia since June. That puts the commonwealth behind only Ohio, with 126 visits, and Florida, with 112.
Four years ago, Barack Obama became the first Democrat since President Lyndon B. Johnson to win Virginia. Both sides consider the state very much in play this time around.
After Ryan's rally Saturday, Obama was due to attend a rally in Prince William County with former president Bill Clinton and musician Dave Matthews.
On Sunday night, Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney will appear in Newport News. Come Monday, on the eve of the election, he will headline two rallies, one at a Lynchburg airport and another at George Mason University.
Vice President Biden, accompanied by his wife, Jill, will stump Monday in Sterling and Richmond.
Both campaigns have lavished unprecedented attention on the state, one that for decades had been so reliably red that both sides safely ignored it.
Less welcome than the visits, but no less noticeable, has been the barrage of TV ads that have inundated Virginia media markets for months.
Virginians soon tired of all the commercials. And now, the face time might even be losing its luster.
Jill Vander Pol of Glen Allen came to see Ryan on Saturday but said she has had about enough.
"We're politically pooped," she said.
Virginia House Speaker William J. Howell (R-Stafford) and his wife passed up a chance to see Ryan last month to keep a date with their grandchildren, whose busy schedules make them harder to pin down than vice-presidential contenders.
"I was telling my wife: 'They'll probably be back. We've got three weeks to go,' " Howell said.
vozzellal@washpost.com
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November 4, 2012 Sunday 8:12 PM EST
Contempt for voters
BYLINE: Editorial Board
SECTION: Editorial; Pg. A18
LENGTH: 624 words
THROUGH ALL the flip-flops, there has been one consistency in the campaign of Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney: a contempt for the electorate.
How else to explain his refusal to disclose essential information? Defying recent bipartisan tradition, he failed to release the names of his bundlers - the high rollers who collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations. He never provided sufficient tax returns to show voters how he became rich.
How, other than an assumption that voters are too dim to remember what Mr. Romney has said across the years and months, to account for his breathtaking ideological shifts? He was a friend of immigrants, then a scourge of immigrants, then again a friend. He was a Kissingerian foreign policy realist, then a McCain-like hawk, then a purveyor of peace. He pioneered Obamacare, he detested Obamacare, then he found elements in it to cherish. Assault weapons were bad, then good. Abortion was okay, then bad. Climate change was an urgent problem; then, not so much. Hurricane cleanup was a job for the states, until it was once again a job for the feds.
The same presumption of gullibility has infused his misleading commercials (see: Jeep jobs to China) and his refusal to lay out an agenda. Mr. Romney promised to replace the Affordable Care Act but never said with what. He promised an alternative to President Obama's lifeline to young, undocumented immigrants but never deigned to describe it.
And then there has been his chronic, baldly dishonest defense of mathematically impossible budget proposals. He promised to cut income tax rates without exploding the deficit or tilting the tax code toward the rich - but he refused to say how he could bring that off. When challenged, he cited "studies" that he maintained proved him right. But the studies were a mix of rhetoric, unrealistic growth projections and more serious economics that actually proved him wrong.
This last is important - maybe the crux of the next four years. History has shown that it's a lot easier to cut taxes than to reduce spending. Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush promised to do both, managed to do only the first and (with plenty of help from Congress) greatly increased the national debt.
Now Mr. Romney promises to reduce income tax rates by one-fifth - for the rich, that means from 35 percent to 28 percent - and to raise defense spending while balancing the budget. To do so, he would reduce other spending - unspecified - and take away deductions - unspecified. One of the studies he cited, by Harvard economist Martin Feldstein, said Mr. Romney could make the tax math work by depriving every household earning $100,000 or more of all of its charitable deductions, mortgage-interest deductions and deductions for state and local income taxes.
Does Mr. Romney favor ending those popular tax breaks? He won't say. But he did take issue with Mr. Feldstein's definition of the middle class: Mr. Romney said he would protect households earning $250,000 or less. In which case the Feldstein study did not vindicate the Romney arithmetic - it refuted it. Yet the candidate has continued to cite the study.
Within limits, all candidates say and do what they have to say and do to win. Mr. Obama also has dodged serious interviews and news conferences. He has offered few specifics for a second-term agenda. He, too, aired commercials that distorted his opponent's statements.
But Mr. Obama has a record; voters know his priorities. His budget plan is inadequate, but it wouldn't make things worse.
Mr. Romney, by contrast, seems to be betting that voters have no memories, poor arithmetic skills and a general inability to look behind the curtain. We hope the results Tuesday prove him wrong.
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November 4, 2012 Sunday 8:12 PM EST
Seeing stars on the final weekend
BYLINE: Philip Rucker;David Nakamura
SECTION: A section; Pg. A01
LENGTH: 1277 words
On the final weekend of their deadlocked campaign, President Obama and Mitt Romney called forth every supporter they could muster to gain any possible edge they could find.
In a tiny New Hampshire town, four out-of-state surrogates for Romney chatted with the lunchtime crowd at a diner decorated with a pink Cadillac on stilts. In Reno, an Olympic speedskater talked up the Republican nominee. In Virginia, Sens. John McCain (Ariz.) and Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) targeted voters in military communities. Two of Romney's sons campaigned door-to-door in Florida.
Not to be outdone, the Obama campaign sent out its stars on Saturday. Katy Perry, decked out in a body-hugging blue leather dress with the Obama campaign slogan "Forward" on it, rocked the stage before Obama's speech in Milwaukee. John Mellencamp did an acoustic rendition of "Small Town" in Dubuque, Iowa. Dave Matthews was scheduled to perform ahead of Obama's appearance Saturday night in Northern Virginia.
And at Cleveland State University, about 100 students were treated to an impromptu concert on Saturday morning by Stevie Wonder, who then went to an early-voting center and spoke briefly on Obama's behalf on the steps of a church across the street.
"They are not mega events, but the kind of things that keep people interested and give them a sense of how important the ground game really is," explained Tom Rath, a Romney adviser who shepherded a surrogate foursome - Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, Sen. John Thune (S.D.), former senator James M. Talent (Mo.) and Rep. Marsha Blackburn (Tenn.) - through New Hampshire on Saturday.
Both campaigns tried to assert momentum in other ways, too. At Obama's Chicago headquarters, aides trumpeted favorable headlines from the Circleville Herald, a 6,600-circulation Ohio newspaper, and Ha'aretz, the Israeli news source. And at Romney's Boston headquarters, aides tried to gin up a controversy over Obama's remark Friday that voting against Romney is "the best revenge," producing a new ad overnight and trying to pump outrage across Twitter.
The candidates themselves flew in and out of many of the same battleground states, delivering the same dueling messages: the incumbent trying to convince the nation that he has made real progress and the challenger offering himself as an agent of change.
Romney began his weekend in his adopted home state of New Hampshire, where he was hoping to draw undecided voters and, perhaps, Obama supporters to his side.
"I need you to spend some time in the next three days to see neighbors - and maybe ones with an Obama sign in front of their home - and just go by and say, 'Look, let's talk this through a bit.' Because, you see, President Obama came into office with so many promises and he's fallen so far short," Romney told an enthusiastic crowd at the airport in Newington, N.H.
Romney then walked a few hundred yards across the tarmac to board his plane en route to Iowa, and on to Colorado. By the time he goes to sleep in his own bed Monday night, the Republican nominee will have touched down in eight battleground states, some of them multiple times.
During his first stop in Mentor, Ohio, Obama bounded onto a stage at the local high school, where 4,000 supporters had gathered. His voice was raspy and hoarse, a product, campaign aides said, of a busy campaign schedule combined with regular conference calls to officials dealing with the response to Hurricane Sandy.
The president warned that his rivals are counting on his supporters being "so worn down by all the squabbling and all the dysfunction, that you'll finally just give up and walk away and put them back in power."
"No!" the audience responded.
"That's what they're counting on," Obama continued. "In other words, their bet is on cynicism. But, Ohio, my bet is on you. And by the way, I don't feel cynical. I feel hopeful - because of you."
Obama visited four states Saturday and is set to travel to four more on Sunday and three on Monday, ending with a final rally in Des Moines, in the state that launched the onetime underdog to the presidency.
Obama's campaign, meanwhile, opened 5,100 "hyper-local offices" in living rooms, local stores and barbershops in battleground states to get "as close to individual voters as possible," according to campaign manager Jim Messina. Aides said volunteers would perform 700,000 shifts through Election Day.
In the Cleveland area, the Obama campaign distributed fliers noting that celebrity surrogates will stop by the key Cuyahoga County early-voting site this weekend, including Vivica A. Fox, Will.I.Am and Sophia Bush on Saturday and John Legend, Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson and Aisha Tyler on Sunday.
But it was former president Bill Clinton whom the campaign was counting on the most. With three rallies on Saturday in Virginia, including one that marked the first time he and Obama have been on the trail together, Clinton clocked in his 29th appearance for Obama since giving a speech at the Democratic National Convention. And he's set to do eight more, including appearing in Pennsylvania and North Carolina over the next two days - two states Obama has not visited since holding the convention in Charlotte in early September.
"It doesn't take a poll to tell you that there is almost no one who can deliver a more compelling case about what it takes to manage the country through a challenging economic time and who is better suited to stand up for the middle class than President Clinton," Obama campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.
Clinton's appearances in states such as Minnesota and Pennsylvania - which Obama carried easily four years ago - showed that the Obama campaign had taken notice that Romney's side was making a late play in both states. And Obama's appearance in Wisconsin - he'll make another Monday - showed his concern about another state that he carried comfortably four years ago.
Romney has more than 60 surrogates, split into teams of three or four, fanning out across 11 battleground states this weekend.
While Romney has sought to appeal to moderate voters, many of his surrogates have offered red meat to the base. Introducing Romney in Dubuque, Sen. Charles E. Grassley (Iowa) recalled mentioning Obama in front of his 3-year-old great-granddaughter and she said, "Grandpa, don't say that dirty word."
Friday night in West Chester, Ohio, where more than 40 Republican leaders joined Romney and running mate Paul Ryan on stage, many of the introductory speakers tore into Obama over his handling of the killing of American diplomats in Benghazi, Libya. Former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani suggested that if Romney was president, the attacks would have been avoided.
Romney's final campaign swing has been tinged with nostalgia. He is traveling with his wife, Ann, who had been keeping her own schedule, as well as a half-dozen advisers and intimates who have been at his side since he began his quest for the presidency five years ago.
As they boarded the plane in New Hampshire, Romney's advisers posed for pictures. And in Dubuque, where Romney made a grand entrance at an afternoon rally by descending the steps of his gleaming white and blue plane to the soundtrack of "Rudy," his strategists filmed the whole shebang on their iPhones, just for posterity.
"We've come a long way, you guys. We've been here a few times before right in this wonderful city," Romney told the crowd in Dubuque, where during the last campaign Ann Romney once fell off a stage. ("I fell on da-butt in Dubuque," she likes to joke.)
"With great friends all around us, we've had some long days and some short nights, and we are almost there," Romney said.
ruckerp@washpost.com
nakamurad@washpost.com
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Election 2012
November 4, 2012 Sunday 5:56 PM EST
Romney staffer ducks question on Jeep ad
BYLINE: Rachel Weiner
LENGTH: 344 words
A top staffer for Mitt Romney's campaign avoided commenting Sunday on a controversial ad campaign that suggests Chrysler is moving U.S. jobs to China.
Asked by Fox News' Chris Wallace if the misleading ad was a "mistake," Romney political director Rich Beeson quickly changed the subject.
"Well, I found it interesting that President Obama would attack Mitt Romney on that when they put up an ad saying that Gov. Romney says Let Detroit Go Bankrupt' when that's a headline from the New York Times op-ed," Beeson responded. "And the second thing is President Obama talking about scaring people when yesterday he's out there saying voting is the best revenge.'"
Romney did not use the phrase "Let Detroit go bankrupt" in his 2008 New York Times op-ed on the auto bailout. However, he later defended the headline on television. The Republican was calling for a managed bankruptcy. not liquidation.
In Romney's ad, the narrator says, "Obama took GM and Chrysler into bankruptcy and sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China. Mitt Romney will fight for every American job." But Chrysler is considering expanding its Chinese operations for the Chinese market, not eliminating American jobs.
Asked about the same ad on NBC's "Meet the Press." House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said he couldn't comment because he hadn't seen it."I've not seen the ad," he said. "They're apparently not running it in Virginia."
But Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) defended the Jeep ad on CNN, in an interview with Candy Crowley.
"Jeep has said they're going to reopen a facility that was closed after DaimlerChrysler broke apart years ago, and it'll be in China to produce for the Chinese market," Portman said. "That's all the ad says. There's nothing inaccurate about it."
When Crowley noted that Chrysler took issue with the implication that jobs are being exported, Portman responded that critics were reading something into the spot that wasn't there: "Well there's, you know, that the suggestion that you might want to make but, you know, that's not what the ad says."
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November 4, 2012 Sunday
Met 2 Edition
Welcome to the best - or worst? - Pinocchios of this presidential race
BYLINE: Glenn Kessler
SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A24
LENGTH: 1577 words
It's hard to believe this nasty and brutish presidential campaign is coming to an end.
According to our Pinocchio Tracker, through most of the race President Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney were neck and neck for the average number of Pinocchios, about two each. But then in the final months of the campaign, Romney pulled ahead (so to speak) with a series of statements and commercials that stretched the limits. Obama's average also got worse - and was nothing to be proud of.
In the end, Romney finished with an average ranking of 2.4 Pinocchios, compared with 2.11 for Obama. Not counting debates (when we awarded no Pinocchios), we rated 92 statements by Obama and 77 by Romney - as well as more than 200 claims made by surrogates and interest groups, as well as other GOP candidates. Among the primary aspirants, Rep. Michele Bachmann (Minn.) finished with the worst rating overall of any candidate - an average of 3.08 Pinocchios.
Here are some of the lowlights of the 2012 campaign.
Most Absurd 'Fact' - Republican version
Former House speaker Newt Gingrich's claim that Ronald Reagan never got a break from the "elite media" as an actor. As an example, Gingrich said only one of Reagan's movies - "King's Row" - got a good review from the New York Times. First, Reagan was a Democrat when he was in show business, so Gingrich's point was nonsensical. Second, four of Reagan's top 10 movies got raves from the New York Times - and "King's Row" was panned.
Most Absurd 'Fact' - Democratic version
Making a pitch for the president's jobs bill, Vice President Biden repeatedly claimed that incidents of rape in Flint, Mich., had tripled after the police force was cut, as part of a dubious argument that there was a connection between the crime rate and the number of police. He even asserted that rapes and other crime would increase if the GOP did not vote for the jobs bill. But you need to have your facts straight if you are going to make incendiary charges. We investigated, and it turned out that incidents of rape in Flint actually fell after the number of police was cut.
Worst Super PAC Ad - Republican version
A pro-Gingrich super PAC released a 29-minute video titled "King of Bain," which portrayed Romney as a greedy job killer ruining the lives of Americans. It foreshadowed the Obama attacks on Romney's record as chief of Bain Capital, but it was so over the top that it made many of those later ads seem tame. One "case study" featured selectively edited footage of interviews of workers, who later said they were misled about the purpose of the film. They actually had no complaints about Romney or Bain at all.
Worst Super PAC Ad - Democratic version
Priorities USA Action, a pro-Obama group, aired a provocative ad that suggested Romney was responsible for the cancer death of the wife of a former steelworker who had lost his health insurance. But it turned out she died from cancer five years after the closure of the plant - and had her own health insurance for a period after the steelworker, Joe Soptic, lost his job. As we put it, "On just every level, this ad stretches the bounds of common sense and decency."
Silliest Blooper - Republican version
Until we highlighted this claim, Romney had made this line a regular staple of his campaign stump speech: "We are the only people on the Earth that put our hand over our heart during the playing of the national anthem." We easily disproved this by randomly searching YouTube and finding numerous examples of sports figures and schoolchildren from around the world placing their hands on their hearts during the playing of their national anthems. Apparently, Romney was trying to ding Obama for once failing to do so during the 2008 campaign, but his belief in American exceptionalism was misplaced.
Silliest Blooper - Democratic version
Obama's claim that President Rutherford B. Hayes was so adverse to new ideas that he had asked of the telephone: "Who would ever use one?" It turns out that the 19th president was such an advocate of new technology that he not only thought the telephone was "wonderful" but also installed the first one in Washington, in the White House, just four months after it was introduced. His telephone number was "1."
Most Baseless Claim - Republican version
The repeated claim that Obama said that government, not people, built successful businesses. The truncated quote "you didn't build that," drawn from a late-night rally with ungrammatical phrasing by Obama, became the basis of repeated attack ads and even the first night of the GOP convention. But any fair reading of Obama's comments showed he was making a standard Democratic argument about community success - and that "that" referred to roads and bridges.
Most Baseless Claim - Democratic version
Sen. Harry M. Reid's repeated claim, made with zero evidence, that Romney "hadn't paid any taxes for 10 years." The Nevada Democrat said he knew this was true because a person who had invested with Bain Capital had called his office and told him this "fact." We couldn't find a single expert who thought there was any credibility to the Senate majority leader's reckless claim. Romney eventually released a summary prepared by his accountants showing he had paid federal and state taxes in each of the past 20 years.
Claim That Would Not Die - Republican version
Nearly two years ago, we looked deeply at Romney's claim that Obama had gone on an "apology tour" as a new president - and we found no evidence to back up the assertion. Yet a version of that claim appeared in almost every speech by the Republican nominee, and Romney defended it in the final presidential debate. Then his campaign cut a new ad from his remarks, skillfully snipping out the fact that Romney incorrectly said the offending speeches were made in the Middle East.
Claim That Would Not Die - Democratic version
The Obama campaign repeatedly asserted that Romney, while at Bain Capital, had outsourced jobs to foreign countries such as China and had also sent jobs to India as governor of Massachusetts. The evidence was slim, at best, and often turned on obscure issues as whether Romney still ran Bain Capital while taking a leave to manage the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. Few non-facts ever received as much ink and television time.
'Mediscare' - Republican version
Republicans initially claimed that Obama raided $500 billion from Medicare to fund the health-care law - a figure that later jumped to more than $700 billion for arcane budget reasons. But these were reductions in projected spending, mainly aimed at providers, and would not affect traditional Medicare benefits. Moreover, Republicans had adopted virtually the same "cuts" in their own budgets.
'Mediscare' -Democratic version
Democrats repeatedly charged that seniors would pay $6,400 extra a year in Medicare premiums under the overhaul plan promoted by Romney's running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.). But this was a figure far in the future, based on an early and less-generous version of the plan. A recent study of the "premium support" model suggested any actual increase in premiums would be far less.
Worst Math Skills - Republican version
Romney's math showing how he would add 12 million jobs in his first term as president. He cited three studies, which collectively added up to 12 million jobs, but the studies had 10-year time frames, not four. Moreover, two of the studies did not even evaluate Romney's own plans.
Worst Math Skills - Democratic version
Obama's claim that "90 percent" of the current deficit is due to President George W. Bush's policies, such as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama certainly inherited a mess, but any reasonable accounting showed that as his term wore on, Obama's policies increasingly were responsible for the deficit. By our estimate, by 2011, about 44 percent was due to Obama's policies. Bush's policies were responsible for about 10 percent, and the rest was due to the recession and forecasting errors.
A 'Plan' That Doesn't Exist - Democratic version
The Obama campaign claimed that Romney would raise taxes on the middle class by $2,500. This was based on a nonpartisan study trying to figure out how Romney could cut tax rates by 20 percent but still make his tax plan revenue-neutral. The study concluded that eventually the elimination of tax deductions for the wealthy would also affect the middle class. So Romney's math may not have added up, but he never had a plan to raise taxes.
A 'Plan' That Doesn't Exist - Republican version
The Romney campaign countered that attack by charging that, instead, Obama would raise taxes by $4,000 on the middle class. This was also based on a study, which calculated the distribution of the debt burden on Americans. Obama's budget fell in a middle range, and Romney's budget would probably have a similar effect. But this was not evidence of a planned tax increase. Far from it.
Most Complex Subject to Spin - bipartisan effort
The Obama administration's memo saying it would accept welfare waivers related to worker participation targets prompted bipartisan spinning. The Romney campaign aired an over-the-top ad that accused Obama of gutting the welfare reform law, even though no waivers have yet been issued. But the Democratic counterspin was also questionable, leaving largely unanswered what the administration hoped to accomplish with the new rules.
kesslerg@washpost.com
To read previous Fact Checker columns, go to washingtonpost.com/factchecker.
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November 4, 2012 Sunday
Every Edition
P red iction ad d icti on
BYLINE: Erik Wemple
SECTION: OUTLOOK; Pg. B01
LENGTH: 1589 words
On MSNBC's "The Daily Rundown" on Wednesday, host Chuck Todd was presenting a variety of electoral college outcomes for the Nov. 6 presidential election. With the aid of a clever interactive monitor, Todd was shifting around various battleground states to explain Mitt Romney's most plausible route to a White House-clinching 270 electoral votes.
In the middle of it all, his voice exasperated, he issued this caveat: "When I'm doing this, I'm not saying this is where NBC says the race is right now. I'm going through scenarios, so don't overreact on Twitter."
Compounded by a treatable case of socialmediaphobia, Todd was displaying a bit of old-fashioned caution, ducking behind the curtain of "I'm just a reporter, folks." How out of touch. Campaign 2012 has seen news outlets go ever more deeply into making news, not merely reporting on it. They don't just conduct polls, as they have for years. They have embraced the art of computer modeling, generating a constantly revised picture of the national political scene.
More noise than illumination, you might suppose. Perhaps, but only if you ignore all the noise that the media's long-standing pundit-centric product has churned out for decades.
Watch for it: Just as fact-checking operations have gone viral across journalism in recent years, modeling and forecasting franchises are poised for multiplication. These days, the New York Times, Real Clear Politics and the Huffington Post run highly trafficked poll-aggregation machines offering a look at toss-up states, who's got the lead and a lot of other stuff you didn't realize you were curious about. Other organizations that matter in political coverage - from the major networks, including NBC, to cable outlets to newspapers and universities - sponsor their own polling, offer their own number-crunching services on polls or both.
Bruises attach as easily to the pollsters and forecasters as they do to the fact-checkers and political reporters, all of whom sustain bias allegations and general nastiness in the course of business. The hazard of these occupations is that, at some point, you'll have to issue information that displeases one side or the other. When you do, there are a bunch of people on Twitter ready to overreact.
Nate Silver, the brain behind the mile-deep polling analysis at the New York Times' FiveThirtyEight blog, has made news this election cycle as both modeling guru and punching bag. Silver's blog aggregates and analyzes massive amounts of poll data and organizes them into clean, snapshot impressions of who's up and who's down in the presidential race and other contests. The FiveThirtyEight model has consistently favored President Obama over Romney, creating an obvious opening for critics. MSNBC morning host Joe Scarborough, in a remark that reflects many conservatives' reactions to Silver's oeuvre, recently suggested that the poll aggregator was an ideologue and a joke.
The swell of Silver-centric commentary in the campaign's home stretch leaves search engines with a bit of sorting to do. When he's not getting slammed for putting out results that favor Obama, he's being applauded for his quantitative rigor or his understanding of his craft. Politico, AtlanticWire, BuzzFeed, The Post and others have all weighed in.
Knocking those who deal in polling data and voter demographics isn't a towering intellectual challenge. There's always disparity in survey numbers. In 2008, for example, pollsters whiffed on the New Hampshire Democratic primary, showing then-newcomer Obama with the edge over eventual winner Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Pollsters have never promised precision. That's why their surveys come equipped with margins of error. Paul J. Lavrakas, president of the American Association for Public Opinion Research, cautions that polling is "not pure science . . . it's subject to a lot of threats," including imprecision and "biases." For example, pollsters have yet to lick the problem of accounting for the growing number of cellphone-only citizens, which increases the inaccuracy of surveys that tend to reach land-line users only.
To its eternal discredit, polling is never omniscient, especially in a tight race such as this one. "The interesting dynamic in this race is the number of toss-up states has expanded in the last three weeks," says John McIntyre, founder of Real Clear Politics. "It reflects the uncertainty out there. We don't know what's going to happen. No one knows what's going to happen."
The churn of polling results, too, feeds a fast-twitched Internet not known for sowing a deep understanding of our country. State polls, national polls and surveys of all kinds keep landing, multiple times per day, giving Linkville just what it's built for: a never-ending string of revisions, corrections, annotations and amplifications, each one worth more page views.
Yet whatever its drawbacks, a media world populated by more and more Nate Silvers and their reams of data promises a brighter future than the one to which Americans had resigned themselves: the world of the pundit. As Silver himself says, "I think we represent a counterweight to a lot of the BS, frankly, that you hear in the mainstream media."
One example here: "momentum," a poisonous word for Silver but one frequently used by pundits to describe a campaign's ups and downs. "When the term 'momentum' is used, I think that's a red flag that the coverage you're reading is suffering from bias," Silver says, noting that the bias could take any form, from a pundit's political leanings to simply a desire for a close contest that's more fun to cover.
Everyone agrees that Romney secured "momentum" around the time of his shellacking of the president in the first debate on Oct. 3. But how long did it last? In an Oct. 25 post, Silver argued that if public opinion mattered in computing momentum, Romney's version would have petered out a week or two after the debate. However, he said, pundits kept referring to it as an active dynamic in the race for weeks.
On the "Today" show on Oct. 27, Scarborough minted this take on the election: "So for Romney, I think he's going to be hoping more for this momentum that is sweeping from the first debate to continue forward and carry him over the finish line. And it's just momentum versus the Obama ground game."
There's some perfect punditry for you. In 40 words, Scarborough managed to weave a few strands of conventional wisdom into a compelling-sounding, even-handed wrap-up of where things stand.
Silver himself sometimes envies the wishy-washiness afforded to pundits. "I'd be more comfortable if Obama were a slight favorite [in his modeling]. . . . But that's not where the math - it's not where I think it takes you," he says.
On Thursday, Silver's model was giving Obama a 79 percent chance of winning the election. The luxury of his contraption is its built-in defense against being wrong. He's not calculating the size of an Obama victory, only the probability that the president will end up on top. If Obama loses, Silver can always say, "Well, that's okay, my model gave Romney a 21 percent chance of pulling it out."
When Silver says that 80 to 90 percent of punditry contributes nothing of journalistic value, his modeling is being charitable by about 10 percentage points. On television, the goal is to panel up and talk, with the hope of stirring a disagreement that gets shared like crazy on Facebook. On the Web, the goal is volume, and nothing yields volume quite like political analysis. Politico, the king of volume and analysis, printed this paragraph before the debate between Vice President Biden and Paul Ryan:
"The best case scenario for each? A clear win. The worst case scenario for each? A clear loss. The murkiest scenario for each? A debate that gets fought to a draw, which the press will interpret in different ways but which also likely won't stop the GOP ticket's momentum."
That's important context. Because no matter your view of polling, no matter how biased you deem the people behind the questions and the modeling, think of the choice: impression-based horse-race coverage by pundits vs. data-based horse-race coverage by statisticians.
Given Silver's new fame, there's an 84 percent chance that media outlets will christen at least 10 new poll-modeling gizmos in time for election 2016. "I think I'm taking advantage, in part, of an underserved market," Silver says. "The fact that I get kind of undeserved attention, both negative and mostly positive, would suggest there's a market deficiency - that you have a gang of maybe 500 pundits."
And not enough modelers.
Much has been made of the possibility that pollsters and even modelers will be proved wrong come Nov. 7. Lavrakas says that outcome would be a "major setback" with "dire consequences."
Silver has a milder take. "I know as a matter of practice that I'm going to have more opportunities if my prediction looks good and fewer if it doesn't," he says.
When's the last time a cable pundit had to face such consequences?
I'm more forgiving on the forecasting models. If the model doesn't work, tweak it. If that one doesn't work, tweak it again. But keep the reality-based analysis coming. I'll take a deeply explained essay on the eccentricities of New Hampshire political forecasting or a disquisition on the house biases of polling organizations over conventional punditry every time.
wemplee@washpost.com
Erik Wemple reports and writes about the media in his Washington Post opinion blog.
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The Washington Post
November 4, 2012 Sunday
Met 2 Edition
50 st ates, 11th h our
BYLINE: Dan Balz;Chris Cillizza
SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A01
LENGTH: 1972 words
On the final weekend of a fiercely fought presidential campaign, President Obama holds a narrow advantage over Mitt Romney in the crucial contest for the electoral votes needed to win the White House, even as national polls continue to show the candidates in a virtual tie for the popular vote.
In Congress, despite record levels of disapproval with the institution, voters seem likely to opt for the status quo - Democrats in charge of the Senate and Republicans in the House.
Democrats are expected to gain seats in the House but not the 25 needed to recapture the majority lost in the Republican sweep of 2010. In the Senate, Democrats hold a 53-47 majority, including two independents who caucus with them. Although 10 or more races were considered too close to call through much of the fall, Democrats are now in a position to maintain their majority, although perhaps barely.
This election assessment, along with reports on all the states, is based on interviews by a team of Washington Post reporters with strategists in the two parties and both presidential campaigns, as well as state and local officials and independent analysts. The assessment includes an analysis of polls on individual states and races that have poured forth over the final weeks before the election.
In the presidential campaign, the biggest and most consequential unknowns at this point are the size and shape of the voting population. An electorate that resembles or even slightly exceeds 2008 in terms of the share of minority voters vs. white voters would clearly benefit Obama. A slight decline in the minority share of the electorate and a more even split between Democrats and Republicans - closer to the 2004 electorate than 2008 - would greatly help Romney. Obama, however, may do better among white voters in some of the battleground states than he will do nationally.
The latest Washington Post-ABC News national poll shows a dead heat this weekend, with Obama and Romney both at 48 percent among likely voters. The survey has barely fluctuated.
Obama spent part of this past week in his official capacity as commander in chief as Hurricane Sandy devastated the Atlantic Coast, pummeling New Jersey and New York the hardest. His attention to the cleanup earned praise from New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a Romney supporter who delivered the keynote address at the Republican National Convention.
Almost half of all Americans said Obama's hurricane response would be a factor in their vote, according to the latest Post-ABC tracking poll. An earlier survey found that 79 percent rated his handling of the situation excellent or good. Another wild card is whether the latest jobs report will have a demonstrable effect on an electorate deeply polarized and with few undecided voters left. The report, released Friday, showed that 171,000 jobs were added while the unemployment rate ticked up to 7.9 percent.
Presidential
Through much of the fall campaign, nine states have defined the presidential battleground: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin.
Obama began the general-election race with a base of 18 states plus the District, totaling 237 electoral votes. Romney began with a base of 23 states, totaling 191 electoral votes. North Carolina is tipping toward Romney and Nevada toward Obama, putting the president at 243 and Romney at 206.
Romney is making a late play in Pennsylvania and Minnesota and will campaign in the Keystone State on Sunday. Both states continue to lean toward the president, but Obama's campaign has decided to send former president Bill Clinton to Pennsylvania on Sunday for extra measure.
Assuming those states continue to stay in Obama's column, the president would need only 27 of the remaining 89 electoral votes to win. Romney would need 64 of the 89, which explains why Obama still has an easier - but by no means certain - path to an Electoral College majority. For example, he could win a second term simply by winning Florida, which remains competitive.
If the Sunshine State goes for Romney, then much will depend on Ohio, which is why it is the focus of so much campaign activity in the final days. Its 18 electoral votes represent the bulwark of Obama's Midwestern line of defense against Romney.
If the president were to carry Ohio - and he continues to hold a narrow lead in public polls there - he could win an electoral majority by adding Virginia (13 electoral votes) or Wisconsin (10) or Colorado (nine), or by winning Iowa (six) and New Hampshire (four).
If Romney does not win Ohio, his path to victory would have to include Colorado, Florida, Virginia, Wisconsin and either Iowa or New Hampshire. But if he does capture the Buckeye State, he could become president by taking Florida and Virginia and then just one other contested state.
Poll
The Post-ABC tracking survey underscored the closeness of the race nationally. During two weeks of polling, the largest lead by either candidate was 50 percent to 47 percent, favoring Romney. Obama's biggest was one point. Neither was statistically significant.
Obama's job approval rating continues to hold at 50 percent, with 34 percent saying they strongly approve and 39 percent saying they strongly disapprove. Romney holds a statistically insignificant three-point edge on who is trusted more to handle the economy. Obama has a six-point advantage on who better understands Americans' economic problems.
Through most of the campaign and as recently as October, more voters offered unfavorable than favorable impressions of Romney. Today a majority of likely voters has a favorable view. In fact, he and Obama are virtually tied on this measure: 54 percent say they have a favorable impression of the president, while 53 percent say the same of Romney.
For the first time in the Post-ABC poll, independent voters are evenly split between the two candidates, at 46 percent each. Until now, Romney has held an advantage ranging from three to 20 points. Obama leads among women by six points, Romney among men by seven points.
Obama is winning 38 percent of white voters and 78 percent of non-whites. He gets 33 percent of whites without college degrees and 44 percent of whites with college degrees.
Campaign
Obama's hopes for a second term rest on his ability to reassemble and motivate a coalition of African Americans, Hispanics, young voters and women, despite disappointment and diminished enthusiasm since his historic 2008 victory.
In Ohio, he is aided by the success of the auto-industry bailout and the campaign's attacks on Romney's business background, which have bolstered the president's support among white working-class voters. Beyond that, Romney has been hammered in Ohio for an ad suggesting that Chrysler's new owners plan to shift production of Jeeps to China, which the chief executive denied.
Romney has a motivated base, with Republicans eager to defeat a president they think is taking the country in the wrong direction. But he needs both a turnout that is large enough to make the GOP share of the electorate almost equal to that of the Democrats. He also needs an edge among independent voters.
For the past week, Obama's advisers have expressed confidence that the race is theirs to lose and that they will not lose it. "The economic debate has crystallized," campaign manager Jim Messina said Saturday. "We have picked up steam and now what we have to do is turn out our vote. We continue to lead or are tied in every battleground state and have the ability to get to 270 electoral votes in a variety of ways."
Romney advisers have said their polls show that the battlegrounds, particularly Ohio, are closer than public surveys suggest. They also say that an incumbent who is not above 50 percent in the polls in the final days is in a precarious position.
"When you take a look at the big three - Florida, Virginia and Ohio - we feel very good," said Romney senior adviser Russ Schriefer. "Ohio is tight but it's tied and I think we've got some advantages there. I think then you look at the rest of the map that, in a million years, the Obama campaign never thought they would be campaigning in these states the weekend before the election."
He added: "We're going to win this thing."
Senate
Democrats appear poised to hold on to their narrow Senate majority on Tuesday, a prospect that as recently as a year ago seemed far more difficult, given the disparity in the number of seats Democrats (23) and Republicans (10) had to defend.
The turning point for Democrats may have been the surprise decision by Republican Sen. Olympia J. Snowe (Maine) not to seek another term. Snowe was considered a shoo-in for reelection but in her absence, former governor Angus King, an independent who would caucus with Democrats, has emerged as a favorite.
Then Republicans made a series of self-inflicted mistakes, two centering on the subject of rape. Indiana Treasurer Richard Mourdock, who ousted longtime Sen. Richard G. Lugar in the GOP primary, gave Democratic Rep. Joe Donnelly an opening. Then Mourdock's comments at a late October debate - where he said a woman who becomes pregnant by rape is carrying a "gift from God" and therefore must have the child - turned the race from a tossup to one that favors Donnelly.
In Missouri, Rep. Todd Akin won the GOP nomination and days later made a comment about "legitimate rape" rarely causing pregnancy that created a national firestorm. Much of the party establishment abandoned Akin, but he refused to drop out of the race. Sen. Claire McCaskill (D) is favored to win reelection.
Democrats have growing confidence that former Obama administration official Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard law professor, will beat Sen. Scott Brown (R) in Massachusetts. The contest is the premier Senate race in the country for the seat long held by the late Edward M. Kennedy (D).
Republicans have a number of opportunities to pick up seats held by retiring Democrats. Races in Nebraska and North Dakota, where Democrats are retiring, seem likely to fall for Republicans. Virginia has a very tight race between two former governors: Democrat Timothy M. Kaine and Republican George Allen. In Montana, Sen. Jon Tester (D) and Rep. Denny Rehberg (R) have been tied for months.
Even if several of those races tip to Republicans in the final hours, it still seems unlikely that the GOP will add the four seats it would need to control the Senate if Obama is reelected or the three it would would need if Romney wins. The most likely outcome is no net change, or Republican gains of one or two seats.
House
In the battle for control of the House, it has become clear over the past few months that the wave of elections that roiled the chamber in 2006, 2008 and 2010 will not be repeated Tuesday. Democrats need 25 seats to regain the majority. Not even their most optimistic strategists think that is anything more than a remote possibility.
Because of the decennial redistricting process, both parties will score heavy gains in certain states. Republicans look poised to pick up at least three and maybe four seats in North Carolina. Democrats could take five seats from Republicans in Illinois.
After taking control of more governorships and state legislatures in 2010, Republicans had the political muscle to carve up new congressional districts to their advantage. They shored up some of their most vulnerable incumbents and drew difficult districts for Democrats.
The result: Republicans are now likely to gain at least 10 Democratic seats simply because of the partisanship of redrawn districts, and Democrats are fighting from behind in their effort to win back the House. That is why overall Democratic gains may be held to the mid-single digits.
balzd@washpost.com
chris.cillizza@washingtonpost.com
Aaron Blake, Sean Sullivan, Jon Cohen and Scott Clement contributed to this report.
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November 4, 2012 Sunday
Suburban Edition
Fearless forecasts for our elections
BYLINE: Robert McCartney
SECTION: METRO; Pg. C01
LENGTH: 846 words
For a predominantly Democratic region, the Washington area has a surprisingly high number of close, nail-biter races in Tuesday's elections.Virginia, a genuinely critical national battleground, could go either way in the presidential and U.S. Senate campaigns. (Northern Virginia will go for the Democrats, but not necessarily by enough to offset GOP advantages downstate.)
In Maryland, polls are all over the place on whether voters will say "yes" to expanding casino gambling. The contest over same-sex marriage reportedly has tightened.
Even the District, which will probably vote 9-to-1 for President Obama, has a hot race for an at-large D.C. Council seat. The result will help gauge the public's current distaste with city politicians' ethics controversies.
Given such uncertainty, a sensible columnist would avoid making predictions that might embarrass him Wednesday morning. But that's no fun.
Instead, here are fearless forecasts on the tightest and most interesting races, based on polls and interviews with hopefully well-informed observers.
Virginia presidential: Most recent polls are within the margin of error in the struggle for the Old Dominion's 13 electoral votes. Obama was leading Mitt Romney until the president's disastrous performance in the first debate, when Romney surged. Now there are signs that Obama has regained momentum.
African American turnout will be robust for the Democrat, as in 2008, when he carried the state by six percentage points. But polls show that his support has eroded among white independents disillusioned about the economy.
The GOP's ground organization is much improved from four years ago, but the Democrats are confident that theirs is still superior.
Fearless forecast: Obama squeaks through. (Incidentally, on election night, look for Virginia's results as an early sign of who's winning the presidency.)
Virginia U.S. Senate: In a fascinating example of ticket-splitting, a small but highly influential slice of deep purple voters is preparing to cast ballots for Republican Romney for president and Democrat Tim Kaine for the Senate.
Kaine has been consistently polling a couple of points better than Obama statewide. He has particular strength around Richmond, where he was a popular mayor.
That's bad news for GOP Senate candidate George Allen. Kaine has followed the classic Virginia Democratic strategy of running slightly to the right of the national ticket. He also has scored by emphasizing his willingness to bridge Congress's partisan divide.
Forecast: Kaine.
Maryland Dream Act (Ballot Question 4): Moving to the Free State, let's start with an easy one. Practically everybody agrees voters will endorse the measure to grant in-state tuition at state universities to undocumented immigrants whose families have been paying Maryland taxes.
Forecast: Approved.
Maryland congressional redistricting (Question 5): Little attention has been paid to the measure that would approve a new electoral map designed by Democrats to wrest away a Republican U.S. House seat.
Forecast: Approved.
Maryland same-sex marriage (Question 6): Polls showed gay nuptials were comfortably ahead in mid-October, but some say the margin has narrowed.
Supporters are worried about a last-minute ad blitz by opponents. They're also concerned that polls could be misleading, as some people might have given pollsters the "politically correct" answer, endorsing same-sex marriage only to vote the other way.
However, cultural attitudes on this issue have reached a tipping point, especially among young people. Obama's endorsement has been a huge help in the African American community.
Forecast: Approved.
Maryland expanded casino gambling (Question 7): This one truly is anybody's guess. Polls have varied wildly, showing trends for and against.
The Democratic Party's organizational support, plus a desire in the Washington suburbs to create jobs in Prince George's County by building a new casino there, could carry the day.
But I think many will vote "no" because they're sick of the issue and the ads. Also, there's no guarantee that the casino money will add to spending on education.
Forecast: Rejected.
D.C. Council: The big question is whether voters unhappy with shoddy ethics and financial missteps overall at the D.C. Council will oust Michael A. Brown (I-At Large) in favor of strong challenger David Grosso (I).
(The other at-large incumbent, Vincent Orange, will win because he's the Democratic nominee in the heavily Democratic city.)
Brown has a record of personal financial problems, including missed tax payments, and recently got in an embarrassing dispute with a top aide over embezzled or misallocated campaign funds. Grosso has mounted a well-financed campaign and should benefit from votes of new residents looking for change in the District.
Forecast: Grosso.
So here I am, out on some limbs. At the end of Thursday's column, I'll crow about my successes and stoically acknowledge the bum calls. I only hope the former are well in the majority.
mccartneyr@washpost.com
For previous Robert McCartney columns, go to washingtonpost.com/mccartney.
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The Washington Post
November 4, 2012 Sunday
Met 2 Edition
Ryan makes a final campaign push in swing Va.
BYLINE: Laura Vozzella
SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A25
LENGTH: 398 words
DATELINE: RICHMOND
RICHMOND - Paul Ryan jumped aboard the Republican ticket on a battleship in Norfolk. With three days to go in the campaign, he made an airport hangar in Richmond part of his final push.
"Virginia is important," Ryan told hundreds Saturday at Richmond International Airport. "Virginia and just a handful of states hold the key to this."
Ryan, in choosing to make the commonwealth one of his last stops in the campaign, hardly needed to say that out loud. Both sides are making a flurry of last-minute stops in the state, where the race for president is running neck-and-neck.
That's on top of scores of visits made since the summer, which have made Virginia the third-most-visited state.
The presidential candidates, their running mates and spouses have logged 88 visits to Virginia since June. That puts the commonwealth behind only Ohio, with 126 visits, and Florida, with 112.
Four years ago, Barack Obama became the first Democrat since President Lyndon B. Johnson to win Virginia. Both sides consider the state very much in play this time around.
After Ryan's rally Saturday, Obama was due to attend a rally in Prince William County with former president Bill Clinton and musician Dave Matthews.
On Sunday night, Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney will appear in Newport News. Come Monday, on the eve of the election, he will headline two rallies, one at a Lynchburg airport and another at George Mason University.
Vice President Biden, accompanied by his wife, Jill, will stump Monday in Sterling and Richmond.
Both campaigns have lavished unprecedented attention on the state, one that for decades had been so reliably red that both sides safely ignored it.
Less welcome than the visits, but no less noticeable, has been the barrage of TV ads that have inundated Virginia media markets for months.
Virginians soon tired of all the commercials. And now, the face time might even be losing its luster.
Jill Vander Pol of Glen Allen came to see Ryan on Saturday but said she has had about enough.
"We're politically pooped," she said.
Virginia House Speaker William J. Howell (R-Stafford) and his wife passed up a chance to see Ryan last month to keep a date with their grandchildren, whose busy schedules make them harder to pin down than vice-presidential contenders.
"I was telling my wife: 'They'll probably be back. We've got three weeks to go,'â[#x20ac][#x2c6]" Howell said.
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The Washington Post
November 4, 2012 Sunday
Regional Edition
Contempt for voters
BYLINE: Editorial Board
SECTION: EDITORIAL COPY; Pg. A18
LENGTH: 624 words
THROUGH ALL the flip-flops, there has been one consistency in the campaign of Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney: a contempt for the electorate.
How else to explain his refusal to disclose essential information? Defying recent bipartisan tradition, he failed to release the names of his bundlers - the high rollers who collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations. He never provided sufficient tax returns to show voters how he became rich.
How, other than an assumption that voters are too dim to remember what Mr. Romney has said across the years and months, to account for his breathtaking ideological shifts? He was a friend of immigrants, then a scourge of immigrants, then again a friend. He was a Kissingerian foreign policy realist, then a McCain-like hawk, then a purveyor of peace. He pioneered Obamacare, he detested Obamacare, then he found elements in it to cherish. Assault weapons were bad, then good. Abortion was okay, then bad. Climate change was an urgent problem; then, not so much. Hurricane cleanup was a job for the states, until it was once again a job for the feds.
The same presumption of gullibility has infused his misleading commercials (see: Jeep jobs to China) and his refusal to lay out an agenda. Mr. Romney promised to replace the Affordable Care Act but never said with what. He promised an alternative to President Obama's lifeline to young, undocumented immigrants but never deigned to describe it.
And then there has been his chronic, baldly dishonest defense of mathematically impossible budget proposals. He promised to cut income tax rates without exploding the deficit or tilting the tax code toward the rich - but he refused to say how he could bring that off. When challenged, he cited "studies" that he maintained proved him right. But the studies were a mix of rhetoric, unrealistic growth projections and more serious economics that actually proved him wrong.
This last is important - maybe the crux of the next four years. History has shown that it's a lot easier to cut taxes than to reduce spending. Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush promised to do both, managed to do only the first and (with plenty of help from Congress) greatly increased the national debt.
Now Mr. Romney promises to reduce income tax rates by one-fifth - for the rich, that means from 35 percent to 28 percent - and to raise defense spending while balancing the budget. To do so, he would reduce other spending - unspecified - and take away deductions - unspecified. One of the studies he cited, by Harvard economist Martin Feldstein, said Mr. Romney could make the tax math work by depriving every household earning $100,000 or more of all of its charitable deductions, mortgage-interest deductions and deductions for state and local income taxes.
Does Mr. Romney favor ending those popular tax breaks? He won't say. But he did take issue with Mr. Feldstein's definition of the middle class: Mr. Romney said he would protect households earning $250,000 or less. In which case the Feldstein study did not vindicate the Romney arithmetic - it refuted it. Yet the candidate has continued to cite the study.
Within limits, all candidates say and do what they have to say and do to win. Mr. Obama also has dodged serious interviews and news conferences. He has offered few specifics for a second-term agenda. He, too, aired commercials that distorted his opponent's statements.
But Mr. Obama has a record; voters know his priorities. His budget plan is inadequate, but it wouldn't make things worse.
Mr. Romney, by contrast, seems to be betting that voters have no memories, poor arithmetic skills and a general inability to look behind the curtain. We hope the results Tuesday prove him wrong.
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The Washington Post
November 4, 2012 Sunday
Met 2 Edition
Seeing stars on the final weekend
BYLINE: Philip Rucker;David Nakamura
SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A01
LENGTH: 1277 words
On the final weekend of their deadlocked campaign, President Obama and Mitt Romney called forth every supporter they could muster to gain any possible edge they could find.
In a tiny New Hampshire town, four out-of-state surrogates for Romney chatted with the lunchtime crowd at a diner decorated with a pink Cadillac on stilts. In Reno, an Olympic speedskater talked up the Republican nominee. In Virginia, Sens. John McCain (Ariz.) and Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) targeted voters in military communities. Two of Romney's sons campaigned door-to-door in Florida.
Not to be outdone, the Obama campaign sent out its stars on Saturday. Katy Perry, decked out in a body-hugging blue leather dress with the Obama campaign slogan "Forward" on it, rocked the stage before Obama's speech in Milwaukee. John Mellencamp did an acoustic rendition of "Small Town" in Dubuque, Iowa. Dave Matthews was scheduled to perform ahead of Obama's appearance Saturday night in Northern Virginia.
And at Cleveland State University, about 100 students were treated to an impromptu concert on Saturday morning by Stevie Wonder, who then went to an early-voting center and spoke briefly on Obama's behalf on the steps of a church across the street.
"They are not mega events, but the kind of things that keep people interested and give them a sense of how important the ground game really is," explained Tom Rath, a Romney adviser who shepherded a surrogate foursome - Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, Sen. John Thune (S.D.), former senator James M. Talent (Mo.) and Rep. Marsha Blackburn (Tenn.) - through New Hampshire on Saturday.
Both campaigns tried to assert momentum in other ways, too. At Obama's Chicago headquarters, aides trumpeted favorable headlines from the Circleville Herald, a 6,600-circulation Ohio newspaper, and Ha'aretz, the Israeli news source. And at Romney's Boston headquarters, aides tried to gin up a controversy over Obama's remark Friday that voting against Romney is "the best revenge," producing a new ad overnight and trying to pump outrage across Twitter.
The candidates themselves flew in and out of many of the same battleground states, delivering the same dueling messages: the incumbent trying to convince the nation that he has made real progress and the challenger offering himself as an agent of change.
Romney began his weekend in his adopted home state of New Hampshire, where he was hoping to draw undecided voters and, perhaps, Obama supporters to his side.
"I need you to spend some time in the next three days to see neighbors - and maybe ones with an Obama sign in front of their home - and just go by and say, 'Look, let's talk this through a bit.' Because, you see, President Obama came into office with so many promises and he's fallen so far short," Romney told an enthusiastic crowd at the airport in Newington, N.H.
Romney then walked a few hundred yards across the tarmac to board his plane en route to Iowa, and on to Colorado. By the time he goes to sleep in his own bed Monday night, the Republican nominee will have touched down in eight battleground states, some of them multiple times.
During his first stop in Mentor, Ohio, Obama bounded onto a stage at the local high school, where 4,000 supporters had gathered. His voice was raspy and hoarse, a product, campaign aides said, of a busy campaign schedule combined with regular conference calls to officials dealing with the response to Hurricane Sandy.
The president warned that his rivals are counting on his supporters being "so worn down by all the squabbling and all the dysfunction, that you'll finally just give up and walk away and put them back in power."
"No!" the audience responded.
"That's what they're counting on," Obama continued. "In other words, their bet is on cynicism. But, Ohio, my bet is on you. And by the way, I don't feel cynical. I feel hopeful - because of you."
Obama visited four states Saturday and is set to travel to four more on Sunday and three on Monday, ending with a final rally in Des Moines, in the state that launched the onetime underdog to the presidency.
Obama's campaign, meanwhile, opened 5,100 "hyper-local offices" in living rooms, local stores and barbershops in battleground states to get "as close to individual voters as possible," according to campaign manager Jim Messina. Aides said volunteers would perform 700,000 shifts through Election Day.
In the Cleveland area, the Obama campaign distributed fliers noting that celebrity surrogates will stop by the key Cuyahoga County early-voting site this weekend, including Vivica A. Fox, Will.I.Am and Sophia Bush on Saturday and John Legend, Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson and Aisha Tyler on Sunday.
But it was former president Bill Clinton whom the campaign was counting on the most. With three rallies on Saturday in Virginia, including one that marked the first time he and Obama have been on the trail together, Clinton clocked in his 29th appearance for Obama since giving a speech at the Democratic National Convention. And he's set to do eight more, including appearing in Pennsylvania and North Carolina over the next two days - two states Obama has not visited since holding the convention in Charlotte in early September.
"It doesn't take a poll to tell you that there is almost no one who can deliver a more compelling case about what it takes to manage the country through a challenging economic time and who is better suited to stand up for the middle class than President Clinton," Obama campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.
Clinton's appearances in states such as Minnesota and Pennsylvania - which Obama carried easily four years ago - showed that the Obama campaign had taken notice that Romney's side was making a late play in both states. And Obama's appearance in Wisconsin - he'll make another Monday - showed his concern about another state that he carried comfortably four years ago.
Romney has more than 60 surrogates, split into teams of three or four, fanning out across 11 battleground states this weekend.
While Romney has sought to appeal to moderate voters, many of his surrogates have offered red meat to the base. Introducing Romney in Dubuque, Sen. Charles E. Grassley (Iowa) recalled mentioning Obama in front of his 3-year-old great-granddaughter and she said, "Grandpa, don't say that dirty word."
Friday night in West Chester, Ohio, where more than 40 Republican leaders joined Romney and running mate Paul Ryan on stage, many of the introductory speakers tore into Obama over his handling of the killing of American diplomats in Benghazi, Libya. Former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani suggested that if Romney was president, the attacks would have been avoided.
Romney's final campaign swing has been tinged with nostalgia. He is traveling with his wife, Ann, who had been keeping her own schedule, as well as a half-dozen advisers and intimates who have been at his side since he began his quest for the presidency five years ago.
As they boarded the plane in New Hampshire, Romney's advisers posed for pictures. And in Dubuque, where Romney made a grand entrance at an afternoon rally by descending the steps of his gleaming white and blue plane to the soundtrack of "Rudy," his strategists filmed the whole shebang on their iPhones, just for posterity.
"We've come a long way, you guys. We've been here a few times before right in this wonderful city," Romney told the crowd in Dubuque, where during the last campaign Ann Romney once fell off a stage. ("I fell on da-butt in Dubuque," she likes to joke.)
"With great friends all around us, we've had some long days and some short nights, and we are almost there," Romney said.
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The New York Times
November 3, 2012 Saturday
Late Edition - Final
The Last Election List
BYLINE: By GAIL COLLINS
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Editorial Desk; OP-ED COLUMNIST; Pg. 23
LENGTH: 726 words
O.K., people, we've got an election coming. Tuesday's the day! So little time, so much to do before we go to the polls. Perhaps we should make a list:
1) Complain about the Electoral College.
If you live in places like New York or California or Texas, feel free to spend some time in a dark corner, contemplating the way you're taken for granted. So what if you've got a strong political majority for one party. You're still Americans! But your state has already been colored red or blue on all the Election Central maps. Nobody wants to take your political temperature. Nobody cares what your waitress moms are thinking.
For months now, we've been listening to people from Ohio moan about how many political ads they're seeing on TV. Ohio, some of us have never gotten a single ad! How many celebrities do you think have parachuted into Rhode Island to do fund-raising for Barack Obama? How many network camera crews are on their way to take the pulse of Alabama? You're beginning to sound like people who complain about how tough it is to manage three vacation homes.
2) Consider the bright side of the Electoral College.
If your state has no swing-like characteristics, there's no danger that you'll be humiliated before the global media when it screws up the vote count. New Yorkers, every time you get sullen about the fact that your state doesn't matter, try to imagine what would happen if the entire future of the presidency depended on getting absolutely precise numbers out of Brooklyn.
3) Worst tweet of the election season:
''Because of the hurricane, I am extending my 5 million dollar offer for President Obama's favorite charity until 12PM on Thursday.''
-- Donald Trump
4) Stop obsessively checking the polls.
This has been going on way too long. Stop torturing yourself! Whatever Colorado is going to do, it'll do it on Tuesday. Clean the basement. Read a novel. Consider purchasing a new pet. If it's an Irish setter, you can name it Seamus.
5) Forget about the fact that Mitt Romney once drove to Canada with the family dog strapped to the roof of the car.
If he loses, nobody will care. If he wins, we'll have so many other things to worry about.
6) Find a Senate race to follow.
You are probably going to spend Tuesday night glued to a computer or television that is repeatedly announcing it's too soon to tell who got elected president. The time will go much faster if you're diverted by the Senate returns. Since there are only about a dozen races in which there is any conceivable contest, it's really not all that hard to become an expert. (''I believe Heidi Heitkamp has an excellent chance of beating expectations in North Dakota, which by the way is the only state with no voter registration.'')
My personal favorite is Connecticut, in which we finally get to find out whether a person whose only prior experience is that she helped to build a professional wrestling empire can get elected to the U.S. Senate if she spends $100 million of her own money. But pick for yourself.
7) Learn the identity of your state legislators.
The chances are 50 to 1 that they're going to be re-elected without breaking a sweat. But the fact that you know their names will impress your friends even more than that thing about the North Dakota Senate race.
8) Just go ahead and vote.
If we lived in a democracy full of heroic candidates in evenly matched battles, there'd be no challenge to being an energized voter. Everybody would do it! As it is, one of our greatest civic virtues is the willingness to soldier on and participate in elections even when the contests are foregone conclusions or vaguely ridiculous.
Every day on my way to work for the last few months I've walked past the Victory for Obama Campaign Center on Broadway and 103rd Street in Manhattan. This is a neighborhood in which every single race on the ballot is hopelessly lopsided. Actually, most of them are uncontested. The state has already been painted blue. The congressman who has been in office for 20 years is being challenged by a person with no campaign funds and whose slogan is ''Michael is familiar with politics ... but he is not political.''
Yet the place has been full of enthusiastic people selling buttons, handing out literature and staffing the phones. This is what makes America great. True, the people on the phones were calling voters in Ohio. But still. You do what you can.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/03/opinion/collins-the-last-election-list.html
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The New York Times
November 3, 2012 Saturday
Late Edition - Final
What Romney Has Said Offers Clues If He Wins
BYLINE: By JACKIE CALMES; Kitty Bennett contributed research.
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; THE AGENDA; Pg. 12
LENGTH: 1294 words
WASHINGTON -- What would a President Romney have done?
For nearly four years, Mr. Romney has attacked President Obama's responses to the worst economic crisis since the Depression, the decisions that have defined the Obama presidency -- on the stimulus package, auto industry rescue, home-foreclosure measures and financial regulation.
Mr. Romney has been less clear about what action he would have taken instead. What follows are snapshots of his reactions then and now, which provide a sense of how he might have responded if he had been in the Oval Office and how he might approach economic policy should he be elected president on Tuesday.
STIMULUS Mr. Romney was an early advocate of some government action and criticized President George W. Bush for not seeking a stimulus measure before departing. But mostly he slammed Mr. Obama, within days of the inauguration, for the $831 billion package of spending and tax cuts that a Democratic-led Congress soon passed. He called it bloated with spending that would take too long to help the economy. (The total grew to $1.4 trillion as some provisions were renewed.)
By the end of 2009 Mr. Romney declared the stimulus a costly failure, though nonpartisan studies found that it had helped create or support millions of jobs. He cited a weak recovery, slower than even the Obama administration's projections, and a stubbornly high unemployment rate.
But Mr. Romney's own prescriptions were mixed. In February 2009, as the stimulus bill was being enacted, he suggested $450 billion in tax cuts for middle-income Americans and federal money for unspecified ''urgent priorities.'' He called tax cuts ''twice as effective'' as spending for spurring the economy, a contention that many economists dispute.
That December, Mr. Romney called for Washington to pull back, though unemployment had hit 10 percent. ''Shrinking government and reducing government jobs is healthier for the economy, but this option was never seriously considered,'' he wrote.
His position mirrored that taken by many conservatives at the time in the United States and in Europe, which became something of a laboratory for the idea that Keynesian policy had been proven ineffective and that slashing spending and reducing deficits would lower interest rates, promote investment, shrink the government's interference in the marketplace and put the economy on a sounder footing for the long run.
Britain and other nations that adopted austerity policies encountered deeper economic troubles. In the United States, few nonpartisan economists support government austerity in a downturn. Mr. Romney, suggesting some belief in the central tenet of Keynesian economics -- that government spending can temporarily make up for a lack of demand in the private sector -- has subsequently said that he would enact budget cuts he supported with an eye toward whether the timing would have a negative impact on a still-weak recovery.
AUTO BAILOUT In late 2008 President Bush approved $25 billion in aid for General Motors and Chrysler. Ford, in better shape, declined aid but backed it for the others since liquidating two of the Big Three automakers would bankrupt many suppliers, imperiling Ford.
That help proved insufficient. Mr. Obama, advised by a task force he formed after taking office, forced G.M. and Chrysler through a government-managed bankruptcy, lending them $60 billion more so they could keep operating while restructuring. This amount, unlike the first, had to be repaid.
The decision was politically risky, given the growing populist backlash at the time to bailouts like those already given to banks. Mr. Romney opposed the actions by both Mr. Obama and Mr. Bush to provide direct government aid to Detroit, and in November 2008, he wrote an Op-Ed article in The New York Times calling for the companies to be given new management and restructured through the bankruptcy process, with the prospect of government loan guarantees only afterward. He has defended that stance even as the bailout helped the companies return to profitability and add jobs.
Mr. Obama's plan also required a bankruptcy that forced new union contracts, new managers and investments in fuel-saving technologies. The difference was that Mr. Romney ruled out any bridge loan from taxpayers. He said the government should only guarantee private loans, and only when the companies emerged from bankruptcy. ''Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check,'' he wrote in the Op-Ed article.
But there was little if any private financing available to the automakers at the time. Romney ads this week in Ohio say the revived automakers are sending jobs to China, a charge the automakers have denounced as false. One ad ends, ''Mitt Romney has a plan to help the auto industry.'' It offers no details, but the Romney campaign has suggested that he would have built more safeguards into any bailout package against moving production from the United States to other countries and that his promised crackdown on China's trade and currency practices would have discouraged Chrysler from deciding to build Jeeps for the Chinese market in China rather than in the United States.
HOUSING The hangover of depressed home values and foreclosures since the housing bubble burst has been perhaps the biggest drag on the recovery, analysts say. Yet remedies are financially and politically complex, as Mr. Obama found. Polls show most Americans oppose bailouts for neighbors who got mortgages they could not afford or owe more than their homes are worth. Incentives for lenders to modify troubled mortgages have helped far fewer people than Mr. Obama predicted.
Until recently Mr. Romney offered a free-market alternative: do nothing. Last November in Nevada, the state with the highest foreclosure and jobless rates, he told The Las Vegas Review Journal: ''Don't try and stop the foreclosure process. Let it run its course and hit the bottom.''
Mr. Romney did express interest in then ''helping people refinance homes.'' And more recently he has seemed to suggest that the government policy could have some role in helping spur a recovery. Last week in Reno, he said, without elaboration, ''When I'm elected, we're going to finally get this housing market going.''
FINANCIAL REGULATION Mr. Romney has long proposed to ''repeal and replace'' the 2010 Dodd-Frank law tightening regulation of financial institutions. He has emphasized ''repeal'' and not defined a replacement. But Mr. Romney, who expressed general support for the role of regulation in the first presidential debate, has offered hints.
''There's some parts of Dodd-Frank that make all the sense in the world,'' he said. ''You need transparency, you need leverage limits.''
Past comments and language in his manifesto, ''Believe in America,'' suggest that Mr. Romney supports several objectives of Dodd-Frank: Authorizing the government to wind down failing institutions, to avoid a Lehman Brothers-like crash that threatens the system; requiring transparency for complex financial instruments like derivatives, and requiring institutions to keep a larger buffer of capital.
He has suggested support for some version of the new consumer-protection bureau, which Congressional Republicans opposed. While calling it ''perhaps the most powerful and unaccountable bureaucracy in the history of our nation'' in a statement in January, he also proposed ''to fix the flaws in this new bureaucracy.''
Mr. Romney often attacks Dodd-Frank for supposedly designating five banks as ''too big to fail,'' freeing them to take risks, confident of a bailout. ''We need to get rid of that provision,'' he said in the debate.
But if his position makes clear his opposition to the ''too big to fail'' concept, it ignores one thing: such a provision does not exist in the law.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/03/us/politics/what-romneys-words-tell-us-if-hes-elected.html
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The New York Times
November 3, 2012 Saturday
Late Edition - Final
A Last-Minute Rush of Campaign Spending With Murky Origins
BYLINE: By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE and DEREK WILLIS; Jo Craven McGinty contributed reporting.
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; Pg. 13
LENGTH: 1004 words
In mid-October, a Republican lawyer in Washington sent paperwork overnight to the Federal Election Commission forming a new ''super PAC'' called Freedom Fund North America. The group did nothing for more than a week, until the last deadline passed for publicly disclosing donors before Election Day.
Then it spent nearly $1 million on advertising against Democratic candidates for the Senate in North Dakota and Montana, races that could determine control of the chamber next year.
A last-minute burst of below-the-radar cash has begun flooding into the national elections, most of it financing advertising against Democrats, often in markets where television time is still cheap. But unlike the well-known outside groups that have dominated the airwaves until now, many of the new spenders did not formally exist a few weeks ago. They have generic-sounding names, rarely have Web sites and are exploiting a loophole that will keep their donors anonymous until long after the last votes are counted.
''You get used to the same old crew,'' said Heidi Heitkamp, the Democratic candidate for Senate in North Dakota, referring to outside groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that have already poured millions of dollars into the race on behalf of both candidates. ''But then you see a group place an ad, and don't know what their interest is, you wonder who they are. And when you do some research, you find nothing.''
One new super PAC, called the Hardworking Americans Committee, has spent a little more than $1 million since Oct. 23 on ads attacking Senator Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, a Democrat, accusing her of failing to pay property taxes. But the group reported raising no money at all through Oct. 17, the last date before Election Day by which super PACs were required to disclose contributors.
Because all the group's cash was provided afterward, none of the donors will be revealed until the next disclosure deadline -- in December.
''None of our donors are ashamed about being part of the project,'' said Stuart Sandler, the group's treasurer, who served as executive director of the state Republican Party last year. It was just the way the calendar worked.''
On Wednesday, a new super PAC called Republicans for a Prosperous America purchased $1.7 million worth of advertising against President Obama. The group was formed in early September and did not file a disclosure report in October.
But on the same day it reported purchasing the ad time, the super PAC revealed that it was affiliated with an existing group called the Republican Jewish Coalition, a tax-exempt advocacy organization that has already run millions of dollars in ''issue ads'' against Mr. Obama. The change was reported on Wednesday by the Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan watchdog group that works for more transparency in campaign spending.
Matt Brooks, the Republican Jewish Coalition's executive director, said the group -- which has been heavily financed by the casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson -- wanted to run more explicit campaign ads using a super PAC but set it up under a different name to avoid tipping off opponents.
''We just didn't want to telegraph in advance our strategy and tactics,'' Mr. Brooks said. The timing had nothing to do with disguising donors, he said, but was determined by the subject of the group's new ads: Bryna Franklin, a former organizer for Democrats living in Israel, who announced in an op-ed this week that she planned to vote for a Republican presidential candidate for the first time in her life.
Mr. Brooks said of the op-ed, ''We were presented with an opportunity.
''We hustled to film her in Israel and get this turned around,'' he said. ''The timing didn't have anything to do with donor disclosure.''
The lawyer representing Freedom Fund North America, Michael G. Adams, also serves as treasurer to seven other super PACs that have run ads in recent weeks against Democrats running for the Senate.
Mr. Adams, who did not respond to an e-mail seeking comment, is a former deputy counsel for the Republican politician Ernie Fletcher, the former governor of Kentucky and an ally of Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the party's leader in the Senate.
One of them, the Fund for Freedom, reported having $89,433 on hand in its final pre-election disclosure. Since then, the group has spent $670,000 on advertising to assist Linda Lingle, the Republican candidate for Senate in Hawaii.
Other super PACs are also using last-minute contributions to finance attack ads in states where they had not been active before.
A group called Patriot Majority reported having $20,045 in cash on hand on Oct. 17. Since then, it has spent more than $400,000 on ads attacking Mitt Romney. It is one of the few major late spenders to focus on Republicans.
Now or Never PAC, a group based in Missouri, reported it had $79,494 in cash when it filed its final pre-election disclosure with the F.E.C. in mid-October. In the two weeks since, the group has spent more than $5 million in five Senate races and one House race, all to benefit Republicans.
''Especially late in the game, it's possible to game the timing of disclosures to drop a whole lot of money without having to disclose anything about its sources,'' said Bill Allison, the editorial director of the Sunlight Foundation. ''We're seeing all kinds of groups popping out of the woodwork that we haven't ever seen before, spending a lot of money, and voters have no opportunity to see who is behind those messages.''
All the super PACs will eventually be required to disclose their donors. But additional advertising has been purchased in recent weeks by tax-exempt groups making their first foray into campaign-season advertising. Such organizations are not required to disclose their donors even after the election because they claim to be engaged primarily in educational, not political, activities.
At least 37 such groups, known as 501(c) 4s after a section of the tax code that regulates them, reported political expenditures of close to $3 million since Oct. 17.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/03/us/politics/new-super-pacs-add-to-last-minute-rush-of-spending.html
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The New York Times
November 3, 2012 Saturday
Late Edition - Final
Personal Cost for 2 Senate Bids: $100 Million
BYLINE: By PETER APPLEBOME; Elizabeth Maker, Jo Craven McGinty and Derek Willis contributed reporting.
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Metropolitan Desk; Pg. 16
LENGTH: 1388 words
Linda E. McMahon's campaign for the United States Senate has been good for Bert Volpacchio, who received $494 for a meet-and-greet with about 40 local officials last May at his restaurant, the Hot Tamale, in Seymour, Conn.
It has been great for regular suppliers like Best Buy, Staples and BJ's Wholesale Club; for restaurants that have provided meals for volunteers like No Anchovies in Cromwell and the Sushi Palace in North Haven; for specialty businesses like Bayview Balloons of Milford, which got $830 just before the Republican primary; and for political operatives large and small.
Ms. McMahon may or may not get to influence job creation as a senator. But she has already made an impact on the Connecticut economy by dishing out close to $100 million for two Senate races over the past three years, far more than anyone has ever spent of their own money to win any federal seat. She has long since blown by the $72 million Ross Perot spent of his own money on presidential bids in 1992 and 1996.
The result is akin to a medium-size business with roughly 200 employees, a network of 13 offices and a broad constellation of consultants, marketing experts and advertising firms that include a who's who of Republican handlers and has had a virtual monopoly in the race on the expensive New York City television market that reaches southern Connecticut. The biggest recipient thus far has been Scott Howell & Company, a Texas media consulting company, which received $24.7 million, mostly for advertising in her unsuccessful 2010 race against Richard Blumenthal, according to her campaign finance disclosure reports. She has spent at least $11 million on printing and postage.
Ms. McMahon's millions at the very least have taken her from an obscure businesswoman overshadowed by her husband in her own wrestling company into a ubiquitous political brand in Connecticut. But with recent polls seeming to show her Democratic opponent, Representative Christopher S. Murphy, with a small lead, whether her spending can produce a Senate seat in a strongly Democratic state remains unclear.
''It's bad enough to have 'super PACs' go around and spend whatever they want, but if you can just buy a Senate seat, I think that's outrageous,'' said Lowell P. Weicker Jr., the former governor and senator who in 1982 became the last Republican elected to the Senate from Connecticut. He has endorsed Mr. Murphy.
But Ms. McMahon says that spending her own money leaves her -- unlike Mr. Murphy -- in no one's debt. ''In the Senate I will owe you, not the special interests who corrupt so many career politicians from Hartford to Washington,'' she says in one of her campaign ads.
Ms. McMahon's campaign manager, Corry Bliss, said her spending was not an issue for voters. ''The most important issue in this race is who has a plan to create jobs,'' he said. ''That's what people care about.''
Ms. McMahon spent almost $50 million, nearly all of it her own, in her 2010 race. She has already lent her current campaign $42.6 million, finance reports show. Candidates may raise money to pay back such loans, but it is quite likely that most of her loans will not be repaid.
She had outspent Mr. Murphy by more than four to one at the end of September, but her campaign notes that spending by unions and other outside groups supporting him narrowed that gap. (Outside groups, including the national parties, had spent about $8.5 million in support of Mr. Murphy and less than $1 million for Ms. McMahon through Thursday, according to campaign finance records.)
Her receipts vary from a $10.17 charge at the Dunkin' Donuts in West Hartford to huge advertising buys and media costs like a $1,260,806.25 payment on Sept. 28 to Mentzer Media Services, just one of several payments to Mentzer, which buys advertising and has been the biggest recipient of money in this race.
Some payments seem calculated to court constituencies, like those for ads or event sites to the Stamford Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, the African-American Alliance of Hartford, the Caribbean World Chamber of Commerce in Fairfield, the West Indian Foundation in Bloomfield or the Connecticut Women's Hall of Fame in New Haven.
She has paid more than $900,000 in payroll taxes for campaign workers. She has spent more than $600,000 on paraphernalia like signs, balloons, T-shirts and bumper stickers.
But the biggest categories of expenditures, as with most campaigns, have been for consultants, pollsters, digital marketing experts and other political professionals.
The centerpiece of Ms. McMahon's campaign is her jobs plan; she says it would produce a positive impact on the federal budget of nearly $1.7 trillion over nine years. The numbers come from John Dunham & Associates of New York City, which bills itself as ''The Winning Side of Economics'' and got at least three payments totaling $56,258. Mr. Dunham is a former tobacco industry economist who works mostly for trade groups like the Beer Institute and the National Chicken Council. (In response, an ad that features President Obama praising Mr. Murphy's ''real record of job creation'' will start running on Saturday, The Associated Press reported.)
Her money has allowed her to employ an unusually broad range of political consultants, research and advertising firms, and to afford the most expensive television buys, including spots during the Olympics, the World Series and prime network news shows.
She has hired experienced A-list Republican operatives like Scott Howell, who cites his work with Lee Atwater and Karl Rove on his Web site, and McCarthy Hennings Media, which is best known for the Willie Horton ad going after Michael S. Dukakis in the 1988 presidential race and which also works for Restore Our Future, the PAC backing Mitt Romney. And the campaign's senior consultant is Christopher J. LaCivita; he was media adviser to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, whose ads questioning John Kerry's military service played a critical role in the 2004 presidential election.
A recent Quinnipiac University poll showed Mr. Murphy with a six-point lead, with particular gains among women and older voters. It found that 75 percent of likely voters said they had seen her ads very often and that 13 percent had seen them somewhat often. Most accepted her spending, but 38 percent of voters said they were very or somewhat concerned about it.
Laura Randall, of Fairfield, said that she had planned to vote for Ms. McMahon but that the campaign's barrage of advertising had turned her off, ''I swear, if I hear, 'I'm Linda McMahon and I approve this message' one more time...' '' she said with a grimace.
On Route 7 in New Milford, Doug Yeomans has posted a big, hand-painted sign on his property reading: ''TELL LINDA McMILLION$ YOUR VOTE IS NOT 4 SALE.''
''This is a true David and Goliath story,'' he said. ''I have never felt pressed to do something of this magnitude on my front lawn. But these are extraordinary times.''
Ray Dalton, who works nearby as an electrician, disagreed. ''When I saw that sign go up a couple days ago, I had to laugh,'' he said. ''So Linda McMahon has spent a pile of money on her campaign. So what? Who cares? That's what politicians do.''
He added: ''She has a burning desire to make things better. Why else would she want to spend that kind of money?''
Ms. McMahon lent her campaign another $3.3 million last week. One thing she has done differently this time is to finance a sophisticated turnout operation, including paid staff in minority neighborhoods that Republicans usually cede to Democrats. It could be especially important given the disruption caused by Hurricane Sandy, but otherwise the storm could blunt the impact of the advertising.
On NBC on Tuesday night, the news anchor Brian Williams said: ''In this part of the country, those who do have TV are seeing attack ads from a woman named Linda McMahon, who's running for Senate up in Connecticut -- airing like nothing had changed. Juxtaposed against the damage, it's just a very strange time.''
Mr. Bliss, the McMahon campaign manger, said Mr. Murphy and groups supporting him had also kept up some negative ads.
Asked how Ms. McMahon would feel if she spent close to $100 million of her own money and lost two elections, Mr. Bliss said, ''She is very proud of the race she's run, and has every intention of winning this race.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/03/nyregion/linda-e-mcmahon-has-spent-nearly-100-million-in-senate-races.html
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GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: Linda E. McMahon, at her field office in Farmington, Conn., on Friday, long since surpassed Ross Perot in personal spending for a federal office. (PHOTOGRAPH BY KARSTEN MORAN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)
On Route 7 in New Milford, Conn., a big, hand-painted wooden sign was posted by a resident in response to the exorbitant spending by Ms. McMahon, a Republican. At left is a scene from one of her TV ads. (PHOTOGRAPH BY CHRISTOPHER CAPOZZIELLO FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)
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November 3, 2012 Saturday
Late Edition - Final
Back to Campaign, Blustery Obama Hits Romney on Auto Bailout Ad
BYLINE: By MARK LANDLER
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; THE CAUCUS; Pg. 10
LENGTH: 797 words
LIMA, Ohio-Barnstorming across Ohio on Friday,President Obama threw off the appeals to bipartisan harmony that had suffused his response to the East Coast storm two days earlier to mount a fiery attack on Mitt Romney's attempt to discredit his bailout of Detroit.
The comforting commander in chief replaced by the political warrior, Mr. Obama hopscotched across this electoral battleground, accusing Mr. Romney at every stop of dishonesty for claiming that the president's auto-industry bailout had resulted in jobs moving to China.
At issue is a Romney ad airing in Ohio that asserts that Chrysler, under new Italian owners, moved Jeep production to China after being bailed out by the Obama administration in 2009.
"That's not true," Mr. Obama said to a crowd of 2,800 in a cavernous barn in the town of Hilliard, as they chanted "liar" and "lying" about Mr. Romney. "Everybody knows it's not true. The car companies themselves have told Governor Romney to knock it off."
The commercial, Mr. Obama said, amounted to a cynical ploy to make up for the fact that Mr. Romney opposed the bailout and has struggled ever since with voters in Ohio, where one of every eight jobs is dependent on the auto industry.
"This isn't a game: these are people's jobs, these are people's lives," the president said. Claiming that the ad had unnerved some employees at the Jeep plant in Toledo, Ohio, he said, "You don't scare hard-working Americans just to scare up some votes."
Mr. Obama's harsh words, in a voice that grew raspier as the day went on, sounded like the stretch run of a marathon campaign, with the president pleading for every vote in a state where he is clinging to a narrow but steady lead in polls against Mr. Romney.
Mr. Romney is putting up a fierce challenge, kicking off a major rally in Ohio with his running mate, Representative Paul D. Ryan, and an array of prominent Republican officials. The bitter confrontation between the candidates over the auto bailout illustrates the enormous stakes, and it has dominated headlines here and in Michigan.
The Romney campaign countered the president's criticism by insisting that the ad was accurate.
"The facts are clear: despite his false and misleading attacks, President Obama took the auto companies into bankruptcy," said a spokeswoman, Amanda Henneberg. "His mismanagement of the process has exposed taxpayers to a $25 billion loss."
To try to offset rare public criticism from Chrysler and General Motors, the Romney campaign corralled an endorsement from a former president of Chrysler, Hal Sperlich, who said Mr. Romney would make the American auto industry more competitive.
But Mr. Obama seemed energized, fortified by a better than expected jobs report and his experience in the storm, when he won an endorsement from Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York and made a political bedfellow of the Republican governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie.
"I've got a lot of fight left in me," Mr. Obama said to 4,000 people in a high school gymnasium in Springfield, Ohio. He also went after Mr. Romney's claims that he, not Mr. Obama, was a change agent.
"Governor Romney, he's a very gifted salesman, so he's been trying in this campaign as hard as he can to repackage these ideas that didn't work, the very same policies that did not work, and he's trying to pretend they're change," Mr. Obama said.
The show of harmony in New Jersey on Wednesday seemed a world away from the chilly Midwestern fairground in Hilliard. Even the minister offering the invocation jabbed Mr. Romney for his remarks about the 47 percent of Americans whom he claimed support Mr. Obama and rely on government handouts.
Warming up the crowd, former Gov.Ted Strickland of Ohio characterized a canned-goods drive that Mr. Romney held in Dayton for storm victims as little more than a cheap photo opportunity. And he described Ohio as "the firewall for President Obama" - a state he cannot afford to lose.
So much attention has been lavished on this state that it sometimes seems as if the candidates have been wooing Ohioans one at a time. Mr. Obama used his limousine, helicopter and a smaller version of Air Force One to reach Ohio's nooks and crannies, traversing the flat landscape from Hilliard to Springfield and then north to Lima.
The Obama campaign has projected steadfast confidence that it will hold on to a victory in Ohio, citing public polls that show Mr. Obama ahead of Mr. Romney by a nearly two-to-one ratio among the 23 percent of registered voters who have already cast ballots.
Campaign aides also brushed aside Mr. Romney's plan to campaign in Pennsylvania, saying it reflected the challenger's weakness in Ohio. "It's a desperate ploy, in the last throes of a campaign, to put another state in play," said David Plouffe, a senior White House adviser.
URL: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/02/obama-says-romney-is-being-dishonest-about-auto-bailout/
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November 3, 2012 Saturday
Late Edition - Final
Senate Candidates Find Coattails in Presidential Race Don't Extend Very Far
BYLINE: By JONATHAN WEISMAN
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; Pg. 12
LENGTH: 1008 words
WASHINGTON -- As Mitt Romney and President Obama close out their campaigns, the elections for control of the Senate are taking place across a different set of states, with neither presidential candidate providing coattails to ensure that his agenda will have strong support in Congress's upper chamber.
The future of the Senate is being decided largely beyond the focus of the more narrow presidential contest, in states like North Dakota, Montana, Indiana and Arizona where neither presidential candidate has campaigned. In swing states like Ohio, Virginia and Florida, Democratic Senate candidates are largely getting more voter support than Mr. Obama. In Republican states far from the presidential election action, Republican candidates have struggled to keep up with Mr. Romney.
''It's all over but the crying. Joe Donnelly is poised to succeed Republican Sen. Richard Lugar in the U.S. Senate,'' a Republican pollster, Christine Matthews, wrote in an Indiana newsletter on Friday, unveiling a new Howey-DePauw Indiana Battleground Poll showing that Mr. Donnelly, a Democratic representative, was leading Richard E. Mourdock, a Republican, 47 percent to 36 percent, even as Mr. Romney was leading Mr. Obama in Indiana, 51 percent to 41 percent.
Referring to the Republican candidate for governor, Ms. Matthews wrote, ''Indiana has a healthy tradition of ticket-splitting at the state level, and even this year when Mitt Romney will handily defeat Barack Obama in the state and Mike Pence will nearly certainly be elected governor, voters are deciding the Senate race independently.''
Presidential elections overshadow Congressional contests, and White House campaigns often leave Senate and House candidates largely to their own devices. This year neither presidential candidate has made the Congressional races a focus of his campaign, so the winning House and Senate candidates may not feel the need to repay the winner with the sort of loyalty and gratitude that can smooth a legislative agenda once the ballots are counted.
Democrats often grumble that Mr. Obama does not showcase Congressional candidates at his events, and Mr. Romney has little history with most Congressional Republicans, who would probably consider their allegiance much stronger to Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, his running mate.
Presidential candidates who surge at the end can pull some of their party allies to victory. In 2008, Mr. Obama's sweep was accompanied by an eight-seat Democratic gain in the Senate. President George W. Bush's re-election in 2004 brought to the Senate four additional Republicans. But in the close election of 2000, Mr. Bush's party lost four seats. When President Bill Clinton cruised to a second term four years before, Republicans actually gained two seats in the Senate.
With just four days to go, most forecasters predict little change in the Senate and a minimal Democratic gain in the House. Republicans may pick up a handful of Senate seats, but they could just as easily suffer a net loss of one. Neither party will have anything close to a filibuster-proof majority.
''I'm still hopeful that there will be a tipping point because in so many of these states, Romney will be such a big player,'' said Scott Bensing, a former executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. ''But right now, it's hand-to-hand combat.''
In recent days, the Romney campaign has been trying to change that dynamic. On television and computer screens in Arizona, Montana and Indiana, Mitt Romney looks earnestly into the camera to tell voters that the success of his presidency may depend on the election of Republicans to the Senate.
Mr. Romney followed up his first straight-to-camera endorsement of Mr. Mourdock last week with two new ads this week, one endorsing Representative Jeff Flake of Arizona for the Senate, another promoting Representative Denny Rehberg of Montana for the Senate.
''Governor Romney is committed to helping elect fiscally responsible Republicans who will help him create jobs, strengthen the middle class and put America back on a path to prosperity,'' said Andrea Saul, a spokeswoman for the Romney campaign.
In recent days, President Obama has made commercials for Senate contenders in his home state of Hawaii and in Connecticut. Images of him have appeared in the Massachusetts Senate campaigns of both Elizabeth Warren, the Democrat, and Senator Scott P. Brown, the Republican. Former Gov. Tim Kaine of Virginia, a Democrat running for the Senate, has used pictures of himself with Mr. Obama, but he has also used a photo of himself with George W. Bush to project an image of moderate bipartisanship.
Independent Republican groups have joined the effort. Crossroads GPS, a group whose founders include Karl Rove that is backing Republican candidates, began showing a new ad in North Dakota this week that dispensed with its usual line of attack linking the Democratic Senate candidate, Heidi Heitkamp, to President Obama. Instead, it talked up a Romney presidency.
''With Mitt Romney as president, we can get our country back on track. But not with Heidi Heitkamp in the Senate,'' the ad says. ''We're so close to moving this country forward. Why elect a roadblock like Heidi Heitkamp?''
It may be too late to take advantage of the Romney strength even in the reddest of states, but it is probably worth a try given the huge margin he has compared with some struggling Senate contenders. A Mason-Dixon poll released Wednesday gave Mr. Romney a 14-percentage-point lead over Mr. Obama in North Dakota, for instance. The poll suggests a very close Senate contest between Representative Rick Berg, the Republican, and Ms. Heitkamp, a former North Dakota secretary of state.
But in North Dakota, as in Indiana, Montana and Arizona, the Democratic candidate has played down her party affiliation and kept Mr. Obama at a long arm's length. In her final gauzy ad, Ms. Heitkamp never mentions the word Democrat.
''We vote for the person, not the party,'' she says of North Dakotans. ''I will only answer to you.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/03/us/politics/senate-races-get-little-lift-from-obama-and-romney.html
LOAD-DATE: November 6, 2012
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GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: The Massachusetts campaigns of both Senator Scott P. Brown and Elizabeth Warren have used images of President Obama. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY CHARLES KRUPA/ASSOCIATED PRESS
ELISE AMENDOLA/ASSOCIATED PRESS)
The race appears close between Heidi Heitkamp and Representative Rick Berg in North Dakota, where Mitt Romney is ahead. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY WILL KINCAID/ASSOCIATED PRESS)
A poll shows Joe Donnelly, a Democrat, left, ahead of Richard E. Mourdock, a Republican, in Indiana, where Mr. Romney leads. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY AARON P. BERNSTEIN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
MICHAEL CONROY/ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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SECTION: A section; Pg. A09
LENGTH: 734 words
Afghanistan 4 policemen slainin insider attack
Four Afghan police officers were shot dead Friday in the southern province of Helmandin an insider attack by their colleagues, officials said.
Mohammad Toryali, police chief of Grish district, said the shooting occurred at a police outpost during a shift change. The officers on duty were killed by colleagues arriving to replace them, he said. The killers fled.
At least 55 foreign troops have died in attacks by Afghan security forces this year. A similar number of Afghan policemen and soldiers have been killed in similar attacks by colleagues.
The attacks have undermined trust between the U.S.-led coalition and its Afghan partners, throwing doubt on the Afghans' capabilities ahead of the departure of foreign troops in 2014.
In another development, a U.S. service member was killed in an insurgent attack in southern Afghanistan on Thursday, a military statement said.
- Associated Press
Japan U.S. airman accused of attack in Okinawa
A U.S. airman is suspected of assaulting a boy Friday on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa, authorities said. The incident comes just two weeks after a curfew was imposed on all 52,000 U.S. troops in Japanafter the arrest of two sailors forallegedly raping a local woman.
Authorities on Okinawa said the 24-year-old airman was suspected of entering an apartment and punching the boy, 13, before breaking a TV set and trying to escape through a third-floor window. The airman, whose name has not been released, fell and was taken to a military hospital.
Japan's Foreign Ministry said the government had lodged a formal complaint with U.S. Ambassador John V. Roos.
"Let me be absolutely clear: I am very upset - it's an understatement to say I'm very upset - with the reported incident in Okinawa," Roos said after meeting with Japanese officials. "It is incredibly unfortunate that the purported actions of a few reflect badly on thousands of young men and women here in Japan, away from their homes, that are here for the defense of Japan."
- Associated Press
Cuba U.S. mission's workdecried as subversive
Cuba denounced the American diplomatic mission on theisland Friday for what it called subversive activities designed to undermine the government of President Raul Castro, a shot across the bow just four daysbefore the U.S. election.
The Foreign Ministry said the Americans illegally give classes inside the walls of the U.S. Interests Section - which Washington maintains instead of an embassy - and provide Internet service without permission.
It vowed to defend Cuba's sovereignty "by any legal means" at its disposal, but gave no details. There was no immediate comment from U.S. envoys in Cuba.
Cuba considers all opposition figures to be stooges paid by Washington to cause trouble. The American mission has long provided Internet services to dissidents on the island. It also runs cultural and language programs.
It was not clear why Cuba chose now to criticize the practice. But the timing could be linked to Tuesday's U.S. election.
Republican candidate Mitt Romney has launched a Spanish-language ad in the key swing state of Florida implying that President Obama is supported by Raul and Fidel Castro and leftist Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez. The Obama administration says the ad itself rewards Chavez and the Castros with undeserved attention, and notes that relations with both countries have remained chilly under Obama.
- Associated Press
Central Asians held captive in Moscow, activists say:Russian human rights activists said Friday that they had freed 12 Central Asians held captive asmodern-day slaves in the basement of a Moscow food store, some of them for as long as a decade. The allegations - which are being investigated by the authorities - could not be immediately confirmed independently, but activists said they were consistent with reports of hundreds of thousands of such slaves.
At least 20 dead after cyclone strikes India:The death toll from a cyclone that hit southern India rose to 20 Friday as people started to return to their homes. Cyclone Nilam, with winds of up to 65 mph, made landfall Wednesday at Mahabalipuram in Tamil Nadu state. About 13,000 people from low-lying areas in Tamil Nadu and neighboring Andhra Pradesh were evacuated.
- From news services
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November 3, 2012 Saturday 8:12 PM EST
Checking the Fact Checker
SECTION: Editorial; Pg. A15
LENGTH: 114 words
Does anybody check the Fact Checker? In his Oct. 28 analysis, "Putting an Obama ad on troops into context," Glenn Kessler assigned three Pinocchios to the Obama campaign ad that asserts Mitt Romney termed as "tragic" withdrawing all troops from Iraq. Kessler quoted Romney at length, and then said: "In other words, the phrase tragic referred to the failure to not reach a deal - not bringing the troops home." Apart from the insertion of "not" before "reach," which appears to be a typo in that sentence, the antecedent paragraph quoted from Romney clearly refers to troop withdrawals. I would assign the Pinocchios to Kessler this time, not to the Obama campaign.
Alan Fern, Chevy Chase
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Overcoming procrastination: Let me get back to you on that
BYLINE: Alexandra Petri
SECTION: Editorial; Pg. A17
LENGTH: 704 words
We are a nation of last-minute shoppers.
Come Christmas Eve, you will find thousands of frantic Santas dashing through the aisles, grabbing boxes at random and snapping at one another. Come Halloween morning, we create long lines, waiting to run through the costume store. All year, we knew the date. We had seen ad after ad, and it was circled several times on our calendar.
But here we are, nonetheless.
Why does this always happen? Is it that we start too early? Halloween came to the stores months ago, bumping into the Fourth of July as it entered. Christmas is arriving now, before Thanksgiving even gets a foot in the door. We have had months and months (and months) to see all our options and grow tired of them. And then the deadline arrives, and we go into a panic, tearing everything we can reach off the bare metal shelves.
We arrive home and stare at the six sets of My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic Accessories that, in our deadline-addled frenzy, we seemed to think would make appropriate holiday gifts for our entire families.
What hath the deadline wrought?
So why should it be any different with the election? That, we've been hearing about for years. It feels, now, that these candidates have always been with us. Fatigue doesn't begin to describe it. This election jumped the shark months ago, when Newt Gingrich was bitten by a penguin. Now it feels like we're in reruns.
Still, a lingering percentage of us still haven't made up our minds. The difference between the 48.56 percent of likely voters leaning toward President Obama and 48.49 percent headed for Mitt Romney in the most recent Washington Post-ABC poll is - a few procrastinators.
Welcome to Procrasti-Nation.
What makes a procrastinator? This should be easy to determine. I am one myself. To quote Douglas Adams: "I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by." I tried to make a list of things that define the true procrastinator. Here is the list.
1.
Some things are hard to procrastinate on - removing pies from ovens, extinguishing fires, being present for your children's childhoods, ending World War I, just to name a few. Once I procrastinated on breaking up with someone and we wound up in a six-year relationship by mistake.
But most things don't work like that. You can procrastinate almost indefinitely, and the outcome is not noticeably different. Take this piece, for example.
Which kind is the election?
Procrastinators come in several stripes. There are the ones who are constantly aware of what they are supposed to do but think they still have enough time to do it. There is a certain arrogance to these procrastinators. "This will be very easy," they say. "I don't need to worry about that, because I could do it in my sleep."
They believe that the eleventh hour will show them forth in all their greatness, that inspiration comes just as the clocks sound midnight, that they will snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, the way Kiefer Sutherland used to do during Hour 23. (I assume. "24" is on my list of Things to Watch.)
Then there are the ones who completely forgot this was due today and are frantically scribbling to beat the band. They are not procrastinators by inclination. It just slipped their minds.
And there are the ones who meant to do it, but the longer they contemplated the task, the more mammoth it got. They are just going to throw darts at it and hope it works itself out.
How does this factor into the election? Who still hasn't decided? When will they decide? How? By taking an online quiz about Whose Politics Match Yours the night before? In the line, jostling between Those Old Ladies Moving Very Methodically Who Always Show Up When You Have Somewhere Urgent To Be? In the booth? Once they see who falls first alphabetically on the page? (Laugh if you like, but the Democratic Party says this happens in Tennessee.)
Why are we so startled at the Voter Procrastinator when we're surrounded by procrastinators in everything else? After all, this isn't new. The same last-minute scramble happens every four years.
If it weren't for the last minute, as someone wise once quipped, nothing would ever get done at all.
Alexandra Petri writes the ComPost blog at washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost.
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Ohioans ready for their star turn to end
BYLINE: Rosalind S. Helderman
SECTION: A section; Pg. A08
LENGTH: 766 words
TOLEDO - For many Ohioans, at first it felt like love.
Now it feels like stalking.
In this state, considered by both sides to be the place likely to determine the outcome of the presidential election, it is impossible to get away from President Obama and Mitt Romney.
They write. They call. They stop by the house, sometimes more than once a day.
Turn on the news, and they're there - during the commercials and between them. They blow up cellphones with text messages and they e-mail constantly, begging and pleading - mostly for money, sometimes for votes.
"It's just oversaturation at this point. It's enough," said Steve Thomas, 60, a physician assistant doing his part to make it all stop by casting an early ballot Thursday.
Even in a state grown accustomed to its status as a key presidential battleground, people are agreed that they've seen nothing like the 2012 election.
Part of it is how long it's been going on, for a full year or more now. And part of it, in this most expensive election in history, is how much money both sides have to spend on the elusive activities that the pros call "the ground game" and that ordinary people call harassment. Why send one flier when you can afford to send 12?
Both sides brag that they've never had a more sophisticated effort to find potential supporters and reach out to them - many, many times if necessary.
The Romney campaign claims it has made 4.9 million phone calls and knocked on 2.3 million doors in Ohio alone. The Obama campaign doesn't release such numbers but says it has outdone the Republicans.
That's all in a state with 11.5 million people, 7.9 million of whom are registered to vote.
All of that outreach can feel oppressive to voters - and confusing to many who say they made up their minds long ago and regularly vote, helpful phone reminder or no.
"I've voted in every election since I was 18. I've never been one to think my vote doesn't matter," said Bridgett Garnett, 33, from Toledo.
That didn't stop campaign workers from knocking on her door. Fifteen of them so far.
"To make sure I vote. To make sure I vote early. To inform me about various things on the ballot," she said. "I always listen. With a lot of them, you can tell they're nervous, and I respect that door-to-door thing."
In some ways, it's as if Ohio has become New Hampshire and Iowa, home to the nation's first contests of the primary season, where the joke is that you can't make up your mind until you've met each candidate at least twice.
If you live in Ohio, and you want to see the candidates speak, you've had dozens of opportunities.
The difference is that candidates come to New Hampshire and Iowa scrappy and poor. They compete to outdo each other at long town hall meetings, where ordinary people ask ordinary questions. They visit diners. They shake hands and listen to voters one by one.
The primary states ask for the privilege, and they fight to keep it.
By the time the campaign gets here, it's all recorded phone calls, biting television ads and snazzy rallies that require waiting in line for hours to get through Secret Service checkpoints.
And Ohio didn't really choose this. It stumbled into its all-important status by somehow developing the perfect mix of urban and rural, white and black, young and old, to produce a history of razor-thin election margins.
Voters say it's the television ads, dripping with negativity, that feel most depressing. But it's the phone calls that are most annoying, usually with a recording on the other line, occasionally with a script-reading volunteer barely audible above the sound of fellow phone-bankers making the same calls.
"You can turn off the television. You don't have to read the paper. You can turn off the radio. But the phone rings. You don't know who it's from. It could be your mother. So you answer it," said John Engle, 66, a retired teacher from Sylvania.
A surprising number, say voters, are survey takers asking for their opinions as part of a poll, as the rest of the country joins the candidates in demanding to know what Ohio thinks.
Voters here say they understand the privilege they have by living in Ohio, how in a very real way their opinion about who should be president counts more than that of people living in other states.
Still, they say they're counting down until Wednesday, when Ohio once again will become just another state.
"It'll be nice," said David Rock, 52, a nurse from Oregon, Ohio, who voted for Obama. But people in Ohio care about this election just like everywhere else. So he added, "Well, I guess it'll be nice. It depends who wins."
heldermanr@washpost.com
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November 3, 2012 Saturday 8:12 PM EST
A border town feels half-courted, half-forgotten
BYLINE: Eli Saslow
SECTION: A section; Pg. A01
LENGTH: 1301 words
LINEVILLE, IOWA - They had worked for generations to obscure the state border, because a farming town of 300 couldn't afford to be divided. "One Place, One Community," proclaimed a sign on the road into town, and Main Street was located half in one state and half in the other. Kids from Iowa sometimes went to public schools in Missouri. Families from Missouri sometimes paid taxes to Iowa.
"Nobody knows who lives where, and nobody really cares," the mayor said.
At least until earlier this year, when workers for both presidential campaigns arrived here with maps and satellite images to walk the dirt roads and ask residents where, exactly, Iowa ended, and where, exactly, Missouri began. They knocked on doors in Iowa to recruit volunteers but walked past houses in Missouri. They built a combined 74 campaign offices in one state and only six in the other. They bombarded one side of town with so much mail that the brochures filled a storage room and the postmaster extended his hours.
"Iowa, youcould determine the next president!" read one glossy flier, sent to Lineville by the hundreds.
Meanwhile, less than 100 feet away in Missouri, the only hint of an upcoming election was homemade fliers gathering dust on the counter of the liquor store: "Missouri Tobacco Tax Initiative, Proposition B - the No. 1 Issue for Missourians in 2012."
Here in Lineville and so many other places around the country, the presidential campaign has crystallized geography, turning a rural state line into a hard divider. Voters on one side are regarded as all-important. Voters on the other side are all but disregarded. A close national campaign has become increasingly hyper-local in its final days, with both President Obama and Mitt Romney devoting their time and money to winning over a small number of swing voters in a smaller number of swing states. Iowa is one of them. Republican-leaning Missouri is not.
One of the dividing lines between them is a potholed road that bisects the cornfields and cattle herds of Lineville, where residents experience contrary versions of an American presidential campaign.
"I'm not sure anybody gives a lick what I think," said Nancy Snow, the town secretary, who lives on the Missouri side.
"You'd think we were all rich and famous the way they're coming after us," said Jack Shields, the mayor, who lives on the Iowa side.
'We keep our politics quiet'
Shields has been the mayor of Lineville for 15 years without ever running for office. He had never once declared himself a candidate - never raised money, ordered yard signs or campaigned. People in town had started writing down his name on their ballots for mayor because they trusted his judgment, knew most of his five siblings and admired the way he ran the local grain elevator. He had accepted the job each time even though it barely paid, because he had never lived anywhere else, and because serving Lineville seemed like the right thing to do.
"If somebody else wants this job, they can have it," he liked to say. "You can't afford to disagree with people in a town this size. We keep our politics quiet."
Now, six days from a presidential election that had become everything but quiet, he arrived home in work boots and overalls to a small family farm on the Iowa state line and opened his mailbox. Inside were three fliers supporting Obama and two more sent on behalf of Romney. "Help decide!" read one. "This is about your future," read another. He tossed aside the mailings and walked up to his house.
He expected the phone to ring any minute with the first of three nightly robo-calls, which came so regularly he could predict their times. One came at 6, another at 7:30 and the last one at 8. Even though he knew many of the recordings by heart, sometimes he still decided to answer. It gave him a break from the incessant cycle of campaign ads playing on his TV.
For most of every four years, he has felt like the mayor of a "little nothing place," he said - a place that was all but disappearing. The town population has been dwindling by about a dozen people each year from a peak of about 600 in the early 1980s, and now the mayor's two-room office doubles as the town's only tornado shelter. The purple-painted restaurant on the square is named "The Restaurant." A gas station and a liquor store are the only other remaining businesses in town. A quarter of the population lives below the poverty line, and young people are leaving to find jobs in Des Moines. Gas prices have skyrocketed, and it's a 34-mile drive to buy groceries at the nearest Wal-Mart. The local school district - also the town's biggest employer - closed in 2010, and not a single politician outside of the county did anything to save it.
And yet all of a sudden his besieged rural America is the American heartland, and its barns and cornfields are being used as the props of endless campaign rallies, and his phone won't stop ringing, and the pollsters wanted to keep him on the line to ask him questions about what he thought.
Well?
"I don't care for the tradeoffs, for the talking points," he said. "They need us now but they won't need us later. That's soured me on it."
'It was nice to be asked'
A block across town, in a railroad-style house that doubled as Lineville's liquor store, Nancy Snow's phone wasn't ringing, and another day of the presidential campaign in Missouri was quietly passing by. She sat on the couch in her living room in the early afternoon and watched "The Young and The Restless," which she would re-watch at 9 p.m. Her seat on the couch afforded a clear view into her one-room liquor store, with a walk-in fridge, a "Welcome Hunters" sign and jars of pickled eggs and cured sausages sitting alongside the cash register.
She usually keeps the store open six days a week, from 9 a.m. to 10:30 p.m., and she has been the only employee ever since her husband died in 2005. She spends each day as a captive in the house, waiting for business, trying to pass the time. She makes her bed. She watches her cowboy shows. She walks her cat around the yard on a leash. She turns on MSNBC, Fox News and then CNN.
A week earlier, a pollster had called to ask if she would be willing to participate in a survey about the election, and she had talked to him about her opinions for an hour.
"It was nice to be asked," she said.
For the first time since she could remember, she felt like the observer of a presidential election and not a participant. Missouri had been a swing state in almost every previous election, but now Romney led in the polls by 8 percentage points, and the Democrats had all but withdrawn. Obama had opened two campaign offices in the state, compared with the 22 offices he had there in 2008. This time, his supporters had spent less than $1 million to advertise in Missouri while spending more than $20 million in Iowa.
Snow has received mail and phone calls about the controversial senatorial contest between Democrat Claire McCaskill and Republican Todd Akin, but nothing from Obama or Romney. What she hears about the election comes mostly from her customers - nearly all of them from the more-populated Iowa side of town, and many weary of the campaign.
"I can't wait for it to be over," said one customer, interrupting "The Young and The Restless" to buy a carton of Winstons.
"They're not bothering me," Snow said.
She planned to vote nonetheless, at a building a few miles down the road in Missouri. Her plan was to cast her ballot at 8:30 a.m. on Nov. 6 and then hurry back to Lineville. Before she opened her store, she wanted to walk over to the polling location on the Iowa side. "Everybody who is anybody will be over there," she said. She wanted to see the election unfold in a place that mattered, a block away.
saslowe@washpost.com
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November 3, 2012 Saturday 8:12 PM EST
Candidates refine themes in sprint
BYLINE: Karen Tumulty;Philip Rucker
SECTION: A section; Pg. A04
LENGTH: 1230 words
WEST ALLIS, Wis. - There was a familiar ring to the new speech in which Mitt Romney called Friday for a shared sense of purpose and promised an era of national healing.
It sounded very much like the themes Barack Obama ran on four years ago.
"I will lead America to a better place, where confidence in the future is assured, not questioned," the GOP challenger told an ebullient crowd at the Wisconsin state fairgrounds here. "This is not a time for America to settle. We're four days away from a fresh start, four days away from the first day of a new beginning."
From the start, the two campaigns have had different theories of the race - Romney's being that it would be a referendum on Obama; Obama's that it would be a comparative choice between the two candidates. But in the final days, both sides appear to have realized that this election is both. The challenger seeking to unseat an incumbent must make a case for himself. The incumbent seeking to hold on to his office must convince voters not only that the alternative would be worse but also that he has earned the right to another term.
So Obama found himself heading into Election Day in the traditional posture for an incumbent under siege - the fighter, not the conciliator, wiser for the experience.
"I'm a very nice guy, people will tell you. I really am," Obama said.
But if "the price of peace in Washington" means cutting deals to slash student financial aid or give health insurance companies more power, "I'm not going to make that deal," the president said at a high school gym in Springfield, Ohio, at the second of three rallies Friday in that crucial state.
He added: "I am a long ways away from giving up on this fight. I got a lot of fight left in me. I don't get tired. I don't grow weary. I hope you aren't tired either, Ohio."
Though the polls show the race to be close, it is not because the voters lack a contrast, and both candidates are using their last hours of frenzied campaigning to highlight that choice.
Romney ended the day in West Chester, a suburb of Cincinnati, where he came together with his wife, Ann; their five sons; his running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.); and more than 40 top surrogates for a huge rally before they fanned separately across battleground states for the three-day sprint to Election Day. Of them all, Ohio looms largest. "Your state is the one I'm counting on, by the way. This is the one we have to win," Romney told the energetic crowd of more than 18,000, the biggest of his campaign.
From there, Romney set off on a swing from New Hampshire to Iowa to Colorado and, on Sunday, to Pennsylvania. Romney is making an eleventh-hour gamble to contest the Keystone State, which leans Democratic but, with 20 electoral votes, could give him an alternate path to victory. Meanwhile, he is dispatching Ryan to Minnesota, another leaning-Democratic state that Romney is trying to snatch away from Obama.
Obama is setting off on a whirlwind tour of his own, with plans to stump on Saturday in Iowa, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin and on Sunday in a slew of other states. At various stops, he will be joined by former president Bill Clinton and singers Katy Perry, Dave Matthews and John Mellencamp.
Adding punctuation to the two candidates' rhetoric was a fresh monthly jobs report - one that each candidate seized upon to underscore his argument.
Obama pointed to the second straight month of unemployment below 8 percent as evidence that the country was making real progress; Romney said the report was more evidence of how frustratingly slow the recovery has been.
The president challenged Romney's effort to seize the banner of change.
"Now, Governor Romney, he's a very gifted salesman. So he's been trying in this campaign, as hard as he can, to repackage these ideas that didn't work, the very same policies that did not work, and he's trying to pretend that they're change," Obama said. "Now, the thing is, we know what change looks like, and what he's selling ain't it."
These final pitches are always a tricky balance between inspiring the base to put their hearts into the last few days and winning over the few voters who are still making up their minds.
Along with his talk of putting political differences aside, the Republican challenger also unleashed a sharply partisan attack, warning that reelecting Obama would lead to another showdown in Congress next year over the debt ceiling, followed by a possible government shutdown and default on debts. Democrats insist that Republicans are the ones guilty of intransigence on those issues.
Obama, for his part, blasted Romney on Friday for using "scare" tactics in claiming that U.S. car companies are moving jobs to China. He accused Romney of frightening Americans with false claims of job losses "just to scare up some votes."
In Hilliard, Ohio, about 12 miles northwest of Columbus, Obama made his first extended remarks about a Romney TV commercial in wide circulation in the state. The ad, which says that General Motors and Chrysler are expanding in China, may leave some Ohioans with the impression that U.S. jobs, including at Toledo-based Jeep, are moving there.
Democrats have attacked the ad as untrue, and independent analysts, including The Washington Post's Fact Checker, have criticized it as misleading. Chrysler announced a year ago it would add 1,100 jobs at its Toledo plant.
Obama told a crowd of 2,800 at the Franklin County Fairgrounds that the ad has prompted workers at the Jeep plant to call their employer to ask if they will lose their jobs.
"The reason they're making the calls is because Governor Romney is running an ad that says so. Except it's not true," Obama said. "The car companies themselves have told Governor Romney to knock it off. GM said we think creating jobs in the United States should be a source of bipartisan pride. I could not agree more."
Despite the criticism the ad has received, which has included condemnation by auto company executives, Romney aides say it is accurate and provides important context on an issue Obama has run on for months.
Romney kicked off the final leg of the campaign in Wisconsin, a state that has not voted for a Republican presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan in 1984. Its 10 electoral votes now are central to both campaigns' calculations.
Romney hopes the deep ground organization that Republican Gov. Scott Walker built in Wisconsin earlier this year to fend off a recall effort - as well as his selection of Ryan, a native of Janesville, southwest of Milwaukee, as his running mate - will pay dividends at the polls Tuesday.
Along with his high-altitude themes, Romney also pointed to tangible problems, such as rising gasoline prices, that he has calculated could help him pry away suburban voters who may be leaning toward Obama.
Noting that gas costs roughly twice what it did in 2008, Romney said that "we're going to change course on energy - and I know just how much energy means to middle-class families." Romney said he would open more federal lands to oil drilling, approve construction of the Keystone pipeline and loosen governmentregulations on coal development - a proposal he thinks might give him a lift in the coal regions of Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia.
tumultyk@washpost.com
ruckerp@washpost.com
David Nakamura, traveling with Obama, and William Branigin and Alice Crites in Washington contributed to this report.
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Election 2012
November 3, 2012 Saturday 5:19 PM EST
Obama aide explains revenge comment
BYLINE: Natalie Jennings
LENGTH: 154 words
President Obama was referring to "scare tactics" employed by the Romney campaign in misleading ads when he told a crowdFriday that "voting is the best revenge," one of his aides told reporters Saturday en route to another Ohio event.
Jen Psakisaid the president was referring to the ad and comments by Romney that Chrysler planned to move jobs from Ohio to China.
The ad was "frightening workers in Ohio into thinking, falsely, that they're not going to have a job," Psaki said. "And the message he was sending is if you don't like the policies, if you don't like the plan that Governor Romney is putting forward, if you think that's a bad deal for the middle class, then you can go to the voting booth and cast your ballot. It's nothing more complicated than that."
Mitt Romney seized on the line Saturday, telling attendees at his New Hampshire rally to "vote for love of country" and not revenge. An adfollowed.
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November 3, 2012 Saturday 4:33 PM EST
Romney hits Obama for revenge voting appeal in N.H.;
Short summary of story
BYLINE: Natalie Jennings
LENGTH: 136 words
Mitt Romney began his final Saturday campaign swing in Newington, N.H., where campaign aides say about 2,000 people attended his morning rally.
Romney jabbed Obama for appealing to supporters by saying "Voting is the best revenge." at a rally on Friday.
Vote for revenge? I'd like to tell him what I'd tell you: Vote for love of country. It's time to lead America to a better place," Romney said.
The Romney campaign also released an ad on Saturday hitting Obama for that line.
Here's a look at the rest of his campaign schedule Saturday (all times Eastern):
1:30 p.m. Victory rally at the Dubuque, Iowa, regional airport5:50 p.m. Victory rally at Colorado Springs, Colo., municipal airport8:25 p.m. Victory Rally in Englewood, Colo., with Alabama lead singer Randy Owen
Romney's wife, Ann, will attend both Colorado events.
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The Fix
November 3, 2012 Saturday 3:20 AM EST
The Obama defectors
BYLINE: Aaron Blake;Scott Clement
LENGTH: 1021 words
Barring some kind of last-minute surge, President Obama is going to fall well shy of the 52.9 percent he won in the 2008 election. It might still be good enough to win, but it won't be resounding.
But just who exactly has deserted Obama over the last four years?
Two weeks of Washington Post-ABC News tracking poll interviews find 84 percent of likely voters who supported Obama in 2008 support him this year, while 13 percent say they are switching to Romney and 3 percent are backing others or haven't made up their mind yet.
The chart below shows the erosion of Obama's 2008 coalition among many key demographics:
Among the most likely to defect are the usual suspects: Republicans and conservatives who crossed over to vote for Obama in 2008, along with white evangelicals and white men without college degrees. Obama already struggled with these groups, so no surprise here.
What's perhaps most striking is who the rest of Obama's defectors are. While much of the focus has been on how Obama has turned off white men, his defectors run the gamut.
Obama is losing 16 percent of white non-evangelical Protestants who previously supported him to Romney, but also 19 percent of white Catholics. While he has lost 21 percent of his non-college-educated white men, he has also lost 17 percent of white male college graduates and 18 percent of women who didn't attain four-year degrees. And Obama has lost between 11 percent and 14 percent of supporters in all three age groups: under 40 years old, 40-64, and 65-plus.
(Yes, many of these groups are white, but within the white demographic -- which is still roughly three-fourths of the electorate -- the even distribution of defectors is notable.)
Less obvious -- and a positive sign for Obama -- is his high retention rate among Hispanics and those with no religious affiliation. Both are fast-growing groups in the population and supported Obama at record levels in 2008. If they do so again, it will certainly help Obama offset his losses among other demographics.
Other groups that have stuck by Obama with few exceptions are liberals and those making less than $50,000 per year. Not surprisingly, these are the people Obama has focused his message on throughout this campaign, particularly his push to let the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans expire.
Romney and the Republicans, meanwhile, have used varied tactics to pick off dissatisfied barnacles of Obama's 2008 voting bloc. Speaking to the Republican National Convention in August,Romney reasoned, If you felt that excitement when you voted for Barack Obama, shouldn't you feel that way now that he's President Obama? And the Republican National Committee produced an ad entitled The Breakup, in which a woman abandons a life-size Obama cutout at a restaurant table because she's fed up with him. (Other groups have run similar ads.)
It's pretty clear that many types of Americans are breaking up with Obama in their own way, and if Obama loses, it won't be because he lost favor with any one particular group.The breakup would in fact be pretty universal.
Jobs report today: The last jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics before Tuesday's election comes out this morning at 8:30 a.m., and all eyes in the political world will be on it.
At the same time, neither a bad report for Obama two months ago nor a good one last month seemed to have much effect on the presidential race.
We wouldn't expect today's report -- barring some shocking numbers -- to be any different. But the numbers are likely to be used in talking points for one or both sides in the final days of the campaign.
Romney and Ryan both going to Pennsylvania: Both men on the GOP presidential ticket will go to Pennsylvania this weekend -- a reflection of how important the state has become to its path to victory.
Paul Ryan will be in the state on Saturday, while Romney will go on Sunday.
In response, Democrats noted that many Republican presidential candidates have made late pushes in Pennsylvania, only to come up short.
"In an act of sheer desperation, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are going all in in Pennsylvania, following the lead of every Republican presidential candidate since 1992 who have made last ditch investments in the Keystone State. Not one of them carried the state," Obama spokesman Michael Czin said in a statement.
As we wrote Wednesday, the Romney campaign's insistence on putting states like Pennsylvania in play may have as much to do with its lack of a path to victory in the current crop of "tossup" states as it does with how competitive Pennsylvania looks right now.
Republicans have also made late investments in Minnesota, Michigan and even New Mexico. All are expected to go for Obama.
Fixbits:
Romney hits Obama on his "bayonets and horses" comment while in Virginia, a state with lots of defense jobs.
Romney will debut his closing argument Friday in Wisconsin.
A Democratic former congressman from Ohio endorses Romney.
Incredibly, Republican candidates can't seem to stop talking about rape and pregnancy.
Rep. Jon Runyan's (R-N.J.) opponent pulls a radio ad that compared him to Hurricane Sandy.
Sen. Claire McCaskill's (D-Mo.) campaign is up with a new ad using Romney's criticisms of Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.) against Akin.
Montana GOP governor candidate Rick Hill has loaned his campaign $100,000 after a judge froze the rest of his funds.
Rep. Jeff Denham (R-Calif.) is suing the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee for libel.
Must-reads:
"In 5 Great Lakes states, some hotly contested terrain in presidential campaign" -- Joel Achenbach and Michael S. Williamson, Washington Post
"The Benghazi Drip-Drip-Drip" -- Jake Tapper, ABC News
"A Different Poll Question: Who Do You Think Will Win?" -- David Leonhardt, New York Times
"Romney Advance Team Works Every Angle in Pursuit of Visual Perfection" -- Ashley Parker, New York Times
"Warning from Ohio: Don't be misled by early election day results" -- Alana Semuels, Los Angeles Times
"Allen West and Alan Grayson: Florida's bipartisan contribution to partisanship" -- Ed O'Keefe, Washington Post
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November 3, 2012 Saturday
Suburban Edition
SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A09
LENGTH: 712 words
Afghanistan
4 policemen slainin insider attack
Four Afghan police officers were shot dead Friday in the southern province of Helmandin an insider attack by their colleagues, officials said.
Mohammad Toryali, police chief of Grish district, said the shooting occurred at a police outpost during a shift change. The officers on duty were killed by colleagues arriving to replace them, he said. The killers fled.
At least 55 foreign troops have died in attacks by Afghan security forces this year. A similar number of Afghan policemen and soldiers have been killed in similar attacks by colleagues.
The attacks have undermined trust between the U.S.-led coalition and its Afghan partners, throwing doubt on the Afghans' capabilities ahead of the departure of foreign troops in 2014.
In another development, a U.S. service member was killed in an insurgent attack in southern Afghanistan on Thursday, a military statement said.
- Associated Press
Japan
U.S. airman accused of attack in Okinawa
A U.S. airman is suspected of assaulting a boy Friday on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa, authorities said. The incident comes just two weeks after a curfew was imposed on all 52,000 U.S. troops in Japanafter the arrest of two sailors forallegedly raping a local woman.
Authorities on Okinawa said the 24-year-old airman was suspected of entering an apartment and punching the boy, 13, before breaking a TV set and trying to escape through a third-floor window. The airman, whose name has not been released, fell and was taken to a military hospital.
Japan's Foreign Ministry said the government had lodged a formal complaint with U.S. Ambassador John V. Roos.
"Let me be absolutely clear: I am very upset - it's an understatement to say I'm very upset - with the reported incident in Okinawa," Roos said after meeting with Japanese officials. "It is incredibly unfortunate that the purported actions of a few reflect badly on thousands of young men and women here in Japan, away from their homes, that are here for the defense of Japan."
- Associated Press
Cuba
U.S. mission's workdecried as subversive
Cuba denounced the American diplomatic mission on theisland Friday for what it called subversive activities designed to undermine the government of President Raul Castro, a shot across the bow just four daysbefore the U.S. election.
The Foreign Ministry said the Americans illegally give classes inside the walls of the U.S. Interests Section - which Washington maintains instead of an embassy - and provide Internet service without permission.
It vowed to defend Cuba's sovereignty "by any legal means" at its disposal, but gave no details. There was no immediate comment from U.S. envoys in Cuba.
Cuba considers all opposition figures to be stooges paid by Washington to cause trouble. The American mission has long provided Internet services to dissidents on the island. It also runs cultural and language programs.
It was not clear why Cuba chose now to criticize the practice. But the timing could be linked to Tuesday's U.S. election.
Republican candidate Mitt Romney has launched a Spanish-language ad in the key swing state of Florida implying that President Obama is supported by Raul and Fidel Castro and leftist Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez. The Obama administration says the ad itself rewards Chavez and the Castros with undeserved attention, and notes that relations with both countries have remained chilly under Obama.
- Associated Press
Central Asians held captive in Moscow, activists say: Russian human rights activists said Friday that they had freed 12 Central Asians held captive asmodern-day slaves in the basement of a Moscow food store, some of them for as long as a decade. The allegations - which are being investigated by the authorities - could not be immediately confirmed independently, but activists said they were consistent with reports of hundreds of thousands of such slaves.
At least 20 dead after cyclone strikes India: The death toll from a cyclone that hit southern India rose to 20 Friday as people started to return to their homes. Cyclone Nilam, with winds of up to 65 mph, made landfall Wednesday at Mahabalipuram in Tamil Nadu state. About 13,000 people from low-lying areas in Tamil Nadu and neighboring Andhra Pradesh were evacuated.
- From news services
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November 3, 2012 Saturday
Regional Edition
Checking the Fact Checker
SECTION: EDITORIAL COPY; Pg. A15
LENGTH: 114 words
Does anybody check the Fact Checker? In his Oct. 28 analysis, "Putting an Obama ad on troops into context," Glenn Kessler assigned three Pinocchios to the Obama campaign ad that asserts Mitt Romney termed as "tragic" withdrawing all troops from Iraq. Kessler quoted Romney at length, and then said: "In other words, the phrase tragic referred to the failure to not reach a deal - not bringing the troops home." Apart from the insertion of "not" before "reach," which appears to be a typo in that sentence, the antecedent paragraph quoted from Romney clearly refers to troop withdrawals. I would assign the Pinocchios to Kessler this time, not to the Obama campaign.
Alan Fern, Chevy Chase
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November 3, 2012 Saturday
Regional Edition
Overcoming procrastination: Let me get back to you on that
BYLINE: Alexandra Petri
SECTION: EDITORIAL COPY; Pg. A17
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We are a nation of last-minute shoppers.
Come Christmas Eve, you will find thousands of frantic Santas dashing through the aisles, grabbing boxes at random and snapping at one another. Come Halloween morning, we create long lines, waiting to run through the costume store. All year, we knew the date. We had seen ad after ad, and it was circled several times on our calendar.
But here we are, nonetheless.
Why does this always happen? Is it that we start too early? Halloween came to the stores months ago, bumping into the Fourth of July as it entered. Christmas is arriving now, before Thanksgiving even gets a foot in the door. We have had months and months (and months) to see all our options and grow tired of them. And then the deadline arrives, and we go into a panic, tearing everything we can reach off the bare metal shelves.
We arrive home and stare at the six sets of My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic Accessories that, in our deadline-addled frenzy, we seemed to think would make appropriate holiday gifts for our entire families.
What hath the deadline wrought?
So why should it be any different with the election? That, we've been hearing about for years. It feels, now, that these candidates have always been with us. Fatigue doesn't begin to describe it. This election jumped the shark months ago, when Newt Gingrich was bitten by a penguin. Now it feels like we're in reruns.
Still, a lingering percentage of us still haven't made up our minds. The difference between the 48.56 percent of likely voters leaning toward President Obama and 48.49 percent headed for Mitt Romney in the most recent Washington Post-ABC poll is - a few procrastinators.
Welcome to Procrasti-Nation.
What makes a procrastinator? This should be easy to determine. I am one myself. To quote Douglas Adams: "I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by." I tried to make a list of things that define the true procrastinator. Here is the list.
1.
Some things are hard to procrastinate on - removing pies from ovens, extinguishing fires, being present for your children's childhoods, ending World War I, just to name a few. Once I procrastinated on breaking up with someone and we wound up in a six-year relationship by mistake.
But most things don't work like that. You can procrastinate almost indefinitely, and the outcome is not noticeably different. Take this piece, for example.
Which kind is the election?
Procrastinators come in several stripes. There are the ones who are constantly aware of what they are supposed to do but think they still have enough time to do it. There is a certain arrogance to these procrastinators. "This will be very easy," they say. "I don't need to worry about that, because I could do it in my sleep."
They believe that the eleventh hour will show them forth in all their greatness, that inspiration comes just as the clocks sound midnight, that they will snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, the way Kiefer Sutherland used to do during Hour 23. (I assume. "24" is on my list of Things to Watch.)
Then there are the ones who completely forgot this was due today and are frantically scribbling to beat the band. They are not procrastinators by inclination. It just slipped their minds.
And there are the ones who meant to do it, but the longer they contemplated the task, the more mammoth it got. They are just going to throw darts at it and hope it works itself out.
How does this factor into the election? Who still hasn't decided? When will they decide? How? By taking an online quiz about Whose Politics Match Yours the night before? In the line, jostling between Those Old Ladies Moving Very Methodically Who Always Show Up When You Have Somewhere Urgent To Be? In the booth? Once they see who falls first alphabetically on the page? (Laugh if you like, but the Democratic Party says this happens in Tennessee.)
Why are we so startled at the Voter Procrastinator when we're surrounded by procrastinators in everything else? After all, this isn't new. The same last-minute scramble happens every four years.
If it weren't for the last minute, as someone wise once quipped, nothing would ever get done at all.
Alexandra Petri writes the ComPost blog at washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost.
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The Washington Post
November 3, 2012 Saturday
Suburban Edition
Ohioans ready for their star turn to end
BYLINE: Rosalind S. Helderman
SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A08
LENGTH: 764 words
DATELINE: TOLEDO
TOLEDO - For many Ohioans, at first it felt like love.
Now it feels like stalking.
In this state, considered by both sides to be the place likely to determine the outcome of the presidential election, it is impossible to get away from President Obama and Mitt Romney.
They write. They call. They stop by the house, sometimes more than once a day.
Turn on the news, and they're there - during the commercials and between them. They blow up cellphones with text messages and they e-mail constantly, begging and pleading - mostly for money, sometimes for votes.
"It's just oversaturation at this point. It's enough," said Steve Thomas, 60, a physician assistant doing his part to make it all stop by casting an early ballot Thursday.
Even in a state grown accustomed to its status as a key presidential battleground, people are agreed that they've seen nothing like the 2012 election.
Part of it is how long it's been going on, for a full year or more now. And part of it, in this most expensive election in history, is how much money both sides have to spend on the elusive activities that the pros call "the ground game" and that ordinary people call harassment. Why send one flier when you can afford to send 12?
Both sides brag that they've never had a more sophisticated effort to find potential supporters and reach out to them - many, many times if necessary.
The Romney campaign claims it has made 4.9 million phone calls and knocked on 2.3 million doors in Ohio alone. The Obama campaign doesn't release such numbers but says it has outdone the Republicans.
That's all in a state with 11.5 million people, 7.9 million of whom are registered to vote.
All of that outreach can feel oppressive to voters - and confusing to many who say they made up their minds long ago and regularly vote, helpful phone reminder or no.
"I've voted in every election since I was 18. I've never been one to think my vote doesn't matter," said Bridgett Garnett, 33, from Toledo.
That didn't stop campaign workers from knocking on her door. Fifteen of them so far.
"To make sure I vote. To make sure I vote early. To inform me about various things on the ballot," she said. "I always listen. With a lot of them, you can tell they're nervous, and I respect that door-to-door thing."
In some ways, it's as if Ohio has become New Hampshire and Iowa, home to the nation's first contests of the primary season, where the joke is that you can't make up your mind until you've met each candidate at least twice.
If you live in Ohio, and you want to see the candidates speak, you've had dozens of opportunities.
The difference is that candidates come to New Hampshire and Iowa scrappy and poor. They compete to outdo each other at long town hall meetings, where ordinary people ask ordinary questions. They visit diners. They shake hands and listen to voters one by one.
The primary states ask for the privilege, and they fight to keep it.
By the time the campaign gets here, it's all recorded phone calls, biting television ads and snazzy rallies that require waiting in line for hours to get through Secret Service checkpoints.
And Ohio didn't really choose this. It stumbled into its all-important status by somehow developing the perfect mix of urban and rural, white and black, young and old, to produce a history of razor-thin election margins.
Voters say it's the television ads, dripping with negativity, that feel most depressing. But it's the phone calls that are most annoying, usually with a recording on the other line, occasionally with a script-reading volunteer barely audible above the sound of fellow phone-bankers making the same calls.
"You can turn off the television. You don't have to read the paper. You can turn off the radio. But the phone rings. You don't know who it's from. It could be your mother. So you answer it," said John Engle, 66, a retired teacher from Sylvania.
A surprising number, say voters, are survey takers asking for their opinions as part of a poll, as the rest of the country joins the candidates in demanding to know what Ohio thinks.
Voters here say they understand the privilege they have by living in Ohio, how in a very real way their opinion about who should be president counts more than that of people living in other states.
Still, they say they're counting down until Wednesday, when Ohio once again will become just another state.
"It'll be nice," said David Rock, 52, a nurse from Oregon, Ohio, who voted for Obama. But people in Ohio care about this election just like everywhere else. So he added, "Well, I guess it'll be nice. It depends who wins."
heldermanr@washpost.com
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The Washington Post
November 3, 2012 Saturday
Met 2 Edition
A border town feels half-courted, half-forgotten
BYLINE: Eli Saslow
SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A01
LENGTH: 1293 words
DATELINE: LINEVILLE, IOWA
LINEVILLE, IOWA - They had worked for generations to obscure the state border, because a farming town of 300 couldn't afford to be divided. "One Place, One Community," proclaimed a sign on the road into town, and Main Street was located half in one state and half in the other. Kids from Iowa sometimes went to public schools in Missouri. Families from Missouri sometimes paid taxes to Iowa.
"Nobody knows who lives where, and nobody really cares," the mayor said.
At least until earlier this year, when workers for both presidential campaigns arrived here with maps and satellite images to walk the dirt roads and ask residents where, exactly, Iowa ended, and where, exactly, Missouri began. They knocked on doors in Iowa to recruit volunteers but walked past houses in Missouri. They built a combined 74 campaign offices in one state and only six in the other. They bombarded one side of town with so much mail that the brochures filled a storage room and the postmaster extended his hours.
"Iowa, you could determine the next president!" read one glossy flier, sent to Lineville by the hundreds.
Meanwhile, less than 100 feet away in Missouri, the only hint of an upcoming election was homemade fliers gathering dust on the counter of the liquor store: "Missouri Tobacco Tax Initiative, Proposition B - the No. 1 Issue for Missourians in 2012."
Here in Lineville and so many other places around the country, the presidential campaign has crystallized geography, turning a rural state line into a hard divider. Voters on one side are regarded as all-important. Voters on the other side are all but disregarded. A close national campaign has become increasingly hyper-local in its final days, with both President Obama and Mitt Romney devoting their time and money to winning over a small number of swing voters in a smaller number of swing states. Iowa is one of them. Republican-leaning Missouri is not.
One of the dividing lines between them is a potholed road that bisects the cornfields and cattle herds of Lineville, where residents experience contrary versions of an American presidential campaign.
"I'm not sure anybody gives a lick what I think," said Nancy Snow, the town secretary, who lives on the Missouri side.
"You'd think we were all rich and famous the way they're coming after us," said Jack Shields, the mayor, who lives on the Iowa side.
'We keep our politics quiet'
Shields has been the mayor of Lineville for 15 years without ever running for office. He had never once declared himself a candidate - never raised money, ordered yard signs or campaigned. People in town had started writing down his name on their ballots for mayor because they trusted his judgment, knew most of his five siblings and admired the way he ran the local grain elevator. He had accepted the job each time even though it barely paid, because he had never lived anywhere else, and because serving Lineville seemed like the right thing to do.
"If somebody else wants this job, they can have it," he liked to say. "You can't afford to disagree with people in a town this size. We keep our politics quiet."
Now, six days from a presidential election that had become everything but quiet, he arrived home in work boots and overalls to a small family farm on the Iowa state line and opened his mailbox. Inside were three fliers supporting Obama and two more sent on behalf of Romney. "Help decide!" read one. "This is about your future," read another. He tossed aside the mailings and walked up to his house.
He expected the phone to ring any minute with the first of three nightly robo-calls, which came so regularly he could predict their times. One came at 6, another at 7:30 and the last one at 8. Even though he knew many of the recordings by heart, sometimes he still decided to answer. It gave him a break from the incessant cycle of campaign ads playing on his TV.
For most of every four years, he has felt like the mayor of a "little nothing place," he said - a place that was all but disappearing. The town population has been dwindling by about a dozen people each year from a peak of about 600 in the early 1980s, and now the mayor's two-room office doubles as the town's only tornado shelter. The purple-painted restaurant on the square is named "The Restaurant." A gas station and a liquor store are the only other remaining businesses in town. A quarter of the population lives below the poverty line, and young people are leaving to find jobs in Des Moines. Gas prices have skyrocketed, and it's a 34-mile drive to buy groceries at the nearest Wal-Mart. The local school district - also the town's biggest employer - closed in 2010, and not a single politician outside of the county did anything to save it.
And yet all of a sudden his besieged rural America is the American heartland, and its barns and cornfields are being used as the props of endless campaign rallies, and his phone won't stop ringing, and the pollsters wanted to keep him on the line to ask him questions about what he thought.
Well?
"I don't care for the tradeoffs, for the talking points," he said. "They need us now but they won't need us later. That's soured me on it."
'It was nice to be asked'
A block across town, in a railroad-style house that doubled as Lineville's liquor store, Nancy Snow's phone wasn't ringing, and another day of the presidential campaign in Missouri was quietly passing by. She sat on the couch in her living room in the early afternoon and watched "The Young and The Restless," which she would re-watch at 9 p.m. Her seat on the couch afforded a clear view into her one-room liquor store, with a walk-in fridge, a "Welcome Hunters" sign and jars of pickled eggs and cured sausages sitting alongside the cash register.
She usually keeps the store open six days a week, from 9 a.m. to 10:30 p.m., and she has been the only employee ever since her husband died in 2005. She spends each day as a captive in the house, waiting for business, trying to pass the time. She makes her bed. She watches her cowboy shows. She walks her cat around the yard on a leash. She turns on MSNBC, Fox News and then CNN.
A week earlier, a pollster had called to ask if she would be willing to participate in a survey about the election, and she had talked to him about her opinions for an hour.
"It was nice to be asked," she said.
For the first time since she could remember, she felt like the observer of a presidential election and not a participant. Missouri had been a swing state in almost every previous election, but now Romney led in the polls by 8 percentage points, and the Democrats had all but withdrawn. Obama had opened two campaign offices in the state, compared with the 22 offices he had there in 2008. This time, his supporters had spent less than $1 million to advertise in Missouri while spending more than $20 million in Iowa.
Snow has received mail and phone calls about the controversial senatorial contest between Democrat Claire McCaskill and Republican Todd Akin, but nothing from Obama or Romney. What she hears about the election comes mostly from her customers - nearly all of them from the more-populated Iowa side of town, and many weary of the campaign.
"I can't wait for it to be over," said one customer, interrupting "The Young and The Restless" to buy a carton of Winstons.
"They're not bothering me," Snow said.
She planned to vote nonetheless, at a building a few miles down the road in Missouri. Her plan was to cast her ballot at 8:30 a.m. on Nov. 6 and then hurry back to Lineville. Before she opened her store, she wanted to walk over to the polling location on the Iowa side. "Everybody who is anybody will be over there," she said. She wanted to see the election unfold in a place that mattered, a block away.
saslowe@washpost.com
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November 3, 2012 Saturday
Met 2 Edition
Candidates refine themes in sprint
BYLINE: Karen Tumulty;Philip Rucker
SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A04
LENGTH: 1228 words
DATELINE: WEST ALLIS, WIS.
WEST ALLIS, Wis. - There was a familiar ring to the new speech in which Mitt Romney called Friday for a shared sense of purpose and promised an era of national healing.
It sounded very much like the themes Barack Obama ran on four years ago.
"I will lead America to a better place, where confidence in the future is assured, not questioned," the GOP challenger told an ebullient crowd at the Wisconsin state fairgrounds here. "This is not a time for America to settle. We're four days away from a fresh start, four days away from the first day of a new beginning."
From the start, the two campaigns have had different theories of the race - Romney's being that it would be a referendum on Obama; Obama's that it would be a comparative choice between the two candidates. But in the final days, both sides appear to have realized that this election is both. The challenger seeking to unseat an incumbent must make a case for himself. The incumbent seeking to hold on to his office must convince voters not only that the alternative would be worse but also that he has earned the right to another term.
So Obama found himself heading into Election Day in the traditional posture for an incumbent under siege - the fighter, not the conciliator, wiser for the experience.
"I'm a very nice guy, people will tell you. I really am," Obama said.
But if "the price of peace in Washington" means cutting deals to slash student financial aid or give health insurance companies more power, "I'm not going to make that deal," the president said at a high school gym in Springfield, Ohio, at the second of three rallies Friday in that crucial state.
He added: "I am a long ways away from giving up on this fight. I got a lot of fight left in me. I don't get tired. I don't grow weary. I hope you aren't tired either, Ohio."
Though the polls show the race to be close, it is not because the voters lack a contrast, and both candidates are using their last hours of frenzied campaigning to highlight that choice.
Romney ended the day in West Chester, a suburb of Cincinnati, where he came together with his wife, Ann; their five sons; his running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.); and more than 40 top surrogates for a huge rally before they fanned separately across battleground states for the three-day sprint to Election Day. Of them all, Ohio looms largest. "Your state is the one I'm counting on, by the way. This is the one we have to win," Romney told the energetic crowd of more than 18,000, the biggest of his campaign.
From there, Romney set off on a swing from New Hampshire to Iowa to Colorado and, on Sunday, to Pennsylvania. Romney is making an eleventh-hour gamble to contest the Keystone State, which leans Democratic but, with 20 electoral votes, could give him an alternate path to victory. Meanwhile, he is dispatching Ryan to Minnesota, another leaning-Democratic state that Romney is trying to snatch away from Obama.
Obama is setting off on a whirlwind tour of his own, with plans to stump on Saturday in Iowa, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin and on Sunday in a slew of other states. At various stops, he will be joined by former president Bill Clinton and singers Katy Perry, Dave Matthews and John Mellencamp.
Adding punctuation to the two candidates' rhetoric was a fresh monthly jobs report - one that each candidate seized upon to underscore his argument.
Obama pointed to the second straight month of unemployment below 8 percent as evidence that the country was making real progress; Romney said the report was more evidence of how frustratingly slow the recovery has been.
The president challenged Romney's effort to seize the banner of change.
"Now, Governor Romney, he's a very gifted salesman. So he's been trying in this campaign, as hard as he can, to repackage these ideas that didn't work, the very same policies that did not work, and he's trying to pretend that they're change," Obama said. "Now, the thing is, we know what change looks like, and what he's selling ain't it."
These final pitches are always a tricky balance between inspiring the base to put their hearts into the last few days and winning over the few voters who are still making up their minds.
Along with his talk of putting political differences aside, the Republican challenger also unleashed a sharply partisan attack, warning that reelecting Obama would lead to another showdown in Congress next year over the debt ceiling, followed by a possible government shutdown and default on debts. Democrats insist that Republicans are the ones guilty of intransigence on those issues.
Obama, for his part, blasted Romney on Friday for using "scare" tactics in claiming that U.S. car companies are moving jobs to China. He accused Romney of frightening Americans with false claims of job losses "just to scare up some votes."
In Hilliard, Ohio, about 12 miles northwest of Columbus, Obama made his first extended remarks about a Romney TV commercial in wide circulation in the state. The ad, which says that General Motors and Chrysler are expanding in China, may leave some Ohioans with the impression that U.S. jobs, including at Toledo-based Jeep, are moving there.
Democrats have attacked the ad as untrue, and independent analysts, including The Washington Post's Fact Checker, have criticized it as misleading. Chrysler announced a year ago it would add 1,100 jobs at its Toledo plant.
Obama told a crowd of 2,800 at the Franklin County Fairgrounds that the ad has prompted workers at the Jeep plant to call their employer to ask if they will lose their jobs.
"The reason they're making the calls is because Governor Romney is running an ad that says so. Except it's not true," Obama said. "The car companies themselves have told Governor Romney to knock it off. GM said we think creating jobs in the United States should be a source of bipartisan pride. I could not agree more."
Despite the criticism the ad has received, which has included condemnation by auto company executives, Romney aides say it is accurate and provides important context on an issue Obama has run on for months.
Romney kicked off the final leg of the campaign in Wisconsin, a state that has not voted for a Republican presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan in 1984. Its 10 electoral votes now are central to both campaigns' calculations.
Romney hopes the deep ground organization that Republican Gov. Scott Walker built in Wisconsin earlier this year to fend off a recall effort - as well as his selection of Ryan, a native of Janesville, southwest of Milwaukee, as his running mate - will pay dividends at the polls Tuesday.
Along with his high-altitude themes, Romney also pointed to tangible problems, such as rising gasoline prices, that he has calculated could help him pry away suburban voters who may be leaning toward Obama.
Noting that gas costs roughly twice what it did in 2008, Romney said that "we're going to change course on energy - and I know just how much energy means to middle-class families." Romney said he would open more federal lands to oil drilling, approve construction of the Keystone pipeline and loosen governmentregulations on coal development - a proposal he thinks might give him a lift in the coal regions of Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia.
tumultyk@washpost.com
ruckerp@washpost.com
David Nakamura, traveling with Obama, and William Branigin and Alice Crites in Washington contributed to this report.
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The New York Times
November 2, 2012 Friday
Late Edition - Final
Storm-Imposed Intermission Over, Both Campaigns Rush Back Onto Stage
BYLINE: By MICHAEL D. SHEAR and MARK LANDLER; Michael D. Shear reported from Washington, and Mark Landler from Las Vegas. Michael Barbaro contributed from Virginia.
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; Pg. 12
LENGTH: 1048 words
WASHINGTON -- The two presidential campaigns roared back to life on Thursday, ending a storm-imposed hiatus with urgent closing arguments and a flurry of cross-country rallies as Mitt Romney raced to overtake President Obama in the election's final 100 hours.
Mr. Obama enters the last stretch with a slight and consistent -- but in some cases, shrinking -- edge over Mr. Romney, his Republican rival, in polling from most of the 10 swing states where the campaigns are waging fierce and costly battles with television ads and armies of supporters.
The president returned to the trail Thursday amid a series of high-profile events this week that helped bolster his claims of bipartisan appeal. He received endorsements from Colin L. Powell, the former secretary of state, and Michael R. Bloomberg, the independent mayor of New York City. And on Wednesday, the president stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Chris Christie, the Republican governor of New Jersey, as the two toured the state's devastated coastal communities.
But Mr. Romney's withering, yearlong critique of the president's economic stewardship has brought him to a virtual tie in national surveys. His campaign hopes that continued attacks combined with a renewed, bipartisan appeal to moderate and independent voters will help him overcome the president's state-by-state organization.
After spending close to $1 billion each, the two candidates are finishing the campaign where polls show they are strongest: with Mr. Obama stressing his pledge to protect the middle class and Mr. Romney promising to fix the nation's economy. Mr. Romney's campaign also signaled its intention to battle Mr. Obama on more fronts, with the campaign announcing on Thursday that he will make a stop in Pennsylvania on Sunday, an indication that Republican strategists believe they might be able to win a state that has been trending Democratic.
Both sides are bracing for Friday morning's release of the October unemployment rate, a final piece of economic evidence that could either bolster Mr. Romney's accusations of fiscal malpractice or provide further ammunition for the president's case that the country's struggling economy is finally headed in the right direction and creating jobs.
After avoiding attacks on Mr. Obama for 72 hours because of the storm, Mr. Romney plunged back into the fray in Roanoke, Va., mocking the president for proposing a cabinet-level post devoted to business development. Mr. Obama discussed the idea in an interview with MSNBC that was shown Monday, just as Mr. Romney was entering cease-fire mode.
''I don't think adding a new chair in his cabinet will help add millions of jobs on Main Street,'' Mr. Romney told an enthusiastic crowd Thursday morning at a family-owned factory. ''We need a president who understands business, and I do.''
The campaign unveiled a new ad echoing those remarks and saying that the president's ''answer to everything'' was simply adding another government bureaucrat. But at his rally, Mr. Romney also played down his own record as a businessman, focusing instead on how he would govern with the support of Democrats and independents should he win on Tuesday.
''We know something about the past, we've seen what his policies have produced,'' Mr. Romney said in Virginia. ''The only way to get this economy going is the kind of bold change I've described, real change from Day 1.''
Mr. Romney's efforts to claim the mantle of change from Mr. Obama -- who rode to victory in 2008 by promising a new kind of politics -- drew sharp criticism from the president as he began the first of three rallies in three states on Thursday. Wearing a black Air Force One bomber jacket at a rally in Wisconsin, the president scoffed at Mr. Romney's offer of a new direction.
''Let me tell you, Wisconsin,'' Mr. Obama said. ''We know what change looks like. And what the governor is offering sure ain't change.''
At a sun-drenched rally in Las Vegas, Mr. Obama appeared at once sobered and galvanized by his tour of the devastation in New Jersey, drawing on the experience to frame his pitch for bipartisan cooperation and a robust government role in society.
''It reminds us that when disaster strikes, we see America at its best,'' Mr. Obama said. ''All the petty differences that consume us in normal times somehow melt away. There are no Democrats or Republicans in a storm -- just fellow Americans.''
Even as Mr. Obama returned to the trail, the White House was intent on presenting him as deeply immersed in the storm recovery effort. On Air Force One from Wisconsin to Nevada, the president spoke with Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York and Gov. Dannel P. Malloy of Connecticut, and joined a 20-minute conference call led by Mr. Christie.
Until Election Day, the president will be in nearly constant motion, flying to three states a day, as he works furiously to lock down what his campaign insists are narrow but durable leads. Mr. Obama was scheduled to spend all Friday in Ohio, and he is likely to return to the state at least one more time before Tuesday.
In addition, the president's campaign released a television ad Thursday featuring effusive praise from Mr. Powell. The ad, which will run in 10 states, underscores Mr. Obama's closing message by showing Mr. Powell, a Republican, declaring that ''we ought to keep on the track that we are on.''
But the best barometer of how the campaigns felt about their chances on Thursday was the schedules they have set in place.
The president's stop in Wisconsin was aimed at securing a state the campaign did not worry about before Mr. Romney chose a native son, Representative Paul D. Ryan, as his running mate. Mr. Ryan has campaigned extensively there.
The Obama campaign feels more confident about Nevada. Despite having one of the nation's highest unemployment rates and millions of homes in foreclosure, the state has trended Democratic in recent elections.
On the other hand, Mr. Romney's decision to spend all Thursday in Virginia comes a day after he campaigned in Florida. Both are Southern states the Republican campaign had hoped to have locked up by now.
Polls from NBC News, The Wall Street Journal and Marist out Thursday morning showed Mr. Obama holding on to narrow leads in Iowa and locked in tight races with Mr. Romney in Wisconsin and New Hampshire.
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GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: Top, Mitt Romney, greeting supporters at a rally in Richmond, campaigned all day Thursday in Virginia. Above, President Obama, arriving at Austin Straubel International Airport in Green Bay,Wis., the first of three states he visited on Thursday. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY STEPHEN CROWLEY/THE NEW YORK TIMES
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The New York Times
November 2, 2012 Friday
The International Herald Tribune
America's Gender Divide
BYLINE: By ROGER COHEN
SECTION: Section ; Column 0; Editorial Desk; OP-ED COLUMNIST; Pg.
LENGTH: 819 words
CLEVELAND -- FOR one prominent Cleveland businessman, a lifelong Democrat, the election had come down to a couple of burning questions: Did he dare tell his wife that he was thinking of voting for Mitt Romney? Would she ever forgive him?
In the end, although tempted, he did not dare and voted early for Obama. His quandary illustrates a fundamental dynamic of the excruciatingly close Ohio vote, which in turn could decide the election. Many men who voted for Obama in 2008 are now leaning toward Romney because they are frustrated by the president's handling of the economy and convinced that he cannot spur a decisive recovery.
Many women, more focused on social issues, the problems they face in the work force and particularly the right to abortion, just think these men have lost it.
My Ohio survey was unscientific -- conversations over a few days -- but national polling reveals a sharp split along gender lines. The latest poll by The New York Times and CBS News found that Mr. Obama is supported by 52 percent of women and 44 percent of men, while Mr. Romney is preferred by 51 percent of men and 44 percent of women.
The race is poised on a knife-edge: the knives at the American breakfast tables where many husbands and wives are arguing.
If Obama loses, he will have to blame not only his disastrous first debate performance, his futile attempt to define Mitt Romney as a monstrous unfeeling capitalist, and his touch of alienating coolness. He will have to blame his inability to convince the leaders of corporate America that he is not ''anti-business'' and his failure to persuade many Americans, ranging from college graduates to holders of high school diplomas, that his top priority was jobs.
The anti-Obama feeling I encountered among business leaders in both Cleveland and Chicago was of startling vehemence. A Chicago chief executive, scion of Obama's hometown, described how Obama had alienated U.S.A. Inc. The narrative ran all the way from Obama's 2009 comment on 60 Minutes: ''I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of fat cat bankers on Wall Street'' to his remark in a campaign speech this year that, ''If you've got a business -- you didn't build that.''
It included his failure to place business leaders in his inner circle, his reluctance to listen to them at White House gatherings and his lack of business experience.
The painstaking if uncertain recovery from the abyss of 2008, the salvaging of the auto industry, the lenience to Wall Street earned not a mention.
Obama is battling this sticky ''anti-business'' label in the land of business. That is an uphill road -- especially in an age of unlimited campaign contributions.
If Romney loses, he will have to blame remaining hostage too long to the right wing of the Republican Party, adopting a social agenda to please the Tea Party, delaying his move to the moderate center for too long, and failing to perceive that the level of economic discontent was such that he could win as a centrist pro-business Republican rather than as a ''pro-life'' ideologue echoing antediluvian male views on the rights, anatomies and inclinations of women.
A Chicago friend told me how you recognize liberal Republicans in Washington these days. ''They're the guys still eating with knives and forks,'' he said. Romney should have moved to that table long ago.
Both candidates have made big mistakes. We will know next week whose was most fatal.
Obama allowed Romney back in the race. After the conventions Romney was toast. After the first debate he became plausible. The Democratic ad blitz to define him as the beast of Bain imploded. Whatever else he was, the G.O.P. candidate was plainly a paid-up member of the human race.
Obama, through his lofty disdain, had suggested he did not care much about keeping his job. How then could he deliver on creating others?
I ran into Thomas Kish, a black ex-Marine working in security, near the West Side Market in downtown Cleveland. He has voted Democratic all his life. Now, worried by ''our downhill trend,'' he is unsure. ''I watched all those commercials that put Romney down and then I saw him in the debates and liked his aggressiveness,'' he said. ''He seemed like he could make some changes. Obama is a good talker, but not much of a backer-upper.''
Kish is a big reason Obama should be worried.
But then there was Pamela Stevenson, aged 49, with a job in marketing, who had already voted for Obama when I met her -- and brought along her two sons, aged 20 and 19, to make sure they voted for Obama, too. ''We are coming out in numbers,'' she told me. ''We know that is what we have to do to get him back in.''
It has come down to women against men, turnout against momentum. How many women, blacks, Latinos, workers will vote for Obama? How many Romney voters are keeping quiet about their choice? There is no romance left. Obama will have to grind this out -- and hope feminine good sense prevails.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/02/opinion/roger-cohen-americas-gender-divide.html
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November 2, 2012 Friday
Late Edition - Final
Fiat's Plan to Go Upscale Is Met With Skepticism
BYLINE: By JACK EWING
SECTION: Section B; Column 0; Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 3
LENGTH: 1344 words
FRANKFURT -- Sergio Marchionne, the chief executive of Chrysler and Fiat, was the model of the concerned corporate leader when he vowed this week not to close any underused Italian car factories. But many doubt whether even the man who led Chrysler's revival can defy Europe's worst industry downturn in decades.
Instead of closing factories that are operating at less than half of capacity and throwing thousands of people out of work, Fiat will attempt to do what BMW and Mercedes have done in Germany. It will make Italy a production center for the company's pricier brands, like Alfa Romeo and Maserati, which Fiat will then try to export to the United States and fast-growing markets in Asia.
The ambitious plan has been received skeptically by analysts who doubt whether Alfa Romeo can play in the same league as the German brands -- each of which sells more than four times as many cars in Europe and already have strong positions in America and China.
''Alfa has too little volume,'' said Ferdinand Dudenhöffer, a professor at the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany who generally admires Mr. Marchionne.
Even in Italy, where Fiat is the largest private-sector employer, Mr. Marchionne's vow not to close plants won only muted praise. Many in the country complain that he has not kept past promises to invest in new Fiat brand cars.
''Fiat's words are good, fair and realistic,'' Roberto Cota, the president of the Piedmont region, told the news agency Ansa. ''But as president of the region I await facts.''
What is more, any good will generated by Mr. Marchionne's show of commitment to Italian jobs was overshadowed by a decision this week to fire 19 workers at a factory in Naples. That came after a court ordered the company to rehire 19 others who had been dismissed, ruling in favor of their claims of discrimination.
If the firings seemed vindictive to the company's critics, Fiat said in a statement that it had ''no alternative but to employ the necessary mechanisms to reduce the company's existing work force by the same number.''
During a week in which Ford and General Motors reported another quarter of huge losses in Europe, Mr. Marchionne illustrated just how different the crisis on the Continent is playing out compared with the one on the other side of the Atlantic in 2009.
European automakers cannot count on U.S.-style bailouts from strapped governments. And even if countries did try to prop up their national champions, they would probably run afoul of European Union rules.
In Europe, the government role usually consists of trying to prevent car companies from cutting jobs, even in response to huge financial losses. Calls by Mr. Marchionne for a coordinated, industrywide reduction of factory capacity have not led to any action. So the carmakers are left to fight among themselves for higher shares of a shrinking market -- a competition that not all can win.
''The market is going to be a lot tougher than people think,'' Mr. Marchionne said during a conference call with analysts Tuesday. ''This is truly not for the fainthearted.''
Not that the car business is immune to politics in the United States, where Mr. Marchionne has been drawn into the fray. The Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, has been running television commercials contending that President Barack Obama ''sold Chrysler to Italians.''
In fact, many analysts credit Mr. Marchionne -- who grew up partly in Canada and has dual Canadian and Italian citizenship -- with rescuing Chrysler from oblivion. The rescue saved the jobs of more than 55,000 company employees, mostly in the United States and Canada.
''If it wasn't for Marchionne Chrysler wouldn't be around,'' said Paul Nieuwenhuis, a director of the Center for Automotive Industry Research at Cardiff University in Wales.
Fiat and Chrysler remain legally separate. And Fiat cannot subsidize Italian operations with Chrysler profits, according to the company. On the contrary, Fiat has been supplying Chrysler with components and engineering that allow it to introduce more new products than it might be able to do on its own. The new Dodge Dart borrows heavily from the Alfa Romeo Giulietta, and the company is expected to incorporate more Italian styling and technology into future Chrysler models.
While European sales have not yet dropped as steeply as they did in the United States in 2009, the downturn -- 20 percent since 2007 -- has lasted longer and an uptick is not yet in sight. Mr. Marchionne said that Fiat's European operations would not be profitable again until 2015 or 2016. G.M. this week made a similar forecast for Opel, after reporting a pretax loss in Europe of $478 million.
Except for Ford, which plans to close three factories in Europe after reporting a pretax loss of $468 million in the region during the quarter, automakers have been hesitant to face the public opprobrium that accompanies any shutdown. Opel plans to close a plant in Bochum, Germany, but probably not until 2016.
Mr. Marchionne, who said earlier this week that it made more business sense to keep plants open, promised to roll out an array of new high-end models that would be built in Italy for export. The product offensive is to include seven new Alfa Romeos, six new Maseratis and a new Jeep brand vehicle.
Critics are skeptical about the plans to move upmarket.
''They've been trying that for a while with limited success,'' said Mr. Nieuwenhuis of Cardiff University. Alfa and Fiat have too thin a distribution and service network in Europe even when its products are appealing, he said. ''What let them down was their dealer network,'' Mr. Nieuwenhuis said.
All the European carmakers are trying to escape dependence on lower-priced vehicles with thin or nonexistent profit margins. They look enviously at the German carmakers, which have remained profitable through the downturn. So far no European rivals have been able to seriously challenge the dominance of BMW, Mercedes and Audi.
Renault said Wednesday that it wanted to focus its French factories on higher-priced cars like the Laguna. The company said it would begin talks with labor unions next week on how to operate more profitably. In a statement, the company did not mention plant closings.
Given that Mr. Marchionne has already led one turnaround at Fiat, and gets credit for saving Chrysler, it would probably be a mistake to underestimate his chances. For all its problems, Fiat has performed better in Europe than Ford or Opel.
Fiat said Tuesday that it lost €219 million, or $283 million, in Europe, the Middle East and Africa in the third quarter, compared with a loss of €135 million a year earlier. As bad as that is, it is still substantially better than Ford's and G.M.'s results in the region.
''We have all said nasty things about his strategy but he did better than we expected,'' said Mr. Dudenhöffer of the University of Duisburg-Essen.
Still, some analysts have expressed doubt how long Fiat, which is profitable over all because of sales outside Europe, can continue to absorb losses at home. Analysts at Credit Suisse estimate the company is burning through €15 million a day. On Tuesday the company raised its estimate of what its debt would be at the end of the year, to €6.5 billion. That compared with a previous forecast of no more than €6 billion.
When an analyst questioned Tuesday whether Fiat had enough money to carry out its plans for new models, Mr. Marchionne replied sharply: ''There is enough cash coming out of this damn thing, don't worry about it.''
One reason that Fiat has lost less money than some rivals is that the company has drastically cut investment in new Fiat cars. In an industry that lives on new products, that is a controversial approach.
''The one big risk with Marchionne is that he is saving very radically on product development,'' Mr. Dudenhöffer said. ''He is taking a big risk. We'll see in a few years whether it worked.''
Elisabetta Povoledo contributed reporting from Rome.
This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/02/business/global/skepticism-abounds-as-fiat-seeks-upmarket-strategy.html
LOAD-DATE: November 2, 2012
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTO: A Fiat dealership in Rome. Fiat intends to make Italy a production center for the company's more expensive brands. (PHOTOGRAPH BY ALESSANDRO BIANCHI/REUTERS)
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November 2, 2012 Friday
Late Edition - Final
Innovative Immigrants
BYLINE: By THOMAS K. McCRAW.
Thomas K. McCraw is a professor emeritus at Harvard Business School and the author, most recently, of ''The Founders and Finance: How Hamilton, Gallatin, and Other Immigrants Forged a New Economy.''
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Editorial Desk; OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR; Pg. 27
LENGTH: 1057 words
Boston
SOME 70 million immigrants have come to America since the first colonists arrived. The role their labor has played in economic development is widely understood. Much less familiar is the extent to which their remarkable innovations have driven American prosperity.
Indeed, while both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney have lauded entrepreneurship, innovation and ''job creation,'' neither candidate has made comprehensive immigration reform an issue, despite immigrants' crucial role in those fields. Yet understanding how immigrants have fueled innovation through history is critical to making sure they continue to drive prosperity in the future.
At the country's beginning, the three most important architects of its financial system were immigrants: Alexander Hamilton, from St. Croix, then part of the Danish West Indies; Robert Morris, born in Liverpool, England; and Albert Gallatin of Geneva. Morris was superintendent of finance during the Revolutionary War, using every resource at his command to support the army in the field. Hamilton, as the first secretary of the Treasury, rescued the country from bankruptcy and designed its basic financial system. Gallatin paid down much of the national debt, engineered the financing of the Louisiana Purchase and remains the longest-serving Treasury secretary ever.
Immigrants' financial innovations continued through the 19th century. In 1808 Alexander Brown, from Ireland, founded the nation's first investment bank, and his immigrant sons set up Brown Brothers. The Lehman brothers, from Germany, began as dry-goods merchants and cotton brokers in Alabama, then moved to New York just before the Civil War and eventually founded a bank. Many other immigrants, including Marcus Goldman of Goldman Sachs, followed similar paths, starting very small, traveling to new cities and establishing banks. Meanwhile, ''Yankee'' firms like Kidder, Peabody and Drexel, Morgan -- whose partners were native-born -- remained less mobile, tied by family and high society to Boston and New York.
Immigrant innovators were pioneers in many other industries after the Civil War. Three examples were Andrew Carnegie (Scotland, steel), Joseph Pulitzer (Hungary, newspapers) and David Sarnoff (Russia, electronics). Each came to America young, poor and full of energy.
Carnegie's mother brought the family to Pittsburgh in 1848, when Andrew was 12. He became a bobbin-boy in a textile mill, a telegram messenger, a telegraph-key operator, a low-level manager at the Pennsylvania Railroad, a division superintendent for the same railroad and a bond salesman for the railroad in Europe.
Recognizing the limitless market for the rails that carried trains, Carnegie jumped to steel. His most important innovation was ''hard driving'' blast furnaces, wearing them out quickly. This violated the accepted practice of ''coddling'' furnaces, but he calculated that his vastly increased output cut the price of steel far more than replacing the furnaces cost his company. In turn, an immense quantity of cheap steel found its way into lucrative new uses: structural steel for skyscrapers, sheet steel for automobiles.
Pulitzer was the home-tutored son of a prosperous Hungarian family that lost its fortune. He came to the United States in 1864 at age 17, recruited by a Massachusetts Civil War regiment. Penniless after the war ended, he went to St. Louis, a center for German immigrants, whose language he spoke fluently.
He worked as a waiter, a railroad clerk, a lawyer and a reporter for a local German newspaper, part of which he eventually purchased. In 1879, he acquired two English-language papers and merged them into The St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
In 1883, he moved to New York, where he bought The New York World and began a fierce competition with other New York papers, mainly the Sun and, later, William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal. The New York World was pro-labor, pro-immigration and, remarkably, both serious and sensationalist. It achieved a huge circulation.
Sarnoff was just 9 years old when he arrived from Russia in 1901. He earned money selling Yiddish newspapers on the street and singing at a synagogue, and then worked as an office clerk, a messenger and, like Carnegie, a telegraph operator. From there he became part of the fledgling radio firm RCA and rose rapidly within its ranks.
Sarnoff was among the first to see radio's potential as ''point-to-mass'' entertainment, i.e., broadcasting. He devoted a huge percentage of profits to research and development, and won an epic battle with CBS over industry standards for color TV. For decades, RCA and electronics were practically synonymous.
As these men show, one of the key traits of immigrant innovators is geographic mobility, both from the home country and within the United States. Consider the striking roster of 20th-century immigrants who led the development of fields like movies and information technology: the Hollywood studios MGM, Warner Brothers, United Artists, Paramount and Universal; the Silicon Valley companies Intel, eBay, Google, Yahoo and Sun Microsystems.
The economist Joseph Schumpeter -- yet another immigrant, and the most perceptive early analyst of innovation -- considered it to be the fundamental component of entrepreneurship: ''The typical entrepreneur is more self-centered than other types, because he relies less than they do on tradition and connection'' and because his efforts consist ''precisely in breaking up old, and creating new, tradition.'' For that reason, innovators always encounter resistance from people whose economic and social interests are threatened by new products and methods.
Compared with the native-born, who have extended families and lifelong social and commercial relationships, immigrants without such ties -- without businesses to inherit or family property to protect -- are in some ways better prepared to play the innovator's role. A hundred academic monographs could not prove that immigrants are more innovative than native-born Americans, because each spurs the other on. Innovations by the blended population were, and still are, integral to the economic growth of the United States.
But our overly complex immigration law hampers even the most obvious innovators' efforts to become citizens. It endangers our tradition of entrepreneurship, and it must be repaired -- soon.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/02/opinion/immigrants-as-entrepreneurs.html
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November 2, 2012 Friday
Late Edition - Final
In Shift, Romney Campaign Approaches Pennsylvania With a New Urgency
BYLINE: By JEREMY W. PETERS
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; Pg. 11
LENGTH: 971 words
PHILADELPHIA -- First there was quiet. Then came the ''super PACs.'' Now the candidate is on his way.
In a striking last-minute shift, the Romney campaign has decided to invest its most precious resource -- the candidate's time -- in a serious play to win Pennsylvania.
Mr. Romney's appearance here on Sunday could be a crafty political move to seriously undercut President Obama, or it could be a sign of desperation. Either way, his visit represents the biggest jolt yet in a state that was until recently largely ignored in the race for the White House.
Over the last several days, with polls showing Mr. Obama's edge in the state narrowing, Republicans have sprung into action and forced the Democrats to spend resources here that could have gone toward more competitive battleground states.
Conservative super PACs dusted off old advertisements that had not been shown in weeks and shipped them to local television stations from Scranton to Pittsburgh. They ordered millions of dollars in airtime.
And overnight the race here became the most expensive test yet of whether Republicans and their armies of cash-flush outside groups could unsettle the race at the last minute.
The super PACs helped create an opening that paved the way for the Romney campaign to start making its move. The campaign has already invested $1 million in television advertising across the state, and on Thursday it bolstered that effort even further with a new round of commercials that will ensure a heavy and continuous presence through Election Day.
This came as the Republican National Committee made one of its largest commitments of the race so far, dropping $2.5 million into the state.
Forced to respond, the Obama campaign has put more than $1.5 million into an ad campaign here and is planning even more. Democrats are saying that the race is much closer than they would have guessed just a week ago.
''It's a little tighter than I would have expected,'' said Jef Pollock, a pollster for Priorities U.S.A. Action, a Democratic super PAC. ''But the question is whether this is just the natural tightening that's going to happen.''
Pennsylvania has voted for the Democratic presidential nominee in every election for the last 20 years. Independent pollsters have called it the Republicans' white whale. Indeed, polls show Mr. Obama ahead, albeit by a shrinking margin. And his senior political strategist, David Axelrod, even joked this week that he would shave off his mustache of 40 years if they lose here.
But there is a tangible sense -- seen in Romney yard signs on the expansive lawns of homes in the well-heeled suburbs, and heard in the excited voices of Republican mothers who make phone calls to voters in their spare time -- that the race is tilting toward Mr. Romney.
If ever there were a place where a last-ditch torrent of money could move the needle, this is it. For the last couple of months, there has been a void of presidential ads in Pennsylvania. So when Republican strategists looked for places where their money could go the furthest, they set their sights here, reasoning that a dollar spent in Erie or Altoona would have a greater impact than in a place like Las Vegas or Cleveland, where political commercials have clogged the airwaves.
Republicans believe that even if they cannot stop the president from winning the state -- and rob him of its crucial 20 electoral votes -- they can cut into his margins with certain key demographics. Mr. Obama carried the state by 10 points in 2008, a victory in large part because of strong support in Philadelphia and its surrounding suburbs, some of which he carried by 20 points.
But those counties, which are full of upper-middle-class women and Jewish voters, are precisely the places where Republicans believe their efforts are paying off most.
''The biggest drop-off for the president has been in these more suburban, upper-class areas,'' said Jim Lee, the president of Susquehanna Polling and Research, a Republican firm. ''The women there tend to be very moderate, pro-choice, pro-gun control, pro-gay rights. And they don't fear a Romney presidency like they would maybe a Rick Santorum presidency. I don't think Obama has been able to convince them that Romney is a radical.''
Liberal groups like Planned Parenthood said that some of the Republicans' recent messaging is helping the Republican close the gap with women. Among recent ads is one in which a woman directly refutes Obama ads that portray Mr. Romney as extreme on reproductive health issues.
To counteract this push, Planned Parenthood is leaving leaflets that resemble a pink wallet at the doorsteps of homes across the state. In it, women read that ''Electing Mitt Romney could cost you $407,000,'' a plea to the pocketbook issues that both sides believe are motivating women this year.
But as Democratic groups and the Obama campaign press their case, the Republicans have a formidable operation of their own. For months now, a locally based group called Let Freedom Ring says it has spent more than $2 million on an online ad campaign that has been viewed 30 million times. It targets women who visit the Web sites of HGTV, Vogue and People with ads that run before online videos.
In one, a young woman asks her friend about Mitt Romney. ''I don't know. He's not as cool. And he's a Republican,'' she responds before deciding that yes, she will go with ''Mr. Dependable'' over ''Mr. Cool.''
Americans for Prosperity, the conservative advocacy group financed with the help of the Koch brothers, has a chapter here that says it has made more than 200,000 phone calls in October. Many of the callers, they say, are mothers who volunteer from home.
''This is perfect for women,'' said Jennifer Sefano, the group's director in Pennsylvania. ''You don't have to pay for a baby sitter. You don't even have to leave the house.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/02/us/politics/in-shift-romney-campaign-makes-push-in-pennsylvania.html
LOAD-DATE: November 2, 2012
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTO: Women for Romney volunteers made calls last week at the campaign's Chester County headquarters in Paoli, Pa. (PHOTOGRAPH BY MARK MAKELA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)
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November 2, 2012 Friday
Late Edition - Final
A Macho Moment for America
BYLINE: By ALESSANDRA STANLEY
SECTION: Section C; Column 0; Movies, Performing Arts/Weekend Desk; TELEVISION REVIEW; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1231 words
Torture, even just the threat of it, works wonders in ''SEAL Team Six: The Raid on Osama bin Laden.'' The lead C.I.A. counterterrorism analyst looks like a Fox News anchor. And when Navy commandos talk, their words sound like lyrics from Lee Greenwood's ''God Bless the U.S.A.''
''In this world you don't get to live free without working for it,'' a SEAL team member called Cherry (Anson Mount) says in a creamy country-western baritone. ''You gotta earn it every day, and that day we did.''
''SEAL Team Six'' is a fictionalized account of the real-life operation to track down Osama bin Laden, but it looks a lot like a Republican recruitment film written by Dick Cheney.
The only problem is that the president who ordered the daring manhunt is Barack Obama.
So conservatives have every reason to be irked by the message and timing of ''SEAL Team Six,'' which tells the story in a fake-documentary style and is scheduled to be shown on the National Geographic Channel on Sunday night, two days before the election. (It will also be available on Netflix, beginning on Monday.)
Harvey Weinstein, one of Mr. Obama's most loyal Hollywood backers, is an executive producer, and the film uses real-life footage of the president alongside make-believe dialogue, gritty battle scenes and archival clips of Sept. 11 and other terrorist attacks. It's an ode to presidential resolve, wrapped in a thick layer of Special Forces derring-do that is so red, white and blue it would make Karl Rove blush.
As a movie, however, it's not nearly as gripping as it could be, given how harrowing and suspenseful the actual events were on the night of May 2, 2011. The filmmaking is at times derivative and heavy-handed, and the score is unrelenting and unbearable: an electronic thumpa-thumpa pounding that sounds like music to inject blood boosters by.
This version is not likely to detract from ''Zero Dark Thirty,'' a big-budget motion picture directed by Kathryn Bigelow (''The Hurt Locker''), due in December, about the raid on Bin Laden.
Mostly, ''SEAL Team Six'' is a reminder of how far the United States has moved to the right when it comes to foreign affairs. ''Argo,'' a much better movie about a real-life clandestine operation during the 1979-81 Iran hostage crisis, delicately recreates the decay and self-doubt of that era. In ''Argo'' even State Department analysts impotently monitoring the protests in Tehran express disgust with the Shah's dictatorship.
And Jimmy Carter, president then, is the image that Mitt Romney's campaign has tried to stick to President Obama. Not long after the attack on the United States Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, Paul Ryan, the Republican vice presidential nominee, said, ''Turn on the TV, and it reminds you of 1979 Tehran, but they are burning our flags in capitals all around the world, they are storming our embassies.''
A recent Romney campaign ad that attacks the Obama administration's handling of the auto industry includes an image that has little to do with exporting jobs to China but does evoke the Carter-era gas shortages: a long line of dispirited drivers in motionless cars, waiting, as if for a chance at the fuel pump.
''SEAL Team Six'' instead posits Mr. Obama as the commander in chief of a post-Sept. 11 society led by intelligence operatives, administration aides and members of the Navy SEALs, who are young, dedicated and steely professionals, most of whom have a deeply personal grudge against Bin Laden -- a relative killed in attacks on the twin towers or the Pentagon, or a childhood lost in the aftermath.
The director, John Stockwell, has disputed complaints that his film is politically motivated, but it's hard not to see it as an Obama booster. Intelligence gathering by the Bush administration is given short shrift, whereas the failure to get Bin Laden in 2001, when many believed he was within reach in Tora Bora, in Afghanistan, looms large.
''We have Osama holed up in Tora Bora and we let him go,'' a C.I.A. analyst says angrily. ''I didn't want to be part of the team that let him get away again.''
''SEAL Team Six'' is no more, or less, a work of propaganda than ''DC 9/11: Time of Crisis,'' a gauzy 2003 salute to George W. Bush's leadership by a conservative filmmaker, Lionel Chetwynd, which was shown on Showtime before the second anniversary of Sept. 11.
''If some tinhorn terrorist wants me, tell him to come get me,'' the fictional Mr. Bush, played by Timothy Bottoms, barked at an overprotective security officer. ''I'll just be waiting for the bastard.''
''SEAL Team Six'' doesn't put words into Mr. Obama's mouth; it uses his own. Clips of the president laughing and joking at the 2011 White House Correspondents' Dinner are juxtaposed with scenes of fictional Navy commandos checking their weapons in preparation for the mission their president ordered just before donning black tie and gamely going through with the gala.
In other scenes, other principals, played by actors, are filmed as if in a documentary, laconically recounting what happened to the camera. That includes a fiercely dedicated C.I.A. analyst identified as Vivian Hollins (Kathleen Robertson). Vivian is credited with working day and night to track down Bin Laden, and describes herself as obsessed by her prey.
''The idea of him just kind of got deeper in my head,'' she says. ''I dunno, gradually, I guess you could say that he took over my life.'' She is as fanatical as Carrie Mathison, the C.I.A. analyst played by Claire Danes on ''Homeland,'' but she looks and talks like Megyn Kelly, of Fox News, crossed with the conservative radio commentator Laura Ingraham.
There are simulated surveillance videos and dramatizations, including a moment in Guantánamo when an interrogator finally pushes a detainee over the edge by telling him he is being transferred to Saudi intelligence, where guards rip the skin off their prisoners. The detainee coughs up the name of Bin Laden's courier, and that eventually leads American intelligence to Bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
When the raid is all over, there is almost a religious hush at the scene of the killing. The film cuts to a clip of Mr. Obama in the White House announcing Bin Laden's death.
''And on nights like this one,'' the president says, ''we can say to those families who have lost loved ones to Al Qaeda's terror: Justice has been done.''
Republicans will most likely view the film as anything but fair.
SEAL Team Six: The Raid on Osama bin Laden
National Geographic Channel, Sunday night at 8, Eastern and Pacific times; 7, Central time. Also Netflix, Monday.
Produced by the Weinstein Company and Voltage Pictures. Directed by John Stockwell; written by Kendall Lampkin; Phillip B. Goldfine, Bob Weinstein, Harvey Weinstein and Meghan O'Hara, executive producers; Nicolas Chartier, Zev Foreman and Tony Mark, producers; Dominic Rustam and Corrie Rothbart, associate producers; John N. Ward, line producer; Peter A. Holland, director of photography; Guy Barnes, production designer; Ben Callahan, editor; Miye Matsumoto, costume designer; Paul Haslinger, composer; Mr. Callahan, Joseph Conti and Jonah Loop, visual effects.
WITH: Cam Gigandet (Stunner), Anson Mount (Cherry), Kathleen Robertson (Vivian Hollins), Freddy Rodriguez (Trench), Xzibit (Mule), Eddie Kaye Thomas (Christian), Robert Knepper (Lieutenant Commander), William Fichtner (Mr. Guidry) and Kenneth Miller (Sauce).
URL: http://tv.nytimes.com/2012/11/02/arts/television/seal-team-six-on-national-geographic.html
LOAD-DATE: November 2, 2012
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: SEAL: Team Six: The Raid on Osama bin Laden Actors as members of the Navy SEALs in this film, on National Geographic, Sunday night at 8, Eastern and Pacific times
7, Central time. (C1)
''SEAL Team Six,'' on National Geographic, dramatizes the hunt for Osama bin Laden, mixing real-life footage with make-believe dialogue, gritty battle scenes and archival clips. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY URSULA COYOTE/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CHANNELS, VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS) (C9)
DOCUMENT-TYPE: Review
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November 2, 2012 Friday
Late Edition - Final
Rove Vs. Bloomberg? It Seems That Way In Maine Senate Race
BYLINE: By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; Pg. 13
LENGTH: 1073 words
BANGOR, Me. -- The Maine Senate race has become so convoluted that at times it has seemed as if Karl Rove and Michael R. Bloomberg were running against each other.
Mr. Rove, the mastermind of Republican ''super PAC'' money, and Mr. Bloomberg, the billionaire mayor of New York, have injected considerable cash into this race (on opposing sides) and, as a result, have become proxies for their political allies. But that is not the only oddity here.
With an independent candidate as the perceived front-runner, a conservative Republican group actually paid for a series of television advertisements supporting the Democrat in the race, this after she was abandoned by her national party. And the Republican nominee has been cold-shouldered by Olympia J. Snowe, the popular Republican senator whose retirement led to the race to replace her.
Republicans were distraught when Ms. Snowe announced in February that she would not seek re-election. They had counted on her scoring an easy victory and helping the party take control of the Senate. Then Angus King, a popular former governor, entered the race as an independent, and he shot to the top of the polls.
Mr. King has refused to say which party he will side with if he wins, although many analysts expect him to vote with the Democrats, given his support for President Obama. So Republicans concluded that they at least had to try to knock off Mr. King if they wanted any chance of taking the Senate. Outside interests, notably Mr. Rove's Crossroads GPS and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, joined the National Republican Senatorial Committee in pumping millions of dollars into television ads against Mr. King.
At the same time, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has kept its distance from its nominee, Cynthia Dill, a state senator, because they figured Mr. King had a better chance of winning than she did, and he would side with them anyway.
Now, after a tumultuous summer and fall in which party lines were scrambled and more than $6 million in outside money gushed into the state, Mr. King is still maintaining a double-digit lead in the polls.
This has discouraged some supporters of Charles Summers, the Republican nominee and Maine's secretary of state. Both the national Republican and Democratic Senate campaign committees have stopped buying TV ads in the state.
But Mr. Rove has not. Crossroads has just tossed another $335,000 into the pot for a new ad blasting Mr. King, saying he used his influence to help wind power companies like his own (a charge that the King campaign denies).
The last-minute infusion brings Crossroads' total spending in the race to nearly $1 million, and it has given some fresh hope to the Summers team.
''The fact that Crossroads has locked in for the final week with a new ad should reinforce the fact that this race continues to be seen as a winnable race for Charlie,'' Lance Dutson, Mr. Summers's campaign manager, wrote in an e-mail.
In the down-to-the-wire presidential contest, Mitt Romney has shown sudden interest in Maine; the state has been leaning toward Mr. Obama in the polls, but it awards its Electoral College votes based on results in the state's two Congressional Districts, and even one such vote could matter. Mr. Dutson said that television ad buys by the Romney camp ''means a significant amount of resources will be spent to help get Charlie elected.''
One of Mr. King's chief benefactors has been Mr. Bloomberg, who sent a $500,000 infusion as part of a $1.75 million donation from a group called Americans Elect. The group stepped in after the avalanche of negative ads started to hurt Mr. King. The mayor also started his own super PAC with plans to funnel up to $15 million more to various candidates, including Mr. King.
As the recipient of so much outside money himself, Mr. Summers has not complained too loudly about Mr. Bloomberg's involvement, except to cast Mr. King as a hypocrite. Mr. Summers has also sought to poke holes in Mr. King's notion that he can accomplish anything as an independent.
''We don't need an independent in the Senate,'' Mr. Summers said at a candidate's debate. ''We don't need an umpire. Umpires don't win ballgames.''
Mr. King's support eroded somewhat under an assault of ads that charged him with being a big spender and leaving the state with a deficit when he left office in 2003. But he never fell behind in the polls. One recently gave him an advantage of 26 percentage points; Real Clear Politics has him up over Mr. Summers by an average of 15 points.
One of Mr. Summers's problems is that he managed to alienate the moderate Ms. Snowe, his onetime political patron, who could have been a powerful ally. Before she decided not to seek re-election, he refused to endorse her when she was facing a Tea Party-backed challenger in a Republican primary; that cooled her interest in helping him as he sought to replace her.
Mark Brewer, a political scientist at the University of Maine, said that Mr. King had improved as a candidate, addressing concerns that he needed to be more specific in responding to criticisms about his tenure as governor and about what he wanted to accomplish in Washington.
But much of the campaign has revolved around the outside money, and Mr. King has sought to turn that to his advantage -- even though he, too, has been a recipient. ''I feel, actually, like a walking economic development project,'' he joked here recently.
Maine, he said, has an opportunity to ''make a statement to the negative-ad gurus and the political people that these ads don't work.''
He said in an interview that using Mr. Rove's name had helped him with his own fund-raising because Mr. Rove was so well known and underscored that his race had national implications.
Whatever the outcome, it seems fair to say that traditional political parties in Maine, already somewhat off kilter with its Tea Party-backed governor, will be left in shambles after this campaign, particularly the Democratic Party. By cutting Ms. Dill loose, the national party gave local Democrats the cover to side with Mr. King. And just this week the conservative Safe Nation PAC spent nearly $25,000 on a pro-Dill mailing against Mr. King.
''The scariest thing for Democrats is that this will be their second nominee for a major race who will come in with under 20 percent of the vote in two years,'' said Jennifer Duffy, an analyst with the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. ''They have a lot to worry about.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/02/us/rove-versus-bloomberg-it-just-seems-that-way-in-maine.html
LOAD-DATE: November 3, 2012
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GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: FRESH HOPE FOR THE G.O.P.: Charlie Summers, Maine's secretary of state, is also the Republican Senate nominee.
FAMILIAR FACE, NEW AFFILIATION: Angus King, a former Republican governor turned independent, has led in the polls.
THE COLD SHOULDER: National Democrats have kept their distance from the party's nominee, Cynthia Dill. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY CRAIG DILGER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)
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November 2, 2012 Friday
Wall Street's New Foe
BYLINE: WILLIAM ALDEN
SECTION: BUSINESS
LENGTH: 1708 words
HIGHLIGHT: The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is becoming a thorn in the side of big banks, The Royal Bank of Scotland said it expected to face penalties related to the Libor investigation, and JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup are in the top "bucket" of institutions that are considered "systemically important."
WALL STREET'S NEW FOE | A little-known agency, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, is becoming a thorn in the side of big banks. This week, the agency threatened to impose its largest-ever fine against Barclays, after previously turning up the heat on JPMorgan Chase and Deutsche Bank. "It's the most powerful agency that no one knows about," said Tyson Slocum, the director of the energy program for the nonprofit advocacy group Public Citizen.
The watchdog, which oversees the oil, natural gas and electricity markets, started going after Wall Street in the aftermath of the Enron fraud, report DealBook's Ben Protess and Michael J. de la Merced. A law passed in 2005 gave the agency an enforcement unit, which received an expanded budget under the Obama administration. That unit also hired some seasoned criminal investigators and this year created a specialized group to detect manipulation, DealBook writes. "The overhaul is starting to bear fruit." The order filed against Barclays, for instance, "suggests that the fragmented markets for electricity are vulnerable to wily trading schemes," DealBook's Peter Eavis writes.
POSSIBLE LIBOR FINE FOR R.B.S. | The Royal Bank of Scotland said on Friday that it expected to face penalties related to the broad industry investigation into potential rate manipulation. The bank, which is being investigated by various regulators over potential rigging of Libor, said it could make an announcement about the matter before before reporting earnings on Feb. 28. This summer, Barclays, R.B.S.'s rival in Britain, agreed to pay $450 million to settle charges that it attempted to influence rates.
R.B.S., which is still majority owned by the British government, is dealing with a broader set of woes. The bank reported a net loss of £1.4 billion, or $2.3 billion, in the third quarter, after it took a charge on its own debt and set aside more money for customers who were inappropriately sold insurance.
THE 'TOO BIG TO FAIL' LIST | Of all the big American banks, regulators are apparently most worried about JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup. The two banks are in the top "bucket" of institutions that are officially considered "systemically important," meaning they will be required to hold the equivalent of 9.5 percent of their risk-adjusted assets in capital. Bank of America, Bank of New York Mellon, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, State Street and Wells Fargo are also on the list, albeit with lower capital requirements than JPMorgan and Citigroup. While the "too big to fail" designation imposes stricter rules on these banks, it "may do little to answer the concerns of some analysts who feel the capital surcharges are too small," writes DealBook's Peter Eavis.
ON THE AGENDA | The big data release of the day is the jobs report, which comes out at 8:30 a.m. With the presidential election on Tuesday, you can expect the numbers to be thoroughly scrutinized by political pundits. Economists predict that 125,000 jobs were added in October and that the unemployment rate ticked up to 7.9 percent. Restoration Hardware is set to start trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol RH, after pricing shares at the high end of its expected range. Chevron and the Washington Post Company report earnings before the opening bell. Mort Zuckerman of Boston Properties is on Bloomberg TV at 8 a.m. Jan Hatzius, Goldman Sachs's chief economist, is on CNBC at 10:30 a.m.
The best business book of the year, according to The Financial Times and Goldman Sachs, is "Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power," by Steve Coll, a staff writer at the New Yorker.
The list of the world's 200 richest people, according to Bloomberg Markets magazine, includes "more than 30 hidden billionaires" that were "unmasked" by Bloomberg News. One of these little-known billionaires is Amancio Ortega, the founder of the Spanish clothing retailer Inditex, who overtook Warren E. Buffett to rank third on the Bloomberg Markets list.
BLOOMBERG MAKES HIS ENDORSEMENT | President Obama may not have many friends in finance these days, but he has the support of one Wall Street billionaire. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg surprised New Yorkers on Thursday by endorsing the president's bid for a second term. Mr. Bloomberg argued that Mr. Obama would do a better job than Mitt Romney of tackling global climate change, which he said played a role in causing Hurricane Sandy. The destruction from the storm, the mayor said, "brought the stakes of next Tuesday's presidential election into sharp relief."
It remains to be seen whether Mr. Bloomberg's endorsement will sway anyone on Wall Street. One Obama supporter, the hedge fund manager Whitney Tilson, said he "genuinely felt business risk" in backing the president, according to Bloomberg Businessweek.
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Mergers & Acquisitions »
Berkshire Hathaway to Buy Oriental Trading | Warren E. Buffett's company said it would buy Oriental Trading, known for its catalogs of party supplies. The price, which was not disclosed, is said to be "about $500 million," according to The Wall Street Journal. The deal would provide an exit for K.K.R.
REUTERS | WALL STREET JOURNAL
Rothschild Said to Plan Rival Bid for Bumi | Nathaniel Rothschild is forming a group to challenge the Bakrie family's plan to take over Bumi, the mining company, Reuters reports, citing unidentified people familiar with the matter.
REUTERS
What Next for Netflix? | Carl C. Icahn will probably push for a sale of Netflix, which the company may try to defend even if shareholders want a sale to happen, writes Steven M. Davidoff in the Deal Professor column.
DealBook »
Netflix Says It Is Open to Icahn's 'Perspective' | In response to Carl C. Icahn's announcement that he had built up a roughly 10 percent stake in Netflix, the company said it is open to his perspective on how to build success.
DealBook »
George Lucas Plans to Use Lucasfilm Profit for Philanthropy | A spokesperson for Mr. Lucas told Vanity Fair that he would donate "the majority of the proceeds" from the sale of Lucasfilm to "philanthropic endeavors."
VANITY FAIR
INVESTMENT BANKING »
Should the C.E.O. and Chairman Roles Be Separate? | Bloomberg Businessweek says it conducted a study that found that separating the role "tends to reverse a company's performance: Low-performing firms benefit from a separation event, while high-performing firms suffer."
BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK
Deutsche Bank Names Chief of North American Unit | Jacques Brand has been appointed chief executive of Deutsche Bank's North American operations.
DealBook »
A.I.G. Profit Beats Expectations | But the insurer's shares fell in after-hours trading, amid questions about the government's plan to sell its stake, Reuters reports.
REUTERS
Editor Who Published Names of Greeks With Swiss Bank Accounts Is Acquitted |
NEW YORK TIMES
PRIVATE EQUITY »
Advance Auto Parts Said to Consider a Sale | Private equity firms may be looking to Advance Auto Parts for the next big leveraged buyout, at least by the standards of the post-financial-crisis era.
DealBook »
Inside Private Equity's Lobbying Effort | In its effort to improve its image, the buyout industry is looking to sway "about 70 members of Congress who represent districts in presidential battleground states or who hold key committee positions," The Wall Street Journal reports.
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Alcatel-Lucent Considers Selling Assets | Alcatel-Lucent, the phone equipment company that offloaded a business to Permira last year, is considering options "such as reprofiling our debt or an infusion of liquidity, including asset sales," the chief financial officer said.
REUTERS
HEDGE FUNDS »
Clearwire Investor Demands Sale of Spectrum | Sprint Nextel may have designs on the struggling cellphone network operator Clearwire, but a minority investor in Clearwire is calling on the company to remember its smaller shareholders.
DealBook »
Edoma Partners Hedge Fund to Shut Down | A hedge fund run by Pierre Henri-Flamand, a former head of proprietary trading at Goldman Sachs, is closing, Reuters reports. The fund's assets have shrunk to $855 million from a peak of $2 billion, according to Reuters.
REUTERS
Hedge Fund's Wager on Greek Bonds Pays Off | Adelante Asset Management, a London-based hedge fund, "has made a 70 percent gain on a sale of Greek bonds," Reuters reports.
REUTERS
I.P.O./OFFERINGS »
Chinese Insurer Said to Prepare for I.P.O. | The People's Insurance Company of China "plans to start gauging investors' interest this month for an initial public offering in Hong Kong that could raise up to $4 billion," according to MarketWatch, which cites unidentified people familiar with the matter.
MARKETWATCH
VENTURE CAPITAL »
A Seed-Stage Venture Capital Firm Expands | First Round Capital hired a new partner and announced new software tools, The Wall Street Journal reports.
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Silicon Valley Investors Report Increased Confidence |
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
LEGAL/REGULATORY »
Company That Sold Shares Under New Rules Is Charged With Fraud | A company called Caribbean Pacific Marketing "appears to have become the first 'emerging growth company' as defined by the JOBS Act to have prompted charges of securities fraud by the Justice Department and an effort by the Securities and Exchange Commission to halt sales of the stock," writes Floyd Norris in his column in The New York Times.
NEW YORK TIMES
The Bruce-Bharara Bromance | At a concert attended by the United States attorney for Manhattan, Bruce Springsteen shouted, "This is for Preet Bharara!" before ripping into "Death to My Hometown."
DealBook »
At American Express, Warnings About the 'Fiscal Cliff' | Companies are starting to warn investors about the harsh effects of federal spending cuts and tax increases, which would begin to take effect after Dec. 31.
DealBook »
A Mortgage Regulator's Digs | Edward DeMarco, a regulator who has resisted calls to forgive homeowners' debt, "lives in a 1961 split-level brick house with a basketball hoop in the driveway and a green Subaru in the carport," according to Bloomberg Businessweek.
BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK
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November 2, 2012 Friday
Bad Barbecue? Blame Obama
BYLINE: JULIET LAPIDOS
SECTION: OPINION
LENGTH: 398 words
HIGHLIGHT: Did the government kill Bill's BBQ? Or was it just the free market?
The government, it's been said, can't create jobs; but it can destroy family-owned barbecue joints.
Scouring swing states for misery, the Romney campaign came across the tale of Bill's Barbecue, an 82-year-old Richmond, VA chain that closed in September-because of President Obama. Or so a new ad claims: "Bill's Barbecue couldn't take four years under President Obama. Can we afford four more?"
At a campaign stop in West Allis, Wisconsin this morning, Mitt Romney provided more specifics: "I met Rhoda Elliott. She has been running her family restaurants for years, a business that has been in her family for 83 years. At its high point, she employed 200 people. She just closed it down. And she told me that regulations and taxes, 'Obamacare' and the effects of the Obama economy put her out of business."
So that's one explanation for why Bill's went out of business: Government regulation. (The death panelists don't like pulled pork.) It's not the only one. Some Richmond locals have suggested that, in truth, Bill's was just another victim of the free market-i.e., its competitors offered a better product.
An editor of Richmond Magazine, Brandon Fox, tweeted yesterday "And all over Richmond can be heard the wail, 'But Bill's Barbecue went out of business because it was crap!'" Less brusquely, Mark Holmberg, reporting for a local CBS affiliate, said "The service wasn't real friendly or brisk, the prices a little big for small sandwiches. The places on the Boulevard didn't feel clean-they felt old, tired. I had a hard time figuring out when the Myers Street store was open. There were health code violations, although not too extreme."
He added, "It's a tough, risky business, which is why restaurants close every day. While Bill's was struggling, Alamo BBQ opened in Church Hill three years ago. It's been thriving in what was once a rather tough business location."
If Mr. Obama gets the blame for Bill's, perhaps he deserves credit for Alamo BBQ? No, Mr. Romney would surely respond, only a Marxist would suggest, as the president once did, that if you've got a business, you didn't build it alone.
Mr. Romney's take on Bill's seems perfectly representative of his general outlook. If a business succeeds, the government can't share the credit. If it fails, it's the government's fault.
False Advertising
Romney's New Auto Ad
Bilingual Lies
'Independent' Super PACs
The Spanish Campaign
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November 2, 2012 Friday
Obama Says Romney Is Being Dishonest About Auto Bailout
BYLINE: MARK LANDLER
SECTION: US; politics
LENGTH: 729 words
HIGHLIGHT: President Obama, returning to full-throttle campaign mode after a week upended by the East Coast storm, accused Mitt Romney on Friday of dishonesty in saying that the auto bailout had resulted in jobs moving to China.
HILLIARD, Ohio - President Obama, returning to full-throated campaign mode after a week upended by Hurricane Sandy, accused Mitt Romney on Friday of dishonesty in claiming that his administration's auto bailout had resulted in jobs moving to China.
Speaking to 2,800 people in a cavernous barn here, Mr. Obama took aim at Mr. Romney for an advertisement his campaign aired in Ohio, which said that Chrysler, under new Italian owners, moved Jeep production to China after being bailed out by the Obama administration in 2009.
"That's not true," Mr. Obama said as the crowd chanted "liar." "Everybody knows it's not true. The car companies themselves have told Governor Romney to knock it off."
The ad, the president said, amounted to a cynical ploy to compensate for the fact that Mr. Romney opposed the bailout. "This isn't a game; these are people's jobs, these are people's lives," he said.
Saying that the commercial had rattled some employees at the Jeep plant in Toledo, Mr. Obama said, "You don't scare hard-working Americans just to scare up some votes."
Mr. Obama's counterattack kicked off a day of barnstorming in a state where he is fighting to cling to a narrow, but stubborn, lead in the polls against a strong offensive by Mr. Romney, who plans a last-minute bus tour in the state over the weekend.
In the final days of the campaign, the escalating confrontation over the auto bailout has dominated headlines and news coverage in Ohio and Michigan.
Mr. Romney's campaign countered the president's criticism by insisting that its ad was accurate.
"The facts are clear: despite his false and misleading attacks, President Obama took the auto companies into bankruptcy," said a campaign spokeswoman, Amanda Henneberg. "His mismanagement of the process has exposed taxpayers to a $25 billion loss. And these companies are expanding production overseas."
Ms. Henneberg said the United States had lost 586,000 manufacturing jobs during Mr. Obama's presidency.
The president was buoyed by a better-than-expected jobs report on Friday. "This morning we learned that companies hired more workers in October than at any time in the last eight months," Mr. Obama said, while acknowledging, as he always does, that more work remains.
Mr. Obama was also still riding the crest of endorsements by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York City, the former secretary of state, Colin L. Powell, and a trip to New Jersey, where the Republican governor, Chris Christie, heaped praise on his response to the storm.
But the show of bipartisan harmony in New Jersey on Wednesday seemed a world away from this chilly Midwestern fairground, where even the minister who offered the religious invocation, Dr. Marilyn Miller, jabbed Mr. Romney for his remarks about the 47 percent.
Warming up the crowd, former Gov. Ted Strickland of Ohio characterized a canned-goods drive that Mr. Romney held in Dayton for storm victims as a cynical photo opportunity.
"Let me say something about Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan: they don't even know how to fake compassion," said Mr. Strickland, who has emerged as one of Mr. Obama's most pugilistic surrogates.
Urging the audience to vote, Mr. Strickland said Ohio was "the firewall for President Obama." So much attention has been lavished here in the waning days of this election that it sometimes seems like the candidates have been wooing Ohio one voter at a time.
This was the first rally on a day that will take Mr. Obama to Ohio's nooks and crannies. From Hilliard, a farming town of 28,435 northwest of Columbus, he will travel by motorcade, helicopter, and Air Force One to Springfield and Lima for speeches at two high schools.
The Obama campaign has projected steadfast confidence that it will hold on to Ohio, citing polls that show Mr. Obama ahead by a nearly two-to-one margin among the 23 percent of registered voters who have already cast ballots.
If those numbers are accurate, the campaign said, Mr. Romney would have to run up a margin of 54 percent on Election Day just to tie with Mr. Obama. The Romney campaign insists that Democrats are performing below their early-voting levels in 2008, while Republicans are outperforming.
Obama and Romney Campaigns Face Off in Ohio
Republican Voters in Ohio Give Romney Another Look
Rocking the Vote, Meat Loaf Endorses Romney
A Holiday Week in a Tough Campaign
Dueling Economic Messages From Romney and Republican Governors
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November 2, 2012 Friday
Romney's Closing Argument: 'Look to the Record'
BYLINE: MICHAEL BARBARO and ASHLEY PARKER
SECTION: US; politics
LENGTH: 909 words
HIGHLIGHT: In what his aides called Mitt Romney's closing argument to electorate after 18 months of bruising politics, he asked that Americans "look to the record, the accomplishments and failures, and the judgment."
WEST ALLIS, Wis.-At the start of a frenetic final weekend of campaigning, Mitt Romney put on a suit and tie, flipped on a teleprompter and did something on Friday that he had avoided for much of the past two years: he made an explicit case for his own lengthy résumé.
He bragged about running the Olympic Games. He waxed about his time as governor of Massachusetts. He brought up Bain Capital(albeit not by name), the wildly lucrative and occasionally controversial private equity firm he founded.
"I started a business from scratch and helped make it successful; that's not easy," Mr. Romney said as a crowd of 4,000 inside a warehouse here applauded his C.E.O.-ness.
As he embarked on a wearying three-day, six-state campaign swing, Mr. Romney urged voters in the battleground state of Wisconsin to judge him on his accomplishments in the private sector and his record in government, arguing that he offered deeper experience and a greater commitment to bipartisanship than President Obama.
"President Obama promised change, but he could not deliver it," Mr. Romney said. "I promise change, and I have a record of achieving it."
After weeks of rallies at high school fields and factory floors, Mr. Romney's speech here had a formality and sweep that are frequently missing from his day-to-day campaigning.
He dropped many of the warm, personal stories that have become a staple of his stump speech: one about his sister, Lynn, that celebrates single mothers and another about the Boy Scouts that exemplifies Americans' patriotic spirit.
In their place, he named specific pieces of legislation that he would introduce in office, including what he called the Retraining Reform Act, a bill to consolidate dozens of federal job training programs that he considers redundant and inefficient.
With its heavy emphasis on biography and readiness, his speech was a departure from a style of campaigning that has relied heavily on stinging attacks on Mr. Obama.
Mr. Romney seems to have farmed out his most withering attacks to his campaign advertising team, which is under fire for a commercial that makes the misleading claim that Mr. Obama is seeking to export American auto jobs to China.
After surging in polls after the first presidential debate and turning the race into a virtual tie, Mr. Romney is grappling with a shifting political landscape. The economy is experiencing a recovery, however halting, and his opponent is enjoying a very public bipartisan embrace, most recently from a prominent Romney supporter, Gov.Chris Christie of New Jersey, a Republican, and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York City, a high-profile independent.
Mr. Romney's message on Friday seemed intended to play offense on both of those fronts. He dismissed a federal jobs report, released Friday, that showed stronger-than-expected job growth, calling it stagnation. "Unemployment is higher today than when Barack Obama took office," he said in West Allis, just outside of Milwaukee.
Mr. Romney delivered a pointed rebuttal to the bipartisan images of his rival that millions of Americans have watched over the past few days on cable news.
Recalling Mr. Obama's promise in 2008 to transcend party politics, Mr. Romney insisted that the president had plunged the Capitol into an era of partisan politics, exemplified by his pursuit of a national health care overhaul.
"If the president were to be re-elected, he will not be able to work with Congress. I don't care what he says right now," Mr. Romney said. "We have four years of record to look at. And of course, he's burned a lot of bridges there. He ignores Congress, he attacks Congress, he demonizes Congress."
He offered himself up as a candidate with a proven record of reaching across the aisle, as governor of a largely Democratic state. He vowed to meet with Democrat lawmakers and their leaders in Congress personally if he is elected on Tuesday.
"I won't waste any time complaining about my predecessor," he said. "I won't spend my effort trying to pass partisan legislation unrelated to economic growth. From Day 1, I will go to work to help Americans get back to work."
But for a candidate who has studiously sidestepped specific references to his time in business, it was his emphasis on his corporate record that stood out.
He even mentioned his time as the temporary head of Bain Consulting, when the firm was plunged into financial turmoil. "I took the reins of another business that was in trouble and helped turn it around," he said. "That's real change."
Mr. Obama carried Wisconsin handily in 2008, and Mr. Romney has rarely campaigned here. But his standing in the state has been lifted by his selection of a Wisconsinite, Representative Paul D. Ryan, as his running mate, and polls now show the race to be neck and neck in the state. On Saturday, Mr. Romney will barnstorm across New Hampshire,Iowa and Colorado, all considered vital to his victory as he tries to cobble together 270 electoral votes on Tuesday.
But on Friday, Mr. Romney made sure to play to the local crowd. "It's good to be in the home state of the next vice president of the United States," he said to roaring cheers.
"Next to Ann Romney," he said, after a pause, "Paul Ryan is the best choice I ever made."
Rocking the Vote, Meat Loaf Endorses Romney
Mourdock's Comments Pose Dilemma for Romney
Coming Later Today: Coverage of the Second Presidential Debate
Obama Says He Was 'Too Polite' at Debate
For Both Campaigns, Time to Fine-Tune Their Messages
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USA TODAY
November 2, 2012 Friday
FINAL EDITION
Rape remark churns Indiana race
BYLINE: Judy Keen, @judykeen, USA TODAY
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 6A
LENGTH: 782 words
Before their Oct. 23 debate, the U.S. Senate race pitting Republican state Treasurer Richard Mourdock against Democratic Rep. Joe Donnelly focused on the future of Social Security and Medicare and whether one candidate is too conservative and the other too liberal.
But Mourdock, 61, Indiana's treasurer since 2007, said that night, "Even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that is something that God intended to happen."
His remark catapulted the race, already crucial to control of the Senate, into national headlines and the presidential campaign. Republican nominee Mitt Romney, who had just released an ad supporting Mourdock, declined to withdraw his support, but his campaign said he disagreed with Mourdock's views. President Obama's campaign released a online ad calling Romney and Mourdock "extremists" on women's issues.
Rotary Club members who gathered in a hotel ballroom here last week to hear Donnelly speak were divided on the controversy. Richard Duke, 72, a retired businessman who described himself as a Christian and a moderate who usually votes for Republicans, called Mourdock's take "exactly right."
"He did open a can of worms," Duke said, "and, unfortunately, one has to back off from that to keep oneself in the race."
Jeffrey Walls, 55, a business professor at the Indiana Institute of Technology, was appalled. "If rape is seen as 'it was God's will,' then you would have to logically conclude that God intended that female to be raped," he said.
Donnelly said in an interview that Mourdock's comment "was insulting and wrong to women, to survivors of rape and to their families," but he didn't bring the issue up at the Rotary Club, nor was he asked about it.
The day after the debate, Mourdock said he apologized if his remarks were misconstrued, but said he would be "less than faithful" to his evangelical Christian views if he said "anything other than 'life is precious.' I don't think God would ever want anyone harmed, sexually abused or raped."
Ed Feigenbaum, editor of the Indiana Legislative Insight newsletter, said that in a close race such as this one, the flap "certainly has the potential to impact the outcome" because it raised "an issue that's pretty volatile in the eyes of most voters."
Most polls taken before the candidates' final debate showed neither man with a lead exceeding the margin of error. Libertarian candidate Andrew Horning also is on the ballot.
The contest already has made history: It is the most expensive ever in Indiana, with total spending by the candidates and outside groups topping $20 million. The Republican primary was remarkable because Mourdock defeated Republican Sen. Richard Lugar, a moderate six-term incumbent once so popular that there was no Democratic alternative to him on the 2006 ballot.
In 2008, Obama became the first Democratic presidential candidate to win Indiana since 1964, when Lyndon Johnson carried the state. Polls this year, though, have shown Romney with a double-digit lead.
"We are still the same state," Feigenbaum said. "The difference is that people aren't as convinced that the hope and change that Obama was talking about back then was exactly what they had in mind."
Donnelly, 57, invoked Lugar in his Rotary Club appearance, saying he hopes the Republican will be his mentor if he's elected. The congressman, who took office in 2007, is a member of Congress' Blue Dog Coalition, a group of moderates. He voted for Obama's Affordable Care Act but tells voters he supports issues on which the president is "wrong," including a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced federal budget and a bill approving construction of the Keystone oil pipeline.
Mourdock, a geologist who lost three earlier campaigns for the U.S. House of Representatives, has the support of the Tea Party and supports federal spending cuts and a balanced budget. He filed a legal challenge to the Obama administration's bailout of Chrysler in 2009, arguing unsuccessfully that the company's creditors, including three state funds, didn't get sufficient return on their investments.
Friends Mary Levin, 34, and Jerry Walsh, 36, met at an Indianapolis coffee shop last week and found themselves on opposite sides of the campaign.
"If Indiana is going to have any clout on Capitol Hill, then we need someone like Donnelly, who is willing to compromise," said Levin, an administrative assistant who said she usually votes for Democrats. "He's not Dick Lugar, but he seems reasonable like Lugar."
Walsh, an information technology specialist who often votes for Republicans, disagreed.
"Mourdock," he said, "thinks like me and most other people in this state. We're conservative, and we should be proud of that."
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November 2, 2012 Friday
FINAL EDITION
Romney put Ohio focus back on autos;
Controversial ad by campaign turns conversation back to jobs in industry
BYLINE: Martha T. Moore, @USATMoore, USA TODAY
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 6A
LENGTH: 590 words
In battleground Ohio the focus of the presidential race has returned to one of President Obama's favorite topics -- the auto industry -- courtesy of Mitt Romney, who brought the issue back to center stage.
The Romney campaign set off controversy with a TV ad that implies Chrysler will move Jeep production to China. A Romney radio ad said that under Obama, General Motors had cut 15,000 jobs.
The automakers swiftly objected. "Jeep has no intention of shifting production" to China, the company said. Chrysler hopes to restart production of Jeeps in China to be sold there. A GM spokesman called the ad criticizing its job cuts "campaign politics at its cynical worst." Most of the job cuts occurred before the company's bankruptcy.
So did Ohio newspapers. Romney's implication that jobs were being shifted overseas earned him a stinging editorial from The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer, which called the spot "a masterpiece of misdirection" from a candidate "desperate to convince Ohio voters that he's the candidate most committed to the U.S. auto industry - no matter how much confusion he must sow to do it."
The (Toledo) Blade called it "an exercise in deception ... remarkable even by the standards of his campaign."
An ad watch in The Columbus Dispatch -- the editorial page of which endorsed Romney, unlike the other papers - pointed out the ad's inaccuracy: "what is being considered is adding production in China -- not shutting down American Jeep factories such as the one in Toledo."
Romney campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul says the ads are factually accurate. "As a result of his handling of the auto bailout, American taxpayers stand to lose $25 billion and GM and Chrysler are expanding their production overseas," she said in a statement.
The ad provoked a strong reaction from the Obama campaign, which has produced two ads in response, including an ad Thursday that cites the automakers' objections. "We know it's not true, Mitt," the ad says.
In a conference call Thursday, former Ohio governor Ted Strickland, a Democrat, called Romney's claim about moving jobs overseas "a dishonest end to a dishonest campaign." In a phone conference for the Obama campaign, he said, "This is not a move a campaign makes when it thinks it's winning."
The issue is potent because of Ohio's large number of auto-manufacturing jobs. But that also means the state's voters are well informed about the industry -- likely to understand when an ad is misleading and likely to understand why Chrysler needs to sell Jeeps in China, says Russell Mills, political scientist at Ohio's Bowling Green State University.
"People here know these issues very well," he says. "Everybody knows the Jeep plant, they're investing millions in expanding it."
Chrysler has said it will add 1,100 jobs at its Toledo plant next year.
A rebuke from the automakers hurts Romney's credibility, Mills says. "It looks bad for him when CEOs of companies are calling him out."
For the Obama campaign, Romney's ads provide an opportunity to focus on the successful turnaround of the auto industry and to hammer Romney as the candidate who opposed federal financing for auto companies during their bankruptcy.
Ohio voters have been swamped with so many ads they may well tune out Romney's Jeep ad and the Obama rebuttals, says Erik Nesbit, a political scientist at Ohio State University. But local coverage of the controversy will help shape their overall impression of the candidates, he says. "A media narrative at the local level is going to be more impactful than one particular ad."
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November 2, 2012 Friday
FINAL EDITION
The 5 worst political ads;
Of thousands of commercials inflicted on voters, a handful stand out for their sheer awfulness
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 10A
LENGTH: 717 words
The numbers are staggering. By Election Day, an estimated 2 million political advertisements will have aired on television during the current campaign, according to the Wesleyan Media Project. That total, which covers presidential and congressional races, doesn't even include ads that run on cable or the Internet.
If all the local ads were 30 second spots, it would take a viewer almost two years to sit through them, watching 24 hours a day. Even to watch for a day would be form of torture.
As anyone with a TV knows, particularly if you live in a battleground state, many of the ads are negative and highly partisan, and many take great liberties with the truth. Suffice it to say, this year's crop contributes to the erosion of the nation's political discourse and further undermines people's faith in government.
Look who's being divisive
Barack Obama rose to fame with a speech that celebrated inclusivity. As the first African-American president, he has had to contend with all manner of wild accusations -- that he is Muslim or wasn't born in the USA, for example. You'd think he would be the last person to run ads that could reasonably be interpreted as portraying Mitt Romney as "the other" or even as casting aspersions on his Mormon faith. But that is precisely what the president has done. In a series of ads, Obama attacks Romney for the usual things, like having a Swiss bank account. Fair enough. But they end with the exclusionary kicker: "Mitt Romney: Not one of us." Talk about offensive and tone deaf.
FALSE LEFT TURN ON AUTO BAILOUT
As Romney tries to win key Midwestern states, he has come to realize that his stridency on the auto rescue is a problem. In the second presidential debate, he stressed the rescue's similarities to his own recommendations back in 2008. But on the air in Ohio he has decided to attack -- oddly enough, from Obama's left flank. His ad criticizes Obama for taking General Motors and Chrysler through a bankruptcy restructuring process (something that Romney himself insisted on four years ago). It also suggests that Chrysler's Jeep division is shipping jobs from Ohio to China. Just the opposite is true: Jeep plans to invest about $1.7 billion and add 1,100 U.S. employees.
Throw Momma over the cliff
For pure tastelessness, nothing tops an ad attacking Republicans in general, and vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan in particular, for his Medicare overhaul plan. In the ad, produced by a Democratic group called the Agenda Project, a man pushes an elderly woman in a wheelchair through a park. It begins by describing Medicare's successes. Midway through, however, it starts describing how Ryan would replace traditional Medicare with a plan that would give seniors vouchers to buy private insurance. The woman begins to suspect something and struggles to get free. Alas, her efforts are in vain and she (or, we hope, a dummy dressed like her) is pushed over a cliff.
Who are you calling rich?
The most laughably absurd ad comes from Connecticut Republican Senate candidate Linda McMahon. Her take-down of her opponent, U.S. Rep. Chris Murphy, is pretty much false or misleading from the get-go on issues ranging from Social Security to Medicare. But what makes it stand out is the claim that Murphy has been "raking in $1 million in salary." Murphy has in fact pulled in a little more than $1 million -- over six years in Congress during which his annual salary was about $175,000. This line of attack is even more amusing as it comes from McMahon, who built a professional wrestling empire with her husband; their stock alone is worth about $400 million.
A not-so-cozy relationship
In the fake "gotcha" category, an ad from Joe Coors, a Republican candidate for Congress in Colorado, takes first prize. He describes how his opponent, Rep. Ed Perlmutter, worked the system by going to Washington as a congressman while his wife went as a lobbyist. Perlmutter, the ad says, voted for the 2009 stimulus and his wife collected $140,000 as lobbyist for Solyndra, a solar panel company that got $500 million from the measure. While the stimulus vote and solar-energy subsidies are certainly fair game, the self-enrichment angle is quite a stretch. Perlmutter and the wife in question, it turns out, were divorced in 2008 and were separated long before that.
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November 2, 2012 Friday
FINAL EDITION
4 days to seal the deal;
Obama, Romney crisscross battlegrounds with final pitches
BYLINE: Susan Page, @susanpage, USA TODAY
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 1A
LENGTH: 444 words
One storm over, another ahead.
After a brief campaign hiatus courtesy of Hurricane Sandy, President Obama and Republican Mitt Romney resumed a blitz of swing states in the final days before Tuesday's election -- making their closing arguments to voters in stump speeches and TV ads.
The candidates' weekend travel schedules made it clear where the election was likely to be decided. Obama was slated to return to Ohio today, Saturday, Sunday and Monday. He also was set to stump in Wisconsin, Iowa, Virginia, Florida, New Hampshire and Colorado.
Romney was scheduled to campaign in Ohio, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, Colorado and Pennsylvania as both candidates tried to seal the deal at the end of a long, bitter and close campaign.
Statewide polls released Thursday differed on who was ahead in Colorado and Iowa, but they showed Obama with a single-digit lead in Nevada and Wisconsin. Eight of nine surveys over the past week in crucial Ohio gave Obama a narrow edge.
"We know what the future requires," Obama, sporting a bomber jacket, told an airport rally in Green Bay, Wis. "We don't need a big-government agenda or a small-government agenda. We need a middle-class agenda that rewards hard work and responsibility."
He dismissed Romney's claim to being a candidate of change. "We know what change looks like, and what the governor's offering sure isn't it," he said.
Romney mocked Obama for suggesting in an NBC interview having a single official oversee overlapping business programs. "I don't think adding a new chair in his Cabinet will help add millions of jobs on Main Street," Romney, stumping in his shirtsleeves, told supporters in Roanoke, Va. "We don't need a 'secretary of Business' to understand business. We need a president who understands business, and I do."
A new Romney TV ad also ridiculed Obama's comment. "His solution to everything is to add another bureaucrat," the narrator said.
A new Obama ad used a testimonial from a Republican, former secretary of State Colin Powell, who praised the president's record and urged Americans to "keep on the track that we are on."
The president received an unexpected endorsement from New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a Republican-turned-independent. He cited Obama's disaster response and the need for the next president to address climate change, which the mayor said increased the ferocity of the storm.
The limited number of battlegrounds at times made the campaigns seem to be circling each other. In Akron late Thursday, Ann Romney and former president Bill Clinton simultaneously held events just 25 miles from each other.
Contributing: Aamer Madhani on the road with Obama, Jackie Kucinich with Romney
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The Fix
November 2, 2012 Friday 11:23 PM EST
House Republicans may actually add to their majority on Election Day;
Democrats talked a big game this year about winning back the House, but there's a chance they could actually lose ground on Tuesday.
BYLINE: Aaron Blake
LENGTH: 882 words
The Fix now projects that the 2012 race for the House is likely to be close to a draw, and there is even a fair chance that Republicans will add to their biggest majority in six decades on Tuesday.
Below, The Fix is updating the ratings of 10 House races, with most of them moving in the GOP's direction.
In recent weeks, as Mitt Romney has gained a few points in the presidential race, a similar but slight shift has been happening at the House level: The generic ballot has tightened.
While Democrats had built a modest advantage on the generic ballot (a measure of whether people prefer a generic Republican or a generic Democrat) when President Obama built some momentum in September, that advantage is basically gone now.
In part because of this, Democrats have seen their candidates in conservative-leaning districts suffer. Friday, we are moving several red-district Democrats into more vulnerable ratings, including Reps. Ron Barber (D-Ariz.), Mark Critz (D-Pa.), Jim Matheson (D-Utah), Ben Chandler (D-Ky.) and Kathy Hochul (D-N.Y.).
And because those seats have shifted, it is no longer a foregone conclusion that Democrats will gain seats this year.
In fact, right now, The Fix projects that Republicans have 228 seats either solidly in their favor or leaning toward them, while Democrats have 184. Another 23 seats are tossups.
If Republicans can win 14 of those 23 tossup races, they would keep their majority exactly as it is. If they win more than that, they would actually gain seats.
Democrats talked a big game early this cycle about winning back the majority, but they now acknowledge that it's not in the cards. Republicans are favored to win 10 Democratic-held seats that were either drawn more conservative in redistricting or where there was a crucial retirement by a conservative Democratic incumbent. Because of that deficit, Democrats have to win a bunch of seats just to get back to even.
Even Democrats acknowledge it's a possibility they come up short and actually wind up losing seats.
That remains the less-likely scenario, but not by as much as some people might think.
Here are the changes:
Moving in Republicans' favor
PA-12 moves from "tossup" to "lean Republican"
Critz is in a very tough spot right now, with Republican polls this month showing him slightly behind Republican Keith Rothfus. This district would have given John McCain 54 percent of the vote in 2008.
UT-4 moves from "tossup" to "lean Republican"
A new poll for the Salt Lake Tribune shows Saratoga Springs Mayor Mia Love (R) opening up a 12-point lead on Matheson, and all the polling in this race has gone in one direction: Love's.
NY-27 moves from "tossup" to "lean Republican"
Hochul is in a 53 percent McCain district, which also happens to be the most conservative district in New York. Polling here has been close, but a GOP internal poll last week shows Republican Chris Collins opening up a seven-point lead.
IA-3 moves from "tossup" to "lean Republican"
The race between Reps. Leonard Boswell (D) and Tom Latham (R) has been tight from the start, and remains tight. We give Latham a slight edge, though, in light of the district's very slight GOP lean and Latham's intangibles (money, anecdotal reports, etc.).
KY-6 moves from "lean Democratic" to "tossup"
Chandler is a survivor of the first rank, but he's also got a 54 percent McCain district, and a GOP poll last week showed himtrailing by fourin his rematch with Republican Andy Barr.
AZ-2 moves from "likely Democratic" to "lean Democratic"
Barber remains a slight favorite in his race with Republican former Air Force colonel Martha McSally. McSally has proven a better candidate than Jesse Kelly, who lost to Barber in the special election for Gabrielle Giffords House seat earlier this year.
Moving in Democrats' favor
CA-7 moves from "tossup" to "lean Democratic"
Rep. Dan Lungren (R-Calif.) is starting to look like a bit of an underdog in his rematch with physician Ami Bera (D). Recent polls show the race close, and Republicans are starting to lose hope.
WA-1 moves from "tossup" to "lean Democratic"
Republican John Koster's recent comments about rape and abortion weren't as harmful as Todd Akin's or Richard Mourdock's. But they still beg the question: Why would any candidate talk about this issue when they don't have to? Automated pollster SurveyUSA, which had shown Koster leading the race in recent months,now shows Democrat Suzan delBene up by three.
FL-10 moves from "lean Republican" to "tossup"
Rep. Dan Webster (R) keeps looking more vulnerable in his race with former Orlando police chief Val Demings (D). New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg (I) just launched a $1.7 million ad buy against Webster, who had already been dropping in the polls. That's a huge amount of money for a House race.
CA-36 moves from "lean Republican" to "tossup"
Like Webster, Rep. Mary Bono Mack (R-Calif.) has quickly moved from "likely Republican" to "tossup." A Democratic poll released this week shows challenger Raul Ruiz (D) leading Bono Mack by six points. Even if that were a bit off, the race is close.
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November 2, 2012 Friday 10:06 PM EST
Senate Democrats wouldnt cooperate with Romneys agenda, Harry Reid says
BYLINE: Sean Sullivan
LENGTH: 664 words
Make sure to sign up to receiveAfternoon Fixevery day in your e-mail inbox by 5(ish) p.m.!
EARLIER ON THE FIX:
WaPo-ABC tracking poll: Most see U.S. on wrong track,' can Obama win?
House Republicans may actually add to their majority on Election Day
Indiana Senate race moves to lean Democratic
GOP will make pickups in governor's races but how many?
Barack Obama and the power of good luck
Donnelly leads Mourdock by 11 in Indiana Senate race, bipartisan poll shows
Jon Stewart: Ohio voters must reconcile role as the precious' (VIDEO)
The Obama defectors
WHAT YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED:
* In what was billed as his closingargument, Mitt Romneysounded an optimistic noteat a campaign stop in Wisconsin on Friday, saying,Americans don't settle. We build, we aspire, we listen to that voice inside us that says, We can do better.' Romney alsoreceivedthe endorsement of Football Hall of Famer Bart Starr, a former Green BayPackersquarterback.
* At a campaign stop in Ohio, President Obama vowed to work with Republicans in Congressduring a second term, butacknowledgedthere would be disagreements.I'm a very nice guy, people will tell you. I really am, Obama said. But if the price of peace in Washington means cutting deals to slash student financial aid or give health-insurance companies more power, I'm not going to make that deal."
* Obama holds a slim,50 percent to 47 percent leadover Romney in Ohio, according to the latest CNN/ORC International survey of thoselikeliestto vote in the state.
* The conservative 501(c)(4) Crossroads GPSlauncheda $1.4 millionTV ad buyinMinnesotahitting Obama over the nation's debt. The stateleans toward Obama, though both sides are now spending money there.
*Obama cut aTV adfor Connecticut Democratic Senate nominee Rep. Chris Murphy, marking the first time this year the president has made a direct appeal for a Senate contender over the airwaves. Obama praises Murphy's job creation record and in the spot, and says the congressman will "always stand up to those who would turn back the clock on women's health."
WHAT YOU SHOULDN'T MISS:
* Bill Clintonwill campaign for Obamain Pennsylvania on Monday. Obama holds a single-digit lead over Romney in the Keystone State, recent polling has shown. Both Romney and running mate Paul Ryan (Wis.) will be campaigning in the state this weekend.
* Rep. Aaron Schock (R-Ill.) met with Republican Governors Association officials on Wednesday about the prospect of running for governor of Illinois in 2014. "He's made it pretty clear to a lot of donors," that he is considering running for governor, one well-connected Illinois Republican said.
* Obama's campaign hasspent moreon ads than Romney's, according to ananalysis by theWesleyanMedia Project.Super PACs and other outside groups have allowed Romney to surpass Obama in overall spending. Since June, though,Romney and his allied GOP groups have aired about 50,000 fewer ads than Obama.
* Retiring Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) appears in a new ad in which he defends former state attorney general Heidi Heitkamp (D) against Rep. Rick Berg (R) on the subject of military bases. "RickBergwantsto youto believe that Heidi Heitkampwouldcloseour bases. It'sridiculous," he says.
* If Romney wins the presidency, don't expect Senate Democrats to cooperate with him,Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.) said Friday."Romney's fantasy that Senate Democrats will work with him to pass his severely conservative' agenda is laughable. In fact, Mitt Romney's Tea Party agenda has already been rejected in the Senate," Reid said.
THE FIX MIX:
Unicycle hockey. It's a thing.
With Aaron Blake
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November 2, 2012 Friday 8:12 PM EST
A tug of war over mantle of 'change'
BYLINE: Philip Rucker;Jerry Markon
SECTION: A section; Pg. A01
LENGTH: 1283 words
DOSWELL, Va. - The presidential candidates grasped for momentum Thursday in the closing days of a hard-fought race, with President Obama returning to the campaign trail after a three-day hurricane hiatus while Mitt Romney launched a last-minute effort to snatch away vote-rich Pennsylvania.
The battle for the White House, which extended across four time zones amid a flurry of new advertisements and attacks, marked the lead up to the final four days of a contest as close as any in recent history. The latest Washington Post-ABC News tracking poll showed the candidates within decimal points of each other nationally and across the battleground states.
The president welcomed the surprise endorsement on Thursday of New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, a high-profile independent who had recently appeared likely to sit out the election. Independents have been trending toward Romney in recent polling. Obama's campaign also released a television ad hailing the endorsement of retired Gen. Colin L. Powell, who worked in several Republican administrations.
Obama's handling of Hurricane Sandy has won him plaudits, including from Republican Govs. Chris Christie of New Jersey and Robert F. McDonnell of Virginia, both top Romney surrogates. But Romney was not deterred, pressing his argument during three rallies in Virginia that his business experience could turn around the sluggish economy.
With the candidates seeking anything to move the needle, both campaigns looked ahead to a possible wild card: the release of Friday's unemployment report, especially key in a campaign that has turned on the economy. The two sides plan a frenetic weekend of travel, with Obama blitzing four battleground states alone on Saturday and Romney holding a massive evening rally on Friday in Ohio with nearly 100 top surrogates.
The contest has been slowly returning to normal after the storm battered the East Coast this week. Romney resumed a full schedule of events on Wednesday, although he briefly left it to surrogates to attack the president. Obama, in full commander-in-chief mode, had spent three days immersed in briefings and travel as he helped manage the federal response to the hurricane.
Even as the storm's death toll rose, the political broadsides resumed in full force on Thursday. And Obama, who campaigned on the theme of change four years ago but has struggled to land on a simple reelection message, returned to his core argument, telling voters in far-flung time zones that Romney would turn the clock of progress backward. "We know what change looks like. What the governor is offering sure ain't change," Obama said at a morning event. At another event hours later, he argued: "I know what real change looks like, because I fought for it."
Romney has been claiming the mantle of change as well. Late Thursday, a senior adviser said the Republican nominee will begin the final four days of the campaign with a speech in West Allis, Wis., "to make clear the big choice voters have to bring about real change."
Even as Obama flew almost all the way across the country, from Wisconsin to Nevada to Colorado and then to Ohio for several hours of sleep - and as Romney spent the day campaigning in Virginia - the focus of both campaigns' ground games stayed locked on Ohio.
Obama's campaign used a television ad and a conference call to attack a controversial Romney ad that criticized the automobile-industry bailout the president oversaw. The bailout particularly resonates in Ohio and in Michigan, a traditionally blue state in which Romney has been making tentative inroads. Polling suggests the race has tightened over the past month, including in Ohio, even as Obama retains the slightest of edges.
In another tweak of the map, Romney announced plans to make a full-fledged effort in the traditionally Democratic state of Pennsylvania. Trying to expand an electoral map that most analysts think is more difficult than Obama's, the Republican said he would visit the state on Sunday, the day after his running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.), is scheduled to stop in Harrisburg.
Romney and his allies have been running television ads in the state, and on Thursday an official at the Republican National Committee said the organization has bought $2.5 million worth of broadcast television advertising there, as well as about $500,000 in radio ads.
Both sides had considered the state out of reach for the Republican ticket, and Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) lost it in 2008 - after also visiting the Sunday before the election. But polls in the state have tightened recently, in part because the president has grown more unpopular in southwestern Pennsylvania, where he has been criticized as being a foe of the coal industry.
A Romney adviser cast the move as as one of strength. "Our campaign's decision to travel to and campaign in Pennsylvania is just the latest example of how the race is breaking toward Governor Romney and allowing our campaign to be on offense,'' said the adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the candidate's travel plans have not been announced.
The Obama campaign has said Romney's strategy - which also includes an effort in traditionally blue Minnesota - is born of desperation because his path to the 270 electoral votes he needs is blocked in key battleground states, including Ohio.
But even some Democrats in Pennsylvania have said Romney is smart to spend money in the state, given that he has cash to burn. And although there has been no indication that Obama will stump there, his campaign announced Thursday that Vice President Biden's wife, Jill Biden, will visit Pennsylvania on Friday and Saturday.
In his tour of Virginia on Thursday, Romney returned to the core argument that has defined his candidacy: that he is a champion of business whose policies would usher in new jobs and rising incomes.
The former chief executive pounced on a proposal that Obama reintroduced this week to consolidate multiple government agencies under a single secretary of business, charging that it shows the president lacks the business know-how to jump-start the economy.
"I don't think adding a new chair in his Cabinet will help add millions of jobs on Main Street," Romney said in Roanoke on the factory floor of a window and door manufacturer. "We don't need a secretary of business to understand business. We need a president who understands business, and I do."
As if on cue, Starbucks chief executive Howard Schultz - who had spent much of the past year urging voters to withhold their political contributions from a system he blasted as poisonous - declared Thursday that Obama deserves a second term. Schultz, who supported Obama in 2008, said the president has demonstrated "significant leadership" on the economy and in world affairs.
Romney's campaign announced endorsements from 13 business leaders, including the founders or co-founders of Home Depot, Charles Schwab and Netscape.
On a separate front, Romney released an unusual video attacking Obama for high gas prices - which will air on monitors above pumps at gas stations - and another video in which he blames Obama's policies for the demise of a barbecue restaurant in Richmond.
In a tough new Spanish-language ad in Florida, the Republican candidate said Obama is supported by controversial Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and the niece of longtime Cuban leader Fidel Castro. The Hispanic vote is critical in Florida and other states, and the ad brought a blast from the Obama campaign, which called it "bluster.''
ruckerp@washpost.com
markonj@washpost.com
Markon reported from Washington. David Nakamura contributed to this report from Green Bay, Wis.; Las Vegas; and Boulder, Colo.
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November 2, 2012 Friday 8:12 PM EST
Rocky terrain along the Great Lakes
BYLINE: Joel Achenbach;Michael S. Williamson
SECTION: A section; Pg. A25
LENGTH: 1574 words
Tall, strapping, wearing a pinstriped suit, and with his head shaved like Mr. Clean, Tim Misny stood in a parking lot and declared a winner in the presidential election. Misny's a personal injury lawyer. He's famous for TV ads with the slogan "I'll make them pay!" He's not the type of person who's afraid to express an opinion.
"Nothing to discuss. Nothing to discuss. Obama's got it," he said.
He made a grand pronouncement: "You are standing in the exact spot where the election is going to be determined." He explained that Ohio is the crucial swing state, and Cleveland is the key to Ohio, and "this exact intersection, St. Clair and 55th" is the heart of Cleveland.
"People don't have to watch any television commercials to know that unless you're a millionaire, you have no business even thinking about voting for Romney. These people think Romney should run for president of the Cayman Islands," Misny said.
This is, indeed, a Democratic city. Pundits talk about the president's political firewall, but levee might be the more apt metaphor around here, because President Obama hopes to shore up his base in the industrial strip that formed in the 19th century along Lake Erie. Mitt Romney wants to poke a hole in that base.
Some of the most hotly contested terrain in the final weeks of the campaign is along the Great Lakes, the inland seas left behind when the ice sheet retreated 10,000 years ago, back when this campaign season began. The Romney strategists this week generated headlines with their contention that Michigan, Pennsylvania and even Minnesota are in play, in addition to Ohio and Wisconsin.
Both candidates are traveling to these states in the final days of the campaign and spending millions in advertising. The polls in these states still favor Obama, but by margins ranging from narrow to minuscule. There are many paths to 270 electoral votes, but Obama's is nearly assured if he holds all five of these Great Lakes states (not to mention his strongholds of Illinois and New York). If Romney can win even one of these states, he has a dramatically better shot at becoming the 45th president.
The battle for the Great Lakes has affected the tone and lexicon of the presidential race. Four years ago, Sen. Obama expanded the electoral map for Democrats, winning former Republican strongholds such as Virginia, North Carolina and Colorado, and he did so in part with an appeal to suburban swing voters, people with college educations and well-paying New Economy jobs - what economists call "knowledge workers," and members of the "creative class."
This time, Obama is back to basics, focusing a great deal of energy on traditional Democratic voters, particularly here in the industrial north - urban minorities, union members, working-class whites, college students and older voters who remember voting for JFK or maybe even FDR.
Obama has wanted to be a transformative 21st-century president, but to get another term, he needs help from a constituency that dates to the New Deal.
Hitting certain notes
In recent interviews in cities and towns along Lake Erie, voters hit certain notes repeatedly. Romney supporters say the country can't afford four more years of Obama. They call him incompetent and worse. Obama supporters say the president inherited an awful mess, and four years isn't enough time to clean it up. They say Romney cares only about the rich.
Here, you find such rock-solid Obama voters as Landry Simmons, 64, a former steelworker whose job got outsourced years ago. He now drives a forklift. He's in a union.
"I think Romney, he lost his connection to the middle class," Simmons said. "How many people do you know got an elevator in the garage?"
But John McCourt, 70, a retired minister in the rural town of Polk, thinks the country is going broke under Obama.
"I think he's a smart enough guy, but I don't think he was experienced enough. He was in over his head, a little bit like Jimmy Carter," he said.
This is a part of the country that is in a forced transition. Deindustrialization, driven by the new global economy, hit like a slow-motion hurricane. The housing crisis hammered Cleveland; long rows of houses lie abandoned after foreclosures. Cleveland, Toledo, Akron and Youngstown are on the long list of Upper Midwest manufacturing cities that lost population in the last decade, just like Detroit and Flint up in Michigan. Demographers call them "dying cities."
So it is that people here are looking for solutions, for a better way forward, for some kind of turnaround. The candidates pitch themselves as the problem-solvers. There's an old-fashioned, meat-and-potatoes quality to the campaigning here: The candidates talk about manufacturing, energy extraction, coal mining. Romney's campaign has argued that Obama is anti-coal, and Obama's campaign has argued that, no, Romney is the one who's anti-coal.
Most of all, they talk about cars. The auto bailout is widely viewed as Obama's special tool to keep conservative blue-collar workers from defecting to Romney, who favored letting the strapped car companies go through a managed bankruptcy. If the president or one of his surrogates go more than a few paragraphs without mentioning cars, someone has surely hacked the teleprompter.
"His administration saved this area," University of Toledo music professor Ray Marchionni, 70, said last week at a rally where Vice President Biden spoke.
Waiting for Biden to take the stage, law student Steven Vandercoke, 22, said he was leaning toward Romney, having supported Ron Paul during the GOP primary season. "I don't think we need more government intrusion in our lives," he said.
When Biden took the stage, he accused Romney of being an outsourcer of jobs, and promised to protect Ohio workers: "President Obama and I will not stand back and let China break international trade laws and hurt Ohio workers."
He mocked the Republicans: "Starting with the convention, they had what we Catholics call an epiphany. They discovered the middle class."
Someone in the raucous audience shouted, "It just popped up!"
"It just popped up!" Biden echoed.
Undecided voters
The battle along the Great Lakes is being fought voter by voter. Rudolfo Irizarry, 51, who voted for John McCain in 2008, said he gets three or four phone calls a day from one of the campaigns. He's undecided, he said from behind the wheel of a 1973 Gran Torino with its original Ivy Glow paint job as he pulled into a park on the shore of Lake Erie.
Irizarry, a member of the large Puerto Rican population of northern Ohio, is a disabled warehouseman, suffering from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, which is in remission. He's worried about his health care. He needs expensive chemotherapy and fears major cuts to Medicare, on which he relies.
"I'm a Republican, but I'm scared of Romney, so I just don't know," Irizarry said. "I'm scared of both of them as far as health care is concerned."
Billboards have been doing much of the campaigning here, controversially so. A billboard company last week took down 30 billboards in and around Cleveland that featured a judge's gavel and the huge words "Voter Fraud Is A Felony! Up to 31 / 2 years & $10,000 fine." Critics said the billboards were a form of voter intimidation in predominantly African American neighborhoods.
Still standing in low-income Cleveland are billboards saying, "Voting Is a Right, Not a Crime!"
Many Ohioans voted weeks ago. Early voting started Oct. 2.
Two 18-year-old high school seniors, Jaquan Battle and Craig Soto, received permission to miss their fourth-period math class last week to cast a vote in Lorain, west of Cleveland. Both voted for Obama.
"I just heard that Romney, he wants to make us pay more," Soto said.
"In taxes," Battle said. "We heard how he buys small companies and makes them into big companies and ships them off to China."
This has been a campaign with a lot of negativity, anger, enmity. Neither candidate has managed to inspire great positive passion.
Some voters who say they oppose Obama cite conspiracy theories dispensed by fringe elements of the political world. Wayne Potter, 81, playing Pot of Gold Poker at an Internet cafe in Lorain, said he received unsolicited in the mail a DVD claiming that Obama's real father was an American communist, not a Kenyan academic, and that Obama will pursue a communist agenda in his second term. He plans to vote for Romney.
He said of Obama, "He's got all the black vote, probably most of the Hispanic vote and apparently the women are primarily in favor of him. By the time you add all that up, it's a very uphill battle for a white guy." He goes on: "Eventually, the U.S. will be a second-rate power, but I'll be dead and gone when that happens."
Down the road, further west along the lake, Dale and Nancy Reichert, 74 and 62, respectively, went to a lakefront park to watch the sunset. They'd voted that day, by mail, for Obama. Or against Romney.
"Just things he says, and sometimes the way he acts, I just don't trust him," Dale Reichert said.
They do trust each other. They're both recovering from surgery, having scheduled their procedures on the same morning in the same hospital. That's why they voted by mail, because they knew they'd be hurting afterward and might not make it to their polling precinct. And now they huddled on a bench, watching the drama in the sky where the sun had splashed into Lake Erie.
achenbachj@washpost.com
Photography by Michael S. Williamson
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November 2, 2012 Friday 8:12 PM EST
Fiscal cliff divides business community
BYLINE: Suzy Khimm
SECTION: A section; Pg. A10
LENGTH: 910 words
A rift has opened in the U.S. business community over whether tax increases should be an important part of the government's strategy for tackling the federal deficit and heading off destabilizing changes in tax and spending policies set to kick in at the end of the year.
The latest salvo was fired Wednesday when a coalition of business trade associations and advocacy groups warned Congress against agreeing to a deal that leans on new tax revenue. The group, which includes the Chamber of Commerce, the National Federation of Independent Business, and the National Association of Manufacturers, urged lawmakers to put deep cuts in federal spending at the center of any plan to reduce the deficit.
This group, dubbed the Tax Relief Coalition, is pushing back against a rival campaign led by prominent chief executives who called on Congress late last month to include increased taxes, alongside spending cuts, in efforts to tame the national debt. Among the companies involved in the rival campaign are the leaders of Honeywell, JPMorgan Chase, UPS and Aetna.
The escalating dispute comes two months before the United States is set to face a "fiscal cliff" of sharp tax hikes and spending cuts that will automatically take effect unless the White House and Congress agree on plans to avoid it. Many economists have warned that the combination of tax hikes and spending cuts could knock the wind out of a U.S. economy still struggling to recover.
Much of the disagreement among business leaders focuses on the recommendations of a bipartisan panel, known as the Simpson-Bowles commission, for addressing federal deficits. Although the chief executives of Honeywell, JPMorgan Chase and their allies have endorsed the panel's recommendations as a starting point for Congress, the Tax Relief Coalition rejected the approach, saying that spending on programs like Social Security and Medicare is the main problem.
"Because of the significant imbalance in entitlement programs, we also believe that any serious reform must include significantly more in spending reductions than in revenue," the Tax Relief Coalition said in a statement. "Unfortunately, Bowles-Simpson does not achieve that objective."
The coalition also objects to Simpson-Bowles because the recommendations assume that Bush-era tax cuts for wealthy taxpayers will expire at the end of this year. The coalition is urging Congress to extend the tax cuts for all taxpayers, which is the position of presidential nominee Mitt Romney and Republican lawmakers. President Obama and his Democratic allies have said they want to see the tax cuts extended for most taxpayers but be allowed to expire for the wealthy, raising rates on income over $250,000 a year.
Jade West, a senior vice president at the National Association of Wholesale-Distributors and a spokesman for the Tax Relief Coalition, said the Simpson-Bowles plan is nothing less than a "tax increase." She said the willingness to boost tax rates for upper-income taxpayers was "a political decision as well as a policy decision. It is clearly President Obama's position."
The Chamber of Commerce raised similar concerns about the approach endorsed by the chief executives of Honeywell, JPMorgan Chase and others who are willing to increase taxes to get a budget deal. "Raising taxes on successful small businesses and individuals, investments, and capital gains would discourage capital accumulation and job creation," says Bruce Josten, the chamber's executive vice president.
Members of the Tax Relief Coalition say the rival executives do not represent all businesses and are worried that the public may believe that they do. West said the chief executives who have spoken favorably of Simpson-Bowles represent big corporations. Although the Tax Relief Coalition includes companies such as Exxon Mobil and Koch Industries, small businesses make up the majority of companies that the group represents, she said.
West said that allowing the Bush-era income-tax cuts to expire for top-end earners would hit some of these small businesses because these firms tend to file their taxes under the individual tax code rather than the corporate code. If there's a deficit-reduction proposal being considered that fails to go far enough in protecting individual tax rates, "the small-business community will rise up in arms," she predicted.
As a result of these concerns, some members of the coalition want to see all of the Bush-era tax cuts extended even before Congress begins to develop a plan for cutting the federal deficit.
That's in sharp contrast to the chief executives, who have argued that extending tax cuts without linking this to a bigger deficit-reduction package would be a mistake. Honeywell chief executive David Cote has said this would amount to "muddling through the middle."
Maya MacGuineas, who is coordinating the chief executives' campaign known as Fix the Debt, warned that the country needs a so-called grand bargain to get the government's finances back on a healthy footing. Avoiding the fiscal cliff at the end of the year is not enough. "The notion of extending everything for a year without a big comprehensive deal is so dangerous," MacGuineas said.
She added that differences between big corporations and small businesses on taxes should be expected. "Talking about the business community speaking as one voice is impossible, as there are as many business perspectives as people perspectives," MacGuineas said.
khimms@washpost.com
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Election 2012
November 2, 2012 Friday 6:19 PM EST
Obama campaign has spent more on ads than Romneys;
The analysis shows that Obama has spent far more on ads--$265 million--through Oct. 29 than Romney.
BYLINE: Dan Eggen
LENGTH: 469 words
The presidential campaigns and their supporters have aired more than 1 million television ads in the 2012 election, far surpassing any previous contest, according to a study released Friday.
The analysis by the Wesleyan Media Project also shows that President Obama has spent far more on ads$265 millionthrough Oct. 29 than Republican nominee Mitt Romney. But super PACs and other outside groups have allowed Romney to surpass Obama in spending overall.
In 2008, about 730,000 advertisements had been aired in the presidential race from June 1 through the last week of October, according to the study, which is based on tracking estimates from Kantar Media/CMAG. During the same time period this year, that number is 1,015,615a 39 percent increase.
"This is, by far, the most advertising we've seen in a presidential election," said Erika Franklin Fowler, co-director of the Wesleyan group, which focuses on analyzing presidential ad spending. "Everyone expected ads to be more abundant this election than in 2008, especially with super PAC involvement and both candidates opting out of public funding, but passing the one million mark is a real milestone."
Perhaps most striking, the Obama campaign has sponsored half of all the commercials aired, buying cheaper ad time than its rivals and taking advantage of discounts available to candidate committees under federal law. Romney, by contrast, had less money in his campaign account for discounted ads and has relied primarily on the Republican Party and outside groups, which generally pay higher prices for airtime.
The end result is that the Republicans have paid far more but still ran fewer commercials than Obama, even in recent weeks when Romney and allies such as American Crossroads and Restore Our Future have ratcheted up their ad purchases. From Oct. 22 to Oct. 29, Obama and his main ally, the Priorities USA Action super PAC, aired more commercials in 16 of the top 25 markets despite being outspent by about 30 percent, the new data show.
Overall, Romney and all GOP groups combined have aired about 50,000 fewer presidential ads than Obama since June.
Nine of every 10 pro-Obama ads has been sponsored by the president's reelection campaign. Romney, by contrast, has not had control over most of the advertising run in his favor: More than half of pro-Romney adsabout 270,000 spotswere aired by Crossroads and other well-funded conservative groups, the Wesleyan group found.
"The level of support for Governor Romney from outside groups is simply incredible," said Michael Franz, Wesleyan's other co-director. "Groups supporting Romney out-advertised the candidate and party committees. That is unprecedented in a presidential election."
See a full breakdown of which groups are spending money and where on our Mad Money ad tracker.
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The Fact Checker
November 2, 2012 Friday 1:38 PM EST
A 'greatest hits' of misleading Obama claims;
A new Obama campiagn ad puts in one place a number of claims that have been previously debunked.
BYLINE: Glenn Kessler
LENGTH: 1401 words
"Mitt Romney's plan... ...rolls back regulations on the banks that crashed our economy."
"Medicare...voucherized."
"Catastrophic cuts to education"
"Millionaires will get one of the largest tax cuts ever...while middle class families pay more."
- voiceover from a new Barack Obama ad, "Remember"
Just as Mitt Romney recently released an ad with a "greatest hits" of misleading claims, so too has the Obama campaign. Let's spin this record again too! As we shall see, one song is more or less on-key, but others are off-kilter.
"Mitt Romney's plan... ...rolls back regulations on the banks that crashed our economy."
This statement, by itself, is relatively correct. Romney has said he would repeal the 2010 Dodd-Frank law, saying the regulations are "overwhelming," but he has been vague about what he would replace it with.
The ad cites a comprehensive Boston Globe article, "Mitt Romney mum on how to regulate big banks," that lays out the concern of economic specialists that Romney has not fully explained how he would prevent Wall Street from engaging in risky practices that helped lead to the Great Recession.
Romney's vagueness gives the Obama campaign an opening to say he will at least "roll back" the Dodd-Frank rules - even though Romney is on record as saying that some rules are needed, such as "greater transparency in the trading of derivatives" and "rules for what kind of capital has to stand behind each kind of asset on Wall Street and banks."
Moreover, in the first presidential debate, Romney said "we have to have regulation on Wall Street." He also said that "there are some parts of Dodd-Frank that make all the sense in the world," such as a provision that sets broad mortgage-lending standards.
"Medicare...voucherized."
This claim cites the AARP, the nonpartisan organization for people over the age of 50, but AARP has protested the use of its name in Obama campaign advertising, saying it does not endorse political candidates.
In any case, the AARP letter that the Obama campaign provides as backup does not refer to "vouchers," which is a Democratic attack line about the GOP plan for Medicare advanced by Romney's running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.).
Instead, the March 21, 2002, letter to members of Congress calls the GOP proposal by its proper name - "premium support." Under the proposal, the Medicare beneficiaries would choose from a variety of plans, including traditional Medicare, with the government paying a set amount for premiums.
The AARP letter, however, is indeed critical:
Yesterday's budget proposal appropriately acknowledges that health care costs must be addressed if the federal budget is to be balanced. However, rather than recognizing that health care is an unavoidable necessity which must be made more affordable for all Americans, this proposal simply shifts these high and growing costs onto Medicare beneficiaries, and it then shifts even higher costs of increased uninsured care onto everyone else. The typical Medicare beneficiary today, living on an income of roughly $20,000, already struggles to pay for their ever-rising health and prescription drug costs - and nearly 20 percent of their income currently goes to health care costs. By creating a "premium support" system for future Medicare beneficiaries, the proposal is likely to simply increase costs for beneficiaries while removing Medicare's promise of secure health coverage - a guarantee that future seniors have contributed to through a lifetime of hard work.
The Kaiser Family Foundation recently published a deep look into premium support systems and concluded that most seniors would pay more than under the current system, but there would be wide geographic disparities. Moreover, the increase appears to be much less - $6,400 extra a year - than what Democrats have claimed.
The ad does not repeat that misleading figure, but the term "voucherized" is certainly code for much higher costs, especially with the AARP symbol attached.
"Catastrophic cuts to education"
The source for this claim is not an objective analysis, but an editorial in the Denver Post endorsing Obama for president. Moreover, the editorial referred to "catastrophic cuts" to discretionary programs. It did not specifically single out education.
Here is the phrase in context in the editorial:
Romney's approach is one of tax cuts for all, drastic Medicare reform, increased defense spending, and what would be catastrophic cuts to other discretionary programs . In the Republican primary, he said he couldn't support a plan that included even $10 in cuts for every $1 in new revenue. To expect the country to balance its budget without additional revenue, in our view, is nothing short of fantasy.
One could certainly question whether Romney's math - higher defense spending and less nondefense spending - would be sustainable. The White House calculated that the House GOP budget plan would have resulted in a cut of 19 percent in nondefense spending by 2014. But, as we have noted before, that is an across-the-board cut - when in fact Romney could eliminate some programs and spare others.
Indeed, in the Oct. 3 president debate, Romney declared: "I'm not going to cut education funding. I don't have any plan to cut education funding and grants that go to people going to college. I'm planning on continuing to grow, so I'm not planning on making changes there."
Obviously, however, shielding education from cuts would mean that other programs would have to be reduced even more than 19 percent, assuming Romney sticks to his campaign promise to sharply reduce government spending.
"Millionaires will get one of the largest tax cuts ever...while middle class families pay more."
This is not "Romney's plan," as the ad asserts, but rather a claim based on a study that tried to replicate Romney's tax plan.
Romney has said he will cut tax rates by 20 percent, and make other tax changes, while at the same time making the plan revenue neutral by eliminating tax deductions and loopholes. However, Romney has not detailed what he would eliminate, though he has suggested he might cap tax deductions at a level of $17,000 or $25,000.
The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, in a report disputed by the Romney campaign, concluded that the numbers did not add up. In particular, it found that there were not enough tax deductions that could be eliminated for the wealthy without beginning to also affect middle-class Americans. That's where the Obama campaign gets its line that millionaires would get a tax cut while middle-class families would have to pay higher taxes.
Our colleagues at WonkBlog this week unveiled a nifty calculator that shows how difficult it would be for Romney to achieve all of his stated goals in his tax plan. The calculator demonstrates the difficult policy choices involved - but one can safely assume any president would be reluctant to broadly raise taxes on the middle class.
In any case, though the Obama campaign cites a credible source, it goes too far when it simply declares that millionaires "will" get a tax cut while the middle class will get a tax increase. We have been influenced by the comment of Donald Marron, the director of the Tax Policy Center, after the Obama campaign began citing the study:
I don't interpret this as evidence that Governor Romney wants to increase taxes on the middle class in order to cut taxes for the rich, as an Obama campaign ad claimed. Instead, I view it as showing that his plan can't accomplish all his stated objectives. One can charitably view his plan as a combination of political signaling and the opening offer in what would, if he gets elected, become a negotiation.
The Pinocchio Test
As we frequently say, simply repeating the same debunked claims won't make them any more correct. This ad would have come close to Four Pinocchios, simply because of recidivism, but the Obama campaign skates by with Three because the claim about bank regulations stays within the boundaries of fact.
Three Pinocchios
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Track each presidential candidate's campaign ads
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November 2, 2012 Friday
Met 2 Edition
A tug of war over mantle of 'change'
BYLINE: Philip Rucker;Jerry Markon
SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A01
LENGTH: 1281 words
DATELINE: DOSWELL, VA.
DOSWELL, Va. - The presidential candidates grasped for momentum Thursday in the closing days of a hard-fought race, with President Obama returning to the campaign trail after a three-day hurricane hiatus while Mitt Romney launched a last-minute effort to snatch away vote-rich Pennsylvania.
The battle for the White House, which extended across four time zones amid a flurry of new advertisements and attacks, marked the lead up to the final four days of a contest as close as any in recent history. The latest Washington Post-ABC News tracking poll showed the candidates within decimal points of each other nationally and across the battleground states.
The president welcomed the surprise endorsement on Thursday of New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, a high-profile independent who had recently appeared likely to sit out the election. Independents have been trending toward Romney in recent polling. Obama's campaign also released a television ad hailing the endorsement of retired Gen. Colin L. Powell, who worked in several Republican administrations.
Obama's handling of Hurricane Sandy has won him plaudits, including from Republican Govs. Chris Christie of New Jersey and Robert F. McDonnell of Virginia, both top Romney surrogates. But Romney was not deterred, pressing his argument during three rallies in Virginia that his business experience could turn around the sluggish economy.
With the candidates seeking anything to move the needle, both campaigns looked ahead to a possible wild card: the release of Friday's unemployment report, especially key in a campaign that has turned on the economy. The two sides plan a frenetic weekend of travel, with Obama blitzing four battleground states alone on Saturday and Romney holding a massive evening rally on Friday in Ohio with nearly 100 top surrogates.
The contest has been slowly returning to normal after the storm battered the East Coast this week. Romney resumed a full schedule of events on Wednesday, although he briefly left it to surrogates to attack the president. Obama, in full commander-in-chief mode, had spent three days immersed in briefings and travel as he helped manage the federal response to the hurricane.
Even as the storm's death toll rose, the political broadsides resumed in full force on Thursday. And Obama, who campaigned on the theme of change four years ago but has struggled to land on a simple reelection message, returned to his core argument, telling voters in far-flung time zones that Romney would turn the clock of progress backward. "We know what change looks like. What the governor is offering sure ain't change," Obama said at a morning event. At another event hours later, he argued: "I know what real change looks like, because I fought for it."
Romney has been claiming the mantle of change as well. Late Thursday, a senior adviser said the Republican nominee will begin the final four days of the campaign with a speech in West Allis, Wis., "to make clear the big choice voters have to bring about real change."
Even as Obama flew almost all the way across the country, from Wisconsin to Nevada to Colorado and then to Ohio for several hours of sleep - and as Romney spent the day campaigning in Virginia - the focus of both campaigns' ground games stayed locked on Ohio.
Obama's campaign used a television ad and a conference call to attack a controversial Romney ad that criticized the automobile-industry bailout the president oversaw. The bailout particularly resonates in Ohio and in Michigan, a traditionally blue state in which Romney has been making tentative inroads. Polling suggests the race has tightened over the past month, including in Ohio, even as Obama retains the slightest of edges.
In another tweak of the map, Romney announced plans to make a full-fledged effort in the traditionally Democratic state of Pennsylvania. Trying to expand an electoral map that most analysts think is more difficult than Obama's, the Republican said he would visit the state on Sunday, the day after his running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.), is scheduled to stop in Harrisburg.
Romney and his allies have been running television ads in the state, and on Thursday an official at the Republican National Committee said the organization has bought $2.5 million worth of broadcast television advertising there, as well as about $500,000 in radio ads.
Both sides had considered the state out of reach for the Republican ticket, and Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) lost it in 2008 - after also visiting the Sunday before the election. But polls in the state have tightened recently, in part because the president has grown more unpopular in southwestern Pennsylvania, where he has been criticized as being a foe of the coal industry.
A Romney adviser cast the move as as one of strength. "Our campaign's decision to travel to and campaign in Pennsylvania is just the latest example of how the race is breaking toward Governor Romney and allowing our campaign to be on offense,'' said the adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the candidate's travel plans have not been announced.
The Obama campaign has said Romney's strategy - which also includes an effort in traditionally blue Minnesota - is born of desperation because his path to the 270 electoral votes he needs is blocked in key battleground states, including Ohio.
But even some Democrats in Pennsylvania have said Romney is smart to spend money in the state, given that he has cash to burn. And although there has been no indication that Obama will stump there, his campaign announced Thursday that Vice President Biden's wife, Jill Biden, will visit Pennsylvania on Friday and Saturday.
In his tour of Virginia on Thursday, Romney returned to the core argument that has defined his candidacy: that he is a champion of business whose policies would usher in new jobs and rising incomes.
The former chief executive pounced on a proposal that Obama reintroduced this week to consolidate multiple government agencies under a single secretary of business, charging that it shows the president lacks the business know-how to jump-start the economy.
"I don't think adding a new chair in his Cabinet will help add millions of jobs on Main Street," Romney said in Roanoke on the factory floor of a window and door manufacturer. "We don't need a secretary of business to understand business. We need a president who understands business, and I do."
As if on cue, Starbucks chief executive Howard Schultz - who had spent much of the past year urging voters to withhold their political contributions from a system he blasted as poisonous - declared Thursday that Obama deserves a second term. Schultz, who supported Obama in 2008, said the president has demonstrated "significant leadership" on the economy and in world affairs.
Romney's campaign announced endorsements from 13 business leaders, including the founders or co-founders of Home Depot, Charles Schwab and Netscape.
On a separate front, Romney released an unusual video attacking Obama for high gas prices - which will air on monitors above pumps at gas stations - and another video in which he blames Obama's policies for the demise of a barbecue restaurant in Richmond.
In a tough new Spanish-language ad in Florida, the Republican candidate said Obama is supported by controversial Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and the niece of longtime Cuban leader Fidel Castro. The Hispanic vote is critical in Florida and other states, and the ad brought a blast from the Obama campaign, which called it "bluster.''
ruckerp@washpost.com
markonj@washpost.com
Markon reported from Washington. David Nakamura contributed to this report from Green Bay, Wis.; Las Vegas; and Boulder, Colo.
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November 2, 2012 Friday
Suburban Edition
Rocky terrain along the Great Lakes
BYLINE: Joel Achenbach;Michael S. Williamson
SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A25
LENGTH: 1565 words
DATELINE: IN CLEVELAND
Tall, strapping, wearing a pinstriped suit, and with his head shaved like Mr. Clean, Tim Misny stood in a parking lot and declared a winner in the presidential election. Misny's a personal injury lawyer. He's famous for TV ads with the slogan "I'll make them pay!" He's not the type of person who's afraid to express an opinion.
"Nothing to discuss. Nothing to discuss. Obama's got it," he said.
He made a grand pronouncement: "You are standing in the exact spot where the election is going to be determined." He explained that Ohio is the crucial swing state, and Cleveland is the key to Ohio, and "this exact intersection, St. Clair and 55th" is the heart of Cleveland.
"People don't have to watch any television commercials to know that unless you're a millionaire, you have no business even thinking about voting for Romney. These people think Romney should run for president of the Cayman Islands," Misny said.
This is, indeed, a Democratic city. Pundits talk about the president's political firewall, but levee might be the more apt metaphor around here, because President Obama hopes to shore up his base in the industrial strip that formed in the 19th century along Lake Erie. Mitt Romney wants to poke a hole in that base.
Some of the most hotly contested terrain in the final weeks of the campaign is along the Great Lakes, the inland seas left behind when the ice sheet retreated 10,000 years ago, back when this campaign season began. The Romney strategists this week generated headlines with their contention that Michigan, Pennsylvania and even Minnesota are in play, in addition to Ohio and Wisconsin.
Both candidates are traveling to these states in the final days of the campaign and spending millions in advertising. The polls in these states still favor Obama, but by margins ranging from narrow to minuscule. There are many paths to 270 electoral votes, but Obama's is nearly assured if he holds all five of these Great Lakes states (not to mention his strongholds of Illinois and New York). If Romney can win even one of these states, he has a dramatically better shot at becoming the 45th president.
The battle for the Great Lakes has affected the tone and lexicon of the presidential race. Four years ago, Sen. Obama expanded the electoral map for Democrats, winning former Republican strongholds such as Virginia, North Carolina and Colorado, and he did so in part with an appeal to suburban swing voters, people with college educations and well-paying New Economy jobs - what economists call "knowledge workers," and members of the "creative class."
This time, Obama is back to basics, focusing a great deal of energy on traditional Democratic voters, particularly here in the industrial north - urban minorities, union members, working-class whites, college students and older voters who remember voting for JFK or maybe even FDR.
Obama has wanted to be a transformative 21st-century president, but to get another term, he needs help from a constituency that dates to the New Deal.
Hitting certain notes
In recent interviews in cities and towns along Lake Erie, voters hit certain notes repeatedly. Romney supporters say the country can't afford four more years of Obama. They call him incompetent and worse. Obama supporters say the president inherited an awful mess, and four years isn't enough time to clean it up. They say Romney cares only about the rich.
Here, you find such rock-solid Obama voters as Landry Simmons, 64, a former steelworker whose job got outsourced years ago. He now drives a forklift. He's in a union.
"I think Romney, he lost his connection to the middle class," Simmons said. "How many people do you know got an elevator in the garage?"
But John McCourt, 70, a retired minister in the rural town of Polk, thinks the country is going broke under Obama.
"I think he's a smart enough guy, but I don't think he was experienced enough. He was in over his head, a little bit like Jimmy Carter," he said.
This is a part of the country that is in a forced transition. Deindustrialization, driven by the new global economy, hit like a slow-motion hurricane. The housing crisis hammered Cleveland; long rows of houses lie abandoned after foreclosures. Cleveland, Toledo, Akron and Youngstown are on the long list of Upper Midwest manufacturing cities that lost population in the last decade, just like Detroit and Flint up in Michigan. Demographers call them "dying cities."
So it is that people here are looking for solutions, for a better way forward, for some kind of turnaround. The candidates pitch themselves as the problem-solvers. There's an old-fashioned, meat-and-potatoes quality to the campaigning here: The candidates talk about manufacturing, energy extraction, coal mining. Romney's campaign has argued that Obama is anti-coal, and Obama's campaign has argued that, no, Romney is the one who's anti-coal.
Most of all, they talk about cars. The auto bailout is widely viewed as Obama's special tool to keep conservative blue-collar workers from defecting to Romney, who favored letting the strapped car companies go through a managed bankruptcy. If the president or one of his surrogates go more than a few paragraphs without mentioning cars, someone has surely hacked the teleprompter.
"His administration saved this area," University of Toledo music professor Ray Marchionni, 70, said last week at a rally where Vice President Biden spoke.
Waiting for Biden to take the stage, law student Steven Vandercoke, 22, said he was leaning toward Romney, having supported Ron Paul during the GOP primary season. "I don't think we need more government intrusion in our lives," he said.
When Biden took the stage, he accused Romney of being an outsourcer of jobs, and promised to protect Ohio workers: "President Obama and I will not stand back and let China break international trade laws and hurt Ohio workers."
He mocked the Republicans: "Starting with the convention, they had what we Catholics call an epiphany. They discovered the middle class."
Someone in the raucous audience shouted, "It just popped up!"
"It just popped up!" Biden echoed.
Undecided voters
The battle along the Great Lakes is being fought voter by voter. Rudolfo Irizarry, 51, who voted for John McCain in 2008, said he gets three or four phone calls a day from one of the campaigns. He's undecided, he said from behind the wheel of a 1973 Gran Torino with its original Ivy Glow paint job as he pulled into a park on the shore of Lake Erie.
Irizarry, a member of the large Puerto Rican population of northern Ohio, is a disabled warehouseman, suffering from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, which is in remission. He's worried about his health care. He needs expensive chemotherapy and fears major cuts to Medicare, on which he relies.
"I'm a Republican, but I'm scared of Romney, so I just don't know," Irizarry said. "I'm scared of both of them as far as health care is concerned."
Billboards have been doing much of the campaigning here, controversially so. A billboard company last week took down 30 billboards in and around Cleveland that featured a judge's gavel and the huge words "Voter Fraud Is A Felony! Up to 31 / 2 years & $10,000 fine." Critics said the billboards were a form of voter intimidation in predominantly African American neighborhoods.
Still standing in low-income Cleveland are billboards saying, "Voting Is a Right, Not a Crime!"
Many Ohioans voted weeks ago. Early voting started Oct. 2.
Two 18-year-old high school seniors, Jaquan Battle and Craig Soto, received permission to miss their fourth-period math class last week to cast a vote in Lorain, west of Cleveland. Both voted for Obama.
"I just heard that Romney, he wants to make us pay more," Soto said.
"In taxes," Battle said. "We heard how he buys small companies and makes them into big companies and ships them off to China."
This has been a campaign with a lot of negativity, anger, enmity. Neither candidate has managed to inspire great positive passion.
Some voters who say they oppose Obama cite conspiracy theories dispensed by fringe elements of the political world. Wayne Potter, 81, playing Pot of Gold Poker at an Internet cafe in Lorain, said he received unsolicited in the mail a DVD claiming that Obama's real father was an American communist, not a Kenyan academic, and that Obama will pursue a communist agenda in his second term. He plans to vote for Romney.
He said of Obama, "He's got all the black vote, probably most of the Hispanic vote and apparently the women are primarily in favor of him. By the time you add all that up, it's a very uphill battle for a white guy." He goes on: "Eventually, the U.S. will be a second-rate power, but I'll be dead and gone when that happens."
Down the road, further west along the lake, Dale and Nancy Reichert, 74 and 62, respectively, went to a lakefront park to watch the sunset. They'd voted that day, by mail, for Obama. Or against Romney.
"Just things he says, and sometimes the way he acts, I just don't trust him," Dale Reichert said.
They do trust each other. They're both recovering from surgery, having scheduled their procedures on the same morning in the same hospital. That's why they voted by mail, because they knew they'd be hurting afterward and might not make it to their polling precinct. And now they huddled on a bench, watching the drama in the sky where the sun had splashed into Lake Erie.
achenbachj@washpost.com
Photography by Michael S. Williamson
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The Washington Post
November 2, 2012 Friday
Suburban Edition
Fiscal cliff divides business community
BYLINE: Suzy Khimm
SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A10
LENGTH: 910 words
A rift has opened in the U.S. business community over whether tax increases should be an important part of the government's strategy for tackling the federal deficit and heading off destabilizing changes in tax and spending policies set to kick in at the end of the year.
The latest salvo was fired Wednesday when a coalition of business trade associations and advocacy groups warned Congress against agreeing to a deal that leans on new tax revenue. The group, which includes the Chamber of Commerce, the National Federation of Independent Business, and the National Association of Manufacturers, urged lawmakers to put deep cuts in federal spending at the center of any plan to reduce the deficit.
This group, dubbed the Tax Relief Coalition, is pushing back against a rival campaign led by prominent chief executives who called on Congress late last month to include increased taxes, alongside spending cuts, in efforts to tame the national debt. Among the companies involved in the rival campaign are the leaders of Honeywell, JPMorgan Chase, UPS and Aetna.
The escalating dispute comes two months before the United States is set to face a "fiscal cliff" of sharp tax hikes and spending cuts that will automatically take effect unless the White House and Congress agree on plans to avoid it. Many economists have warned that the combination of tax hikes and spending cuts could knock the wind out of a U.S. economy still struggling to recover.
Much of the disagreement among business leaders focuses on the recommendations of a bipartisan panel, known as the Simpson-Bowles commission, for addressing federal deficits. Although the chief executives of Honeywell, JPMorgan Chase and their allies have endorsed the panel's recommendations as a starting point for Congress, the Tax Relief Coalition rejected the approach, saying that spending on programs like Social Security and Medicare is the main problem.
"Because of the significant imbalance in entitlement programs, we also believe that any serious reform must include significantly more in spending reductions than in revenue," the Tax Relief Coalition said in a statement. "Unfortunately, Bowles-Simpson does not achieve that objective."
The coalition also objects to Simpson-Bowles because the recommendations assume that Bush-era tax cuts for wealthy taxpayers will expire at the end of this year. The coalition is urging Congress to extend the tax cuts for all taxpayers, which is the position of presidential nominee Mitt Romney and Republican lawmakers. President Obama and his Democratic allies have said they want to see the tax cuts extended for most taxpayers but be allowed to expire for the wealthy, raising rates on income over $250,000 a year.
Jade West, a senior vice president at the National Association of Wholesale-Distributors and a spokesman for the Tax Relief Coalition, said the Simpson-Bowles plan is nothing less than a "tax increase." She said the willingness to boost tax rates for upper-income taxpayers was "a political decision as well as a policy decision. It is clearly President Obama's position."
The Chamber of Commerce raised similar concerns about the approach endorsed by the chief executives of Honeywell, JPMorgan Chase and others who are willing to increase taxes to get a budget deal. "Raising taxes on successful small businesses and individuals, investments, and capital gains would discourage capital accumulation and job creation," says Bruce Josten, the chamber's executive vice president.
Members of the Tax Relief Coalition say the rival executives do not represent all businesses and are worried that the public may believe that they do. West said the chief executives who have spoken favorably of Simpson-Bowles represent big corporations. Although the Tax Relief Coalition includes companies such as Exxon Mobil and Koch Industries, small businesses make up the majority of companies that the group represents, she said.
West said that allowing the Bush-era income-tax cuts to expire for top-end earners would hit some of these small businesses because these firms tend to file their taxes under the individual tax code rather than the corporate code. If there's a deficit-reduction proposal being considered that fails to go far enough in protecting individual tax rates, "the small-business community will rise up in arms," she predicted.
As a result of these concerns, some members of the coalition want to see all of the Bush-era tax cuts extended even before Congress begins to develop a plan for cutting the federal deficit.
That's in sharp contrast to the chief executives, who have argued that extending tax cuts without linking this to a bigger deficit-reduction package would be a mistake. Honeywell chief executive David Cote has said this would amount to "muddling through the middle."
Maya MacGuineas, who is coordinating the chief executives' campaign known as Fix the Debt, warned that the country needs a so-called grand bargain to get the government's finances back on a healthy footing. Avoiding the fiscal cliff at the end of the year is not enough. "The notion of extending everything for a year without a big comprehensive deal is so dangerous," MacGuineas said.
She added that differences between big corporations and small businesses on taxes should be expected. "Talking about the business community speaking as one voice is impossible, as there are as many business perspectives as people perspectives," MacGuineas said.
khimms@washpost.com
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November 1, 2012 Thursday
Late Edition - Final
One Result of Hurricane: Bipartisanship Flows
BYLINE: By KATE ZERNIKE
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Metropolitan Desk; Pg. 26
LENGTH: 876 words
The power of the image could not have been lost on a politician as savvy as Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey: With days to go before a cliffhanger election, a Democratic president was giving the handshake-back pat to his Republican opponent's most aggressive campaigner as they prepared to embark on a tour of damage from a catastrophic storm.
Mr. Christie had been scheduled to campaign for Mitt Romney, but he embraced the moment. When President Obama praised the governor after they finished their tour -- ''I want to let you know your governor is working overtime'' -- the two were soon swapping compliments.
''It's been a great working relationship,'' Mr. Christie said.
''I cannot thank the president enough for his personal concern and compassion for our state,'' he added during a brief news conference. He said it was ''my honor'' to turn the podium over to the president and then stood just behind him, occasionally nodding and smiling at his jokes.
For all the disruptions caused by Hurricane Sandy, the most unexpected may have been its unsettling effect on a presidential campaign winding into its final days. Perhaps nothing demonstrated the sudden upending of a political landscape years in the making so much as Mr. Christie's unexpected and effusive praise of Mr. Obama. Only last week he dismissed the president as ''clutching for the light switch of leadership.''
The scene played out on televisions around the country like a stirring campaign ad that hit themes of bipartisanship and crisis management -- only it was run free of charge. And for those who missed it, Mr. Christie repeated his praise again and again in television interviews, saying the president had been ''outstanding,'' ''incredibly supportive'' and ''deserves great credit.''
As pundits mused about the political implications for the presidential race, few of those watching, including campaign aides to the president and Mr. Romney, could do more than guess about the latest wild-card move from a wild-card governor.
Was he just a selfless leader making sure that he and his state had the ear of the man holding the federal purse strings? Or a selfish climber who figured he could run for president in 2016 if Mr. Romney were to lose this year? Or maybe he saw it in purely local terms, as a way to scare away a potentially strong Democratic challenger, like the popular Newark mayor, Cory A. Booker, at a time when the state's unemployment rate hovers well above the national average.
As Mr. Obama stood beside Mr. Christie and gushed about ''his extraordinary leadership,'' Romney aides were eager to make nothing of the partnership.
''He's a governor focused on his job,'' said Kevin Madden, a Romney adviser. ''He has said he's not looking at this through the lens of politics. He's right, and I expect most folks are looking at it just like the governor is.''
Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, said the visit should not be seen as a political event. ''This is a time to focus on what was a devastating storm and the terrible aftermath of that storm,'' he said.
But Mr. Christie did not completely set aside politics: he has blasted Democrats in the State Legislature for not allowing him to raise fines on utilities that do not respond quickly enough to power failures, and he has picked a fight with the Democratic mayor of Atlantic City.
Part of it may be that Mr. Christie still feels like a youngster in a candy shop about being governor -- he tells audiences at home that when he sees his name and title etched in gold on his office door, he asks himself, ''How the hell did this happen?'' When the president calls, it's still a pinch-me moment. Even when he wakes you up.
''It's O.K., he's allowed to,'' he told reporters.
Before the visit Wednesday, Mr. Christie mentioned several times that he and the president had talked ''just the two of us,'' and that the president had insisted that if he had any problems, he was to call him directly.
Mike DuHaime, an adviser to Mr. Christie, said the governor was acting true to form. ''He calls 'em as he sees 'em,'' he said. ''If they're working well together, he's going to say it.''
Mr. Christie has not announced whether he will run for a second term, but if he does, Election Day is a mere year and five days away. His approval ratings are high in New Jersey, but Mr. Obama's are higher.
It would not be the first time that Republicans have accused him of putting his own interests first: many criticized him after he delivered the keynote speech at the Republican National Convention, when it took him 15 minutes to mention Mr. Romney's name.
But one Republican close to Mr. Romney said that Mr. Christie would have been accused of playing politics if he had said no to the president's post-storm visit, as Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York had.
Still he seemed at times almost dismissive of Mr. Romney. When a host of Fox and Friends asked whether Mr. Romney would come visit New Jersey, the governor replied sternly: ''I have no idea,'' he said. ''Nor am I the least bit concerned or interested.''
As the president and the governor flew over the devastated Jersey Shore, at least one resident seemed to be staying on message. At the north end of Point Pleasant Beach, someone had etched in the sand: ''ROMNEY.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/01/nyregion/in-stunning-about-face-chris-christie-heaps-praise-on-obama.html
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GRAPHIC: PHOTO: President Obama and Gov. Chris Christie talked with residents recovering from Hurricane Sandy in New Jersey on Wednesday. (PHOTOGRAPH BY DOUG MILLS/THE NEW YORK TIMES)
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The New York Times
November 1, 2012 Thursday
Late Edition - Final
Romney Versus the Automakers
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Editorial Desk; EDITORIAL; Pg. 30
LENGTH: 552 words
When General Motors tells a presidential campaign that it is engaging in ''cynical campaign politics at its worst,'' that's a pretty good signal that the campaign has crossed a red line and ought to pull back. Not Mitt Romney's campaign. Having broadcast an outrageously deceitful ad attacking the auto bailout, the campaign ignored the howls from carmakers and came back with more.
Mr. Romney apparently plans to end his race as he began it: playing lowest-common-denominator politics, saying anything necessary to achieve power and blithely deceiving voters desperate for clarity and truth.
This started months ago when he realized that his very public 2008 stance against the successful and wildly popular government bailout of G.M. and Chrysler was hurting him in the valuable states of Ohio and Michigan. In February, he wrote an essay for The Detroit News calling the bailout ''crony capitalism on a grand scale'' because unions benefited and insisting that Detroit would have been better off to refuse federal money. (This ignores the well-documented reality that there was no other cash available to the carmakers.)
When that tactic didn't work, he began insisting at the debates that his plan for Detroit wasn't really that different from President Obama's. (Except for the niggling detail of the $80 billion federal investment.)
That was quickly discredited, so Mr. Romney began telling rallies last week that Chrysler was considering moving its production to China. Chrysler loudly denounced it as ''fantasies,'' saying it was only considering increasing production in China for sale in China, without moving a single American job.
''I feel obliged to unambiguously restate our position: Jeep production will not be moved from the United States to China,'' Chrysler's chief executive, Sergio Marchionne, said in a statement. ''Jeep assembly lines will remain in operation in the United States and will constitute the backbone of the brand. It is inaccurate to suggest anything different.'' In fact, 1,100 new jobs will be added in Toledo to produce a new generation of Jeep.
The Romney campaign ignored the company, following up with an instantly notorious ad saying President Obama ''sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China.'' If the false implication wasn't clear enough, the campaign put out a radio ad on Tuesday saying ''Barack Obama says he saved the auto industry. But for who? Ohio or China?'' What happened, the ad asks, ''to the promises made to autoworkers in Toledo and throughout Ohio?''
What happened was that those promises were kept. Nearly 1.5 million people are working as a direct result of the bailout. Ohio's unemployment rate is well below the national average. G.M.'s American sales continue to increase, and Chrysler said this week that its third-quarter net income rose 80 percent. These companies haven't just bounced back from the bottom; they are accelerating.
What Mr. Romney cannot admit is that all this is a direct result of the government investment he would have rejected. It's bad enough to be wrong on the policy. It takes an especially dishonest candidate to simply turn up the volume on a lie and keep repeating it.
By doing that in a flailing, last-minute grab for Ohio, Mr. Romney is providing a grim preview of what kind of president he would be.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/01/opinion/mitt-romney-versus-the-automakers.html
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The New York Times
November 1, 2012 Thursday
Late Edition - Final
An Unlikely Political Pair, United by a Disaster
BYLINE: By MARK LANDLER and MICHAEL BARBARO; Mark Landler reported from Washington, and Michael Barbaro reported from Coral Gables, Fla. Michael D. Shear contributed reporting from Washington.
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1152 words
WASHINGTON -- President Obama toured the storm-tossed boardwalks of New Jersey's ravaged coastline on Wednesday, in a vivid display of big-government muscle and bipartisan harmony that confronted Mitt Romney with a vexing challenge just as he returned to the campaign trail in Florida.
The scene of Mr. Obama greeting his onetime political antagonist Gov. Chris Christie in Atlantic City was a striking departure from what has become an increasingly bitter campaign, marked by sharp divisions between Mr. Romney's more limited view of the federal role and Mr. Obama's more expansive vision. The president placed a hand on Mr. Christie's back and guided him to Marine One, where the two men shared a grim flight over shattered sea walls, burning houses and a submerged roller coaster.
Speaking to storm victims at a community center in the hard-hit town of Brigantine, Mr. Obama said, ''We are going to be here for the long haul.'' Mr. Christie thanked the president for his visit, saying, ''It's really important to have the president of the United States acknowledge all the suffering that's going on here in New Jersey.''
The tableau of bipartisan cooperation, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency's highly visible role in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, has put Mr. Romney in an awkward position during the last week of a campaign in which he has fought Mr. Obama to a virtual draw. Last year, in a debate during the Republican primary, Mr. Romney appeared to advocate handing to the states much of the federal government's role in dealing with major disasters.
On Wednesday, as images of Mr. Obama and Mr. Christie dominated the newscasts, Mr. Romney was in Florida, a key electoral battleground that is no stranger to destructive hurricanes, where he struggled to square his small-government credo with a national disaster that seemed to cry out for a major federal response.
Before taking the stage at his first rally in Tampa, Mr. Romney issued a statement pledging to continue financing FEMA to insure it can ''fulfill its mission.''
''I believe that FEMA plays a key role in working with states and localities to prepare for and respond to natural disasters,'' Mr. Romney said. But reaffirming his earlier point, he added that he would channel resources to ''the first responders who work tirelessly to help those in need, because states and localities are in the best position to get aid to the individuals and communities affected by natural disasters.''
Aides to Mr. Romney reiterated that Mr. Romney was not backing away from comments he made at the debate in New Hampshire in June 2011. When asked about a fierce battle in Congress over continued financing of FEMA, Mr. Romney declared, ''We cannot afford to do these things without jeopardizing the future for our kids.''
As the Romney campaign was confronting questions about the candidate's position on the federal role in emergency response, Mr. Obama and Mr. Christie were being accompanied on their tour of a devastated New Jersey by FEMA's administrator, W. Craig Fugate, whose agency has won unstinting praise from Mr. Christie, a Republican, for the speed and intensity of its response to the devastation.
Kevin Madden, a senior Romney adviser, said that Mr. Romney still believes that states, not the federal government, should lead the response to disasters. Pressed on FEMA's proper role, he said that Mr. Romney believes ''being a partner for the states is the best approach.''
Mr. Romney got some help from Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor, who said at the Romney rally in Tampa, ''My experience in all this emergency response business is that it is the local level and the state level that really matters. That if they do their job right the federal government part works out pretty good.''
Mr. Romney has had to balance the demands of the campaign's final week with the desire not to look unseemly in the face of the storm's tragic toll. On Tuesday, in Ohio, he scrapped rallies in favor of a canned-goods drive. Though he returned to politics on Wednesday, he avoided attacks on the president, never mentioning his name.
''My view is pretty straightforward, and that is I believe that this is time for America to take a different course, that this should be a turning point for our country,'' he told 2,500 people in Tampa.
Aides to Mr. Romney said that he had no immediate plans to visit areas damaged by the storm, though they had not ruled it out.
The disaster comes as the campaigns continue to clash, with the federal bailout of the auto industry -- which Mr. Romney opposed -- erupting again as a major issue as the candidates scramble to capture the swing state prize of Ohio.
Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., also in Florida, attacked Mr. Romney for his ad in Ohio that claims Mr. Obama forced Chrysler into bankruptcy, resulting in the carmaker's sale to Italian owners, who are now building Jeeps in China.
Mr. Biden called it ''one of the most flagrantly dishonest ads I can ever remember in my political career.'' The ad is the centerpiece of a mounting war of words over the Obama administration's bailout of the auto industry, which the Romney camp is trying to discredit, as it works to cut the president's narrow but stubborn lead in Ohio.
The harsh words reflected the frantic maneuvering in both campaigns as the hours tick down. Both sides are projecting ironclad confidence that they will win, while trying to outwit each other with last-minute purchases of advertising time in states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Minnesota, which lie outside the conventional battleground.
Aides to Mr. Obama said the Romney campaign's purchases reflected a ''flailing'' attempt to win an electoral majority without Ohio, while Mr. Romney's advisers said that tightening polls in those states showed Mr. Obama's position was eroding everywhere.
On Thursday, Mr. Obama will return to the campaign trail in Wisconsin, Nevada and Ohio. But there is some initial evidence that the storm has helped the president: In the latest Washington Post-ABC News tracking poll, released on Wednesday evening, nearly 8 of 10 likely voters said Mr. Obama's response had been ''excellent'' or ''good.''
On Wednesday, the advantages of incumbency were on full display, as Mr. Christie heaped still more praise on Mr. Obama, saying, ''He has sprung into action immediately.''
With Mr. Christie nodding behind him, Mr. Obama spoke about deploying C-130 military planes to ferry supplies to stricken places like New Jersey and urged storm victims to call (800) 621-FEMA to register for direct help from the federal government.
Pledging to respond swiftly, the president said that he had instituted a rule that government officials must return calls from the state and local authorities within 15 minutes. ''We are not going to tolerate red tape,'' he said, ''We are not going to tolerate bureaucracy.''
''We will not quit until this is done,'' he added.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/01/us/politics/obama-tours-storm-ravaged-new-jersey-with-gov-chris-christie.html
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GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: OBAMA WITH CHRISTIE: A storm changes the tone. (PHOTOGRAPH BY DOUG MILLS/THE NEW YORK TIMES) (A1)
Representative Paul D. Ryan, Mitt Romney's running mate, in Green Bay, Wis., on Wednesday. (PHOTOGRAPH BY MARY ALTAFFER/ASSOCIATED PRESS)
Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. arrived Wednesday for a campaign rally in Ocala, Fla. (PHOTOGRAPH BY JOSH HANER/THE NEW YORK TIMES) (A14)
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The New York Times
November 1, 2012 Thursday
Late Edition - Final
With Pinpoint Door-Knocking, Trying to Tip Virginia Senate Race
BYLINE: By JONATHAN WEISMAN
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; NEW DOMINION; Pg. 12
LENGTH: 1334 words
STERLING, Va. -- Faiza Abdulle hopscotched through the tidy middle-class streets of exurban Washington one evening last month, carrying an iPod Touch that directed her surgically to the houses of a very certain type of voter.
Komlan Sessou, 29, a Togolese barista at nearby Dulles Airport, yawned in his pajama bottoms and asked, ''Now when is this election?'' Abdalla Nasir, 54, a government security worker from Sudan in a flowing white dishdasha, exchanged salaam alaikums with Ms. Abdulle and promised to vote for President Obama and for Tim Kaine for the Senate. Aldemar Ceballos spoke no English but invited the young canvasser in, vowing, through the translations of his 16-year-old niece, to vote but agonizing over his indecision.
With the Senate election in Virginia coming down to a photo finish, Mr. Kaine, a former governor, is figuring that a Democratic army of Faiza Abdulles will make the difference on Tuesday. Republicans, with their own army of door knockers, are hoping that their ground game can eke out a victory by one or two percentage points for George Allen, a former governor and senator. It is a street-level fight of neighborhood canvassing and phone banks conducted largely out of sight and distinct from the ad wars carpet-bombing televisions in Virginia.
Hurricane Sandy disrupted the effort for two days, but both sides were back at it on Wednesday. The state Republican Party started a seven-stop ''Victory'' bus tour that rendezvoused with Mitt Romney's bus in Leesburg, then barnstormed through Loudoun and Prince William Counties before heading south from the Washington area to Fredericksburg, Chesterfield and Richmond.
''The way the presidential and Senate races are coming down, this could be decided by a point or two,'' said Chris LaCivita, a veteran Republican campaign consultant who is close to Mr. Allen. ''Could the armies deployed on the ground actually determine the outcome either way? Absolutely.''
The battle for Virginia between Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney has held significant pitfalls for Mr. Kaine. Animus toward the president in the western coal country and in parts of the military-dominated southeast has done Mr. Kaine no favors.
But by piggybacking on the president's turnout operation, Mr. Kaine may turn the presidential campaign into a last-minute advantage. The Obama campaign maintains 47 offices in Virginia to Mr. Romney's 29. The state Democratic Party runs a ''coordinated campaign'' to augment the Obama team's efforts and promote Mr. Kaine and other Democratic candidates, with hubs in Alexandria, a Washington suburb; Richmond, the capital; the Hampton Roads area, a military center; and Charlottesville, a student bastion.
On the periphery are separate get-out-the-vote, rally-the-faithful efforts motivated by Mr. Obama but carrying along Mr. Kaine's message. Canvassing has been going on for months, financed by at least three unions, Planned Parenthood and Virginia New Majority, the group Ms. Abdulle was working for, which is aimed at an expanding immigrant community that has helped turn Virginia from reliably Republican to a battleground.
Republicans boast of similar operations. The state Republican Party's Victory campaign claimed its one millionth door knocked on last week, and says its canvassers and phone bank workers have contacted nearly 4.5 million voters, more than two-thirds of the state's voting-age population. Democrats scoff at the figure.
No matter, Pete Snyder, the Victory chairman, said the ground game this year was nothing like the moribund ground effort of 2008, when a Democrat took the state in the presidential race for the first time since 1964, or of 2006, when Mr. Allen lost his re-election bid by 9,000 votes. ''If you had gone to McCain headquarters in 2008 and said, 'I'm really worried about Virginia,' they would have laughed you out of the place,'' said Mr. Snyder, a professed ground-game convert. ''Next to nothing went on in 2008.''
The surge of Republican support that swept Gov. Bob McDonnell to power in 2009 and three Republicans into the House in 2010 has presented a tricky task for Democrats: finding the voters who were with them in 2008 but did not show up in the next two elections, and the ones new to the state.
''In a close race, the person-to-person matters more than anything else,'' Mr. Kaine told canvassers crammed into an office in Dale City before heading out one recent weekend into Prince William County. ''Look, they've already seen millions of ads, but it's still close. They've already seen millions of ads, and there are still undecided voters.''
It is a voting universe that requires a lot of coaxing. They may be reliably Democratic, but the women, immigrants and minorities targeted by Virginia New Majority are unreliable voters.
''We are focused almost exclusively on the voters who wouldn't come out to vote without the attention,'' said Rishi Awatramani, the communications director for Virginia New Majority. ''If we hit that 2 percent vote share, then we've done a good job.''
Two weeks ago, organizers sent out about 15 canvassers, white, black, Asian and Hispanic, some in knit caps, others in head scarves.
''What's our chant?'' Ben Byron, an assistant field director, asked at the meeting hall of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers.
''Virginia New Majority, 40,000 doors,'' the group responded.
''Let's do it,'' Mr. Byron concluded.
The sophistication of the operation was evident in the palm of Ms. Abdulle's hand. Her iPod took her on a meandering path. On some streets, she knocked on only one door. On another, she hit two doors in a row, skipped five houses, crossed the street and approached another, before doubling back to a missed one far up the block. She encountered a skunk on East Lee Street, a lot of empty houses and many doorbells ignored. Darkness fell quickly in neighborhoods with no streetlights. But it was better than the previous week, her first canvass, when she braved a rainstorm.
The canvas coordinators who load the maps onto the iPods use publicly available voter files, identifying women and minorities who have voted no more than once in the last four Virginia general elections. For more frequent voters who vacillate between Republicans and Democrats, the group's political advocacy arm assigns ''persuasion'' teams.
Infrequent but reliable Democrats are more likely to get people like Ms. Abdulle, a novice, shy and sweet and not a hard seller.
''I could never do sales,'' said Ms. Abdulle, a Somali immigrant who came to Ashburn, Va., 10 years ago by way of the Netherlands.
For all the sophistication of the group's back office, its utility could be in question in the hands of such young, inexperienced canvassers. Mr. Komlan, one of the voters she contacted, was unpersuasive in his promise to vote after Ms. Abdulle informed him that Election Day was Nov. 6. Bob Bechara, 72, a Greek-Lebanese retiree, was happy to chat, but he said the door knock had not made a difference.
''She's here, not here, I'm going to do it,'' he said with a shrug, speaking of voting.
Ms. Abdulle made no effort to press William Echevarria, 51, when he said he was undecided. She was happy he promised her that he would vote.
But Mr. Echevarria, a military contractor, seemed an easy target. He had two children with health issues whom he had been able to keep on his insurance because of Mr. Obama's health care law, a change he clearly appreciated. On the other hand, he said he had ''at least the impression'' that high gasoline prices stemmed from the Democrats' emphasis on alternative energy, a hunch that may well have been disputed with a little effort. None was made.
Still, he said, Ms. Abdulle's visit was helpful as the race draws to a close.
''It makes me think, 'You know what? I probably should pay attention and make a decision,' '' he said.
New Dominion: Articles in this series are examining the United States Senate race in Virginia and its implications for the presidential election and control of the Senate.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/01/us/politics/door-knocking-army-tries-to-tip-virginia-senate-race.html
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GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: Faiza Abdulle, a worker for Virginia New Majority, talking with Reginald Mervine as she canvassed for President Obama and Tim Kaine, a Democrat running for the Senate, in Sterling, Va., last month. (A12)
Ms. Abdulle was guided in her canvassing by maps loaded onto an iPod by her organization that drew on public voter files. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY BRENDAN HOFFMAN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES) (A14)
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The New York Times Blogs
(Taking Note)
November 1, 2012 Thursday
Opinion Report: Climate Change and Sandy
BYLINE: ANDREW ROSENTHAL
SECTION: OPINION
LENGTH: 88 words
HIGHLIGHT: A summary of what's on today's editorial page.
From the editorial page
Having broadcast an outrageously deceitful ad attacking the auto bailout, the Romney campaign ignored the howls from carmakers and came back with more.
In grimly precise detail, climate studies predicted Hurricane Sandy's flooding of New York City's infrastructure, from power lines to subways to low-lying communities.
The police should not use drug-sniffing dogs outside the door of a house without a warrant.
False Advertising
Romney's New Auto Ad
Obama's Stamina
Last Night's Best Romneyism
Joe Biden's Speech
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November 1, 2012 Thursday
How Romney's Tax Plan Would Encourage Offshoring
BYLINE: TERESA TRITCH
SECTION: OPINION
LENGTH: 301 words
HIGHLIGHT: The candidate wants a so-called territorial tax system.
Mitt Romney has been criticized for the mendacity of his attacks on the auto bailout and, more recently, for his baseless claim that Chrysler was planning to move production to China.
But his attempt to rile voters about the offshoring of jobs is all the more deceitful when you consider that his tax plan would actively encourage companies to move jobs abroad. Mr. Romney wants a so-called territorial tax system, in which the overseas profits of American corporations would escape United States taxation altogether. That would be a big incentive for multinational companies to shift jobs and investments overseas. It would also be a huge giveaway to multinationals - which, not surprisingly, are supporters of the switch to a territorial code.
Under current law, taxes on foreign profits of American firms are deferred until the companies repatriate the money to the United States. Upon repatriation, the profits are taxed, but with a credit given for any foreign taxes paid on the profits, so there is no double taxation. That is already more than generous tax treatment. But a territorial system would go one better, by declaring that overseas profits that are currently tax-deferred would instead be tax-free, forever.
So Mr. Romney's anti-Chrysler ads not only distort what Chrysler is doing. They also decry precisely the policies that his tax plan would provoke: moving jobs off shore, hand in hand with tax avoidance.
For the record: President Obama opposes a territorial approach. Among other policies, he has proposed a minimum tax that would discourage companies from moving overseas by requiring American companies to make up the difference between their foreign and U.S. rates.
Last Night's Best Romneyism
Opinion Report: Climate Change and Sandy
False Advertising
Romney's New Auto Ad
Obama's Stamina
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November 1, 2012 Thursday
Clinton Assails Romney on Swing Through Ohio
BYLINE: RICHARD A. OPPEL JR.
SECTION: US; politics
LENGTH: 658 words
HIGHLIGHT: Bill Clinton took the Romney campaign to task for its ad suggesting Chrysler might move jobs to China as he continued on the trail for President Obama.
PERRYSBURG, Ohio -- Bill Clinton swept through a campaign visit to Ohio on behalf of President Obama on Thursday, blasting Mitt Romney and his surrogates for implying that Jeep might begin manufacturing vehicles in China at the expense of American jobs and for suggesting that Colin L. Powell endorsed Mr. Obama because both men are black.
Mr. Clinton, 66, started the day with a campaign stop in Wisconsin and made his first Ohio stop here, outside Toledo, his voice as hoarse as it often was 20 years ago when he campaigned for president. Much of his appearance was a reprise of his speech at the Democratic National Convention and other campaign talks that have praised Mr. Obama's economic, health care and student loan policies.
"My voice is a little weak," he told a crowd of about 1,900 students and other supporters at Owens Community College. "But I wasted it in a good cause."
In fact, the pace of his appearances for Mr. Obama was evident a few minutes into his speech when Mr. Clinton said, "I'm honored to be here in Pennsylvania to support President Obama."
"Ohio!" many in the crowd shouted.
"I have a Pennsylvania line in the speech," Mr. Clinton explained. But it was a forgiving crowd. "It's O.K," one woman screamed. "Give 'em hell, Bill," a man shouted a few minutes later.
Mr. Clinton reveled in the opportunity to attack Mr. Romney over the Republican ticket's widely criticized commercial that left the misleading impression that Chrysler -- the corporate parent of Jeep - would build Jeeps in China at the expense of American jobs. The automaker says it is discussing new Jeep production in China for sales within China, but that would not affect jobs in the United States, and that it is adding workers in Toledo. The Romney campaign has stood by the accuracy of the commercial.
"Mr. Romney has come into Ohio time and time again and tied himself in knots," Mr. Clinton said. "So what's their latest scam? You've probably seen it -- they say that Jeep is moving jobs to China." Many in the crowd also shouted "China!" as Mr. Clinton said it, almost drowning his raspy voice.
"The truest thing the Romney campaign ever said was, they have no intention of having their campaign be dictated by fact-checkers," Mr. Clinton added.
Mr. Clinton also took a shot at John H. Sununu, the former New Hampshire governor and one of Mr. Romney's chief surrogates, who last week had suggested that Mr. Powell, the former secretary of state under George W. Bush, may have endorsed Mr. Obama for a second time because they are both of the same race.
"Oh, he endorsed him because they are both black," Mr. Clinton said, using his own paraphrase of Mr. Sununu's comments. (Mr. Sununu had quickly backtracked last week, saying he did not doubt Mr. Powell's endorsement was based on anything other than support for Mr. Obama's policies.)
And Mr. Clinton wasn't finished. He mentioned how the Romney campaign had, in Mr. Clinton's words, stated that "now the Italians are taking your jobs away." (Chrysler is majority-owned by Fiat - the "Italians" - and the Romney commercial's voiceover had stated that Mr. Obama had "sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China. Mitt Romney will fight for every American job." Text shown on the screen had also said, "Plans to return Jeep output to China.")
Chrysler's chief executive, Sergio Marchionne, e-mailed his employees earlier this week to "unambiguously restate our position: Jeep production will not be moved from the United States to China," adding that "it is inaccurate to suggest anything different."
Mr. Clinton, who says he has Irish ancestry, closed his remarks here by joking, "Pretty soon, they'll come after the Irish - and I'm toast."
Obama and Romney Campaigns Face Off in Ohio
Republican Voters in Ohio Give Romney Another Look
Romney Campaign Doubles Down on Auto Bailout Attacks
Jeep Production Isn't Moving to China, Chrysler Chief Says
Rocking the Vote, Meat Loaf Endorses Romney
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TimesCast Politics: Campaign Returns to Full Speed
BYLINE: THE NEW YORK TIMES
SECTION: US; politics
LENGTH: 108 words
HIGHLIGHT: TimesCast Politics: Obama and Romney return to the trail. | The money race in the final stages. | A partisan twist on the Senate race in Maine. | Buzzfeed's Ben Smith on social media.
Getty Images
0:22 Presidential Race Is Back in Full Swing
Michael D. Shear reports as both candidates are holding campaign events in key swing states on Thursday.
5:19 The Money Race
Nicholas Confessore looks at the money race as the election enters its final stages.
9:08 Maine Senate Race
A look at the Senate race in Maine, where independent candidate Angus King hasn't decided which party he will caucus with.
13:11 The Battle for the Senate
Jonathan Weisman looks at key Senate races around the country.
18:32 Social Media Check-In
Ben Smith of BuzzFeed discusses how Hurricane Sandy has stolen the attention from the campaign on social media.
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November 1, 2012 Thursday
Liberty to Lie
BYLINE: CHARLES M. BLOW
SECTION: OPINION
LENGTH: 913 words
HIGHLIGHT: A significant number of voters who admit that they don't trust Mitt Romney say that they're going to vote for him anyway. What gives?
This election may go down in history as the moment when truth and lies lost their honor and stigma, respectively.
Mitt Romney has demonstrated an uncanny, unflinching willingness to say anything and everything to win this election. And that person, the unprincipled prince of untruths, is running roughly even with or slightly ahead of the president in the national polls.
What does this say about our country? What does it say about the value of virtue?
The list of Romney's out-and-out lies (and yes, there is no other more polite word for them) is too long to recount here. So let's just take one of the most recent ones: the utterly false claim that General Motors and Chrysler shipped, or planned to ship, American auto jobs to China.
First, let's take on the Chrysler claim.
On Saturday, The Des Moines Register endorsed Mitt Romney because it thought that he would be "the stronger candidate" to forge "compromises in Congress." On Tuesday, the news side of that same publication fact-checked Romney's Chrysler-China claim and found that it was a lie.
According to the Register:
Mitt Romney first told a crowd in Ohio on Thursday that Chrysler was shifting the production of Jeeps to China. Then he aired an ad claiming that President Obama "sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China." (The clear impression in the ad is that American jobs will be lost.) Neither is true.
The paper continued:
Jeep sales have nearly tripled since 2009, according to Chrysler, and the company has added 4,600 jobs to its Jeep plants since then. Another 1,100 jobs will be added at an Ohio plant next year. Sales of Jeep in China have grown in recent years and Chrysler plans to resume vehicle production there, but not at the expense of American jobs.
Now on to GM. The Romney ad claims that "under President Obama, GM cut 15,000 American jobs, but they are planning to double the number of cars built in China, which means 15,000 more jobs for China."
This drew a sharp rebuke from GM:
We've clearly entered some parallel universe during these last few days. No amount of campaign politics at its cynical worst will diminish our record of creating jobs in the U.S. and repatriating profits back to this country.
Factcheck.org went into more detail to disprove Romney's claim:
The Romney radio ad also claims - correctly - that GM has cut 15,000 U.S. jobs under Obama. It's true that 13,000 U.S. hourly employees and 5,000 salaried workers accepted a buyout offer in 2009 to either retire early or voluntarily leave the company, according to GM's 2009 annual filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The Web site continued:
But those numbers don't tell the whole story. GM eliminated old brands and shuttered dealerships when it went through bankruptcy in 2009 - resulting in fewer jobs. The alternative was to go out of business entirely.
And made one further point:
The radio ad goes on to falsely claim that the reduction in GM's U.S. payroll "means 15,000 more jobs for China." That's not true. As we wrote once before, GM is expanding operations in China to meet increased demand there for its vehicles. The increase in its China operations is unrelated to its U.S. operations.
Romney wouldn't acknowledge the truth if it kissed him on the cheek. In fact, Romney seems to have decided that the only things standing between him and the White House are stubborn facts. He continues to roll right over them.
The question is: will this scurrilous tactic have negative consequences?
Unfortunately, there is some evidence that facts and the people who check them don't carry the same weight that they once did.
First, the right's disinformation machine is, explicitly and implicitly, making the argument that facts (science, math, evidence) are fungible and have been co-opted by liberal eggheads. They have declared war on facts in response to what they claim is a liberal war on faith.
This is an utterly false and ridiculous argument, but it works on some people.
According to a Quinnipiac University/New York Times/CBS News Swing State poll released Wednesday, President Obama has a 9 percentage point lead over Romney in Ohio among likely voters on the question of who is honest and trustworthy (most people thought that the president was honest while most would not say the same about Romney). But that same poll found that the president only had a 5-point lead in the horse race numbers in Ohio.
The president had a similarly large lead on the honesty question in Florida in Virginia, but in those states the poll found the race to be virtually tied - the president had a small lead that was within the margin of error.
How is it that so many people are willing to support a man who they don't believe is honest or trustworthy?
The poll also found that most voters didn't believe that Romney cared about their problems. On the other hand, at least 60 percent of voters in each state said that they believed that the president cared about their problems.
Who votes for a man who doesn't care about you over a man who does?
I recognize that Obama hatred is a real thing, but disliking the president so much that you would do harm to yourself by voting for someone who you admit you don't trust seems to be taking things to extremes.
All the voters who are aware of Romney's fact-mangling but vote for him anyway must ask themselves this question: are they granting him the liberty to lie?
Economy or Personality?
Believing in Obama
Obama-mentum
Obama vs. Hoover
The Polling Bias Debate
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November 1, 2012 Thursday
Romney and Obama Campaigns Leaking Web Site Visitor Data
BYLINE: NATASHA SINGER
SECTION: TECHNOLOGY
LENGTH: 887 words
HIGHLIGHT: A new study by a graduate student in computer science and law at Stanford University, reports that both the Romney and Obama campaign Web sites are leaking information about site visitors to a number of third-party trackers operating on their pages.
The presidential campaign sites BarackObama.com and MittRomney.com have recently ratcheted up their use of third-party Web trackers. These are companies, like ad networks and data brokers working on behalf of the campaigns, that collect information about users' online activities to show political ads to people tailored to their own interests and beliefs.
Spokesmen for each campaign have separately said that their own campaign had put safeguards in place to protect that user data, as Charles Duhigg and I reported in an article published in The New York Times on Oct. 28.
But now a new study by Jonathan Mayer, a graduate student in computer science and law at Stanford University, reports that both sites are leaking information about site visitors to a number of third-party trackers operating on their pages.
Several pages on the Obama site included a user's personal information in the page title at the top of the page or in the URL address, Mr. Mayer said, thereby giving third parties operating on the site the opportunity to collect identifying data. The information flowing to third parties, he said, variously included the username; the proper name under which a person registered; and their street address and ZIP code.
On the Romney site, Mr. Mayer said, he found that a number of pages included the user's name in the page title. Many pages also included a unique numerical ID number in the URL, which flowed to third parties, he said.
"Are the campaigns identifying their supporters to third-party trackers? Are they directly undermining the anonymity properties that they are so quick to invoke?" Mr. Mayer wrote in a blog post published on Thursday morning. "Yes, they are."
In an e-mail, Adam Fetcher, a spokesman for the Obama campaign, wrote that, regardless of the kinds of data that flows from the site to its third-party partners, the campaign does not allow those trackers to use the voter data collected on the site for any other clients or purposes.
"We do not provide any personal information to outside entities for their commercial use or for reasons other than what's related to the work they do with us," Mr. Fetcher wrote, "and we stipulate that third party partners not use data collected on the site for other purposes."
A spokesman for the Romney campaign did not return an e-mail request seeking comment.
Mr. Mayer tested the Obama and Romney sites by registering as a user and examining the page codes and layouts that resulted as he visited the sites.
In registering for the Obama site with his e-mail address, for example, Mr. Mayer found that the site by default assigned him a username that was the first part of his e-mail address. On certain pages on the site, he reported, that username appeared in the URL, thereby sharing part of his e-mail address with ten tracking companies operating on the page. Because many consumers tend to use the same e-mail address or username on many sites, leaking such data could allow third parties to link other public accounts on the Web to individual users, Mr. Mayer said.
Meanwhile, after Mr. Mayer found that the Romney site leaked his member ID number in the URL, he logged out and then immediately tried to access his own information on the site using that ID number - a tactic a third party who collected that data could hypothetically use. When he used that ID number on the site without being logged in, the site showed a message that said "Access Denied." At the same time, he said, the very same "access denied" page leaked more information on that page: the name under which he had registered.
I registered on both campaign sites on Wednesday night and had a similar experience.
The Obama site automatically assigned me a user name -nsinger - taken from my e-mail address that was visible in the URL on various pages. Using a tracker identification program called Ghostery, I found four different trackers that could collect that information.
On the Romney site, certain pages leaked the ID number I had been assigned in the URL. Other pages, I noted, leaked my ZIP code or state in the URL.
Advertising industry executives have long argued that third-party tracking is beneficial to online consumers because it helps brands show relevant digital ads. They also argue the data collection about online consumers is "anonymous" because the third parties do not collect identifying information like people's names and home addresses.
But Mr. Mayer said his study, and previous research by other computer experts, indicated that many sites leak users' personal information to third parties - challenging the claims about "anonymous" data.
"I think that for both campaigns this leakage is likely totally inadvertent," Mr. Mayer said in a phone interview. "But claiming this tracking data is anonymous just ignores the reality."
He also took a reporter to task for failing to sufficiently investigate the campaigns' claims about their data protection practices.
"The Gray Lady also deserves a light rap on the knuckles for insufficiently scrutinizing the campaigns' anonymity assertions," Mr. Mayer wrote.
Point taken.
Big Data in Your Blood
Google and F.T.C. Set to Settle Safari Privacy Charge
Stanford Researcher Finds Lots of Leaky Web Sites
Less Web Tracking Means Less Effective Ads, Researcher Says
French Officials Say Google Hasn't Answered Questions
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November 1, 2012 Thursday
FINAL EDITION
Romney backers go bare-knuckles in Fla.
BYLINE: Jackie Kucinich, @JFKucinich, USA TODAY
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 8A
LENGTH: 542 words
Six days before the election and as polls are nearly tied in most critical battlegrounds, the relative cease-fire between President Obama and Mitt Romney in the days after a hurricane ravaged the East Coast remained intact Wednesday -- but their campaigns were a different story.
As Obama toured the damage in New Jersey with Gov. Chris Christie, Romney spent his first full day of campaigning since Hurricane Sandy's landfall talking about his ideas, urging donations to the Red Cross and avoiding even a mention of Obama's name.
His effort succeeded at his first rally in Tampa, where supporters crowded into an airplane hangar on the cool, cloudless morning packed with such Florida political stars as former governor Jeb Bush and U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio.
"I believe this is the year for us to take a different course; I would bring real change and real reform. I don't just talk about change, I actually have a plan to execute change," Romney said, stressing themes like bipartisanship and the importance of working together for a common good.
By the second rally at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, his surrogates appeared ready for something more combative.
As the Red Cross donation number beamed near him, Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., slammed the president's foreign policy.
"Remember, and he went to Egypt to apologize, to tell the world that the United States was going to be humbler and mellower and that, frankly, we are so sorry for the sacrifices of the Americans for generations," he said. "Well, now -- now Egypt is controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood. Now, in Libya, they murder our ambassador, kill three other brave Americans, and the president is nowhere to be found to answer what happened."
Later, Bush, who at the first rally had focused on the changes Romney would make to the country for the better, said the president was more focused on shifting the blame than bringing people together.
"His entire strategy is to blame others -- starting with my brother, of course," he said, referring to former president George W. Bush. "Basically, he blames every possible thing rather than having the humility to be able to reach out and to find common ground."
Meanwhile, Democrats -- other than Obama -- continued to pound Romney for a controversial ad running in Ohio that says the president allowed American automaker General Motors to move operations to China.
Campaigning in Sarasota on Wednesday, Vice President Biden called the auto ad an "outrageous lie."
"They are running the most scurrilous ad in Ohio. And I mean this sincerely one of the most flagrantly dishonest ads I can ever remember in my political career," Biden said, according to ABC News. "It's an outrageous lie. A lie, a lie that is so deceptive and so patently untrue that the Chrysler corporation, including the chairman of the board of Chrysler, they actually spoke up."
A GM spokesman rejected the notion that the company was moving jobs to China in a statement to the Detroit Free Press on Tuesday, and called the ad "campaign politics at its cynical worst."
Romney adviser Kevin Madden defended the ad saying it "makes the case for why Gov. Romney would be stronger for the auto industry and why the auto industry's an important part of a strong economy."
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November 1, 2012 Thursday
First EDITION
U.S. Senate race in Wis. is close, bitter;
Outcome in key state 'matters to the whole nation'
BYLINE: Judy Keen, @judykeen, USA TODAY
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 7A
LENGTH: 761 words
The contentious race for the U.S. Senate between former Republican governor Tommy Thompson and Democratic Rep. Tammy Baldwin is growing even more intense in its final days, reflecting the closeness of the contest and its importance.
A Marquette University Law School poll released Wednesday showed Baldwin leading Thompson, 47%-43%. The same poll showed President Obama leading Republican Mitt Romney in Wisconsin, 51% to 43%. The poll of 1,243 likely voters had an error margin of +/-2.8 percentage points.
The (Senate) race is very, very close" and has been notable for a slew of negative ads and an influx of outside money, said John McAdams, a political scientist at Milwaukee's Marquette University. The investment of attention and resources is logical, he said, because the outcome "matters to the whole nation."
Control of the U.S. Senate could be at stake in the Thompson-Baldwin race, and Romney and Obama need Wisconsin's 10 Electoral College votes to accumulate the 270 needed to secure the presidency. In 2008, Obama defeated Republican John McCain in Wisconsin, 56%-42%.
Wisconsin has grown accustomed to being an epicenter of bitter politics. The Capitol here was occupied for weeks in 2011 after Republican Gov. Scott Walker proposed an end to collective bargaining rights for some state workers. He prevailed and withstood a recall challenge in June.
That doesn't mean the state leans Republican, though, McAdams said: "Maybe we're a little more volatile than some places, but I think we are fundamentally a purple state. We really are a competitive state."
The retirement of Democrat Herb Kohl, who was elected to the Senate in 1988, lured Thompson, 70, back into politics. He served four terms as governor, was Health and Human Services secretary under President George W. Bush and briefly ran for president in 2008. After leaving Bush's administration, he advised lobbying companies.
The campaign has set a Wisconsin record for spending in a U.S. Senate campaign, with total expenditures by the candidates and outside groups topping $40 million.
Baldwin, 50, was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1998 after serving in the Wisconsin Assembly, where she was its first openly lesbian member. She was among six people ranked in 2010 by the National Journal as the most liberal members of Congress. She voted against authorization of the Iraq War in 2002 and supports a single-payer, government-run health care system.
Their records and disparate political philosophies on the economy, health care and the federal deficit were fodder for most of their disagreements, but in the final days of the campaign the 9/11 terrorist attacks and their responses to them have become flash points.
Thompson last week ran a TV ad that cited a 2006 vote by Baldwin against a resolution honoring victims of the attacks to suggest that she has extreme views. In an interview, Baldwin called the ad "a dishonest act of desperation" and explained that she voted against the measure because it included language that commended the Patriot Act. She voted against the Patriot Act in 2001.
In a response ad, Baldwin criticized Thompson for making $3 million from a Wisconsin company that had a contract to provide care to 9/11 responders. To underscore their attacks, the Thompson campaign hosted a conference call with former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani in which he called Baldwin's vote a "slap in the face" to "fallen heroes."
Baldwin's campaign countered with a conference call with Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who said Thompson doesn't belong in the Senate.
Some Wisconsin voters say the campaign's tone has turned them off. "They both seem petty and angry," said Kim Garner, 29, a Madison waitress who isn't certain how she'll vote. "It's kind of embarrassing after all this state has been through lately."
Jim Wilkerson, 51, a marketing manager, shares her concerns.
"What we really need in Washington is someone who can be thoughtful and not super-partisan," he said. "Not sure we'll have that coming out of this campaign." He's an independent voter.
In their final debate on Friday, Baldwin and Thompson disagreed on Iran. She criticized Thompson for owning shares in companies that did business with Iran; he has said he was unaware of the issue and sold the stocks when he found out about the links.
He, in turn, questioned Baldwin's "present" vote on a 2007 resolution that condemned Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for saying Israel should be destroyed.
She said she didn't want to vote "yes" because she was afraid Bush planned to start a war with Iran.
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Washington Post Blogs
The Fix
November 1, 2012 Thursday 10:09 PM EST
Todd Akin releases ad featuring rape victim
BYLINE: Sean Sullivan
LENGTH: 721 words
Make sure to sign up to receive "Afternoon Fix" every day in your e-mail inbox by 5(ish) p.m.!
EARLIER ON THE FIX:
WaPo-ABC tracking poll: Presidential contest as close as close can be
Michael Bloomberg, President Obama and the Fix Endorsement Hierarchy
What's coming on Election Day
Mitt Romney's most likely path to 270 electoral votes
Why isn't Oregon a slam dunk for President Obama?
Obama dodges a Sandy pitfall in Philadelphia
President Obama's most likely path to 270 electoral votes
Why there won't likely be an electoral vote/popular vote split - in one map
Stephen Colbert: Obama stole Romney's 'date to disaster-prom' (video)
Ohio moves back into the 'tossup' category on Fix electoral map
WHAT YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED:
* Mitt Romney will campaign in Pennsylvania on Sunday, the clearest indication yet the Republican nominee believes he can win the Keystone State. Meanwhile, Republican vice presidential nominee Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.) will make his second trip to the state in recent weeks on Saturday.
* Obama and Romney are running about even in the battleground state of Colorado, a new CNN/ORC International poll showed. Obama is at 50 percent while Romney is at 48 percent in the poll of those likeliest to vote in the state.
* Rep Todd Akin (R-Mo.) released a new ad featuring a woman who says she was raped and had an abortion. "The reason I'm voting for Todd, and that I'm so proud of him, is because he defends the unborn, he's a kind man," says the woman. Sen. Claire McCaskill's (D) latest TV ad includes footage of Romney calling for Akin to exit Senate race earlier in the campaign.
* Obama released a new ad slamming Romney's spots that suggested auto jobs are being sent to China. The Obama ad will air in Michigan and Ohio. Meanwhile, Romney released a new positive Iowa ad touting the Des Moines Register's decision to endorse him.
* Don't count reindeer farmer Kerry Bentivolio's (R) brother among those who are supporting him in Michigan's 11th district race. Phillip Bentivolio said he's "never met anyone in my life who is conniving and dishonest as this guy. He's my brother so it's hard to talk about this, but I believe that if he gets elected, he'll eventually serve time in prison." The Bentivolio brothers have each accused each other of being mentally unbalanced. Bentivolio is favored but far from a lock in the open race against physician Syed Taj (D).
WHAT YOU SHOULDN'T MISS:
* Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) has cast an absentee ballot and doesn't plan to hold an election night event on Tuesday. Jackson underwent treatment for bipolar disorder earlier this year and also faces a federal probe of his campaign finances.
* Rep. Jon Runyan's (R-N.J.) Democratic opponent has pulled a radio ad that compared the congressman to Hurricane Sandy. "In New Jersey, we've seen acts of nature do real damage. We're also seeing our own member of Congress do lasting damage in Washington," says the narrator of the ad released by Democrat Shelley Adler's campaign.
* Washington 1st District Republican nominee John Koster faced criticism from Democrat Suzan DelBene's campaign for comments he made about abortion exceptions for rape that were caught on tape. "But the rape thing ... you know, I know a woman who was raped and kept her child, gave it up for adoption, she doesn't regret it," Koster said in audio posted online. Koster released a statement in response to the audio recording saying: "Rape is a vicious and horribly violent crime, and no one in Washington State has been tougher on criminals and sex offenders than I have been, period."
* California Republican Party Chairman Tom Del Beccaro will not run for another term. Under his watch, registration numbers have continued trending downward and the party has faced financial woes. Vice Chairman Steve Baric is expected to run to replace Del Beccaro.
THE FIX MIX:
Vader goes Disney.
With Aaron Blake
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Election 2012
November 1, 2012 Thursday 9:45 PM EST
Shorthand
BYLINE: Rachel Weiner
LENGTH: 32 words
* Nate Silver offered a $2,000 bet.
* Castro, Chavez and Che made it into an ad.
* Michael Bloomberg endorsed Obama.
* Mitt Romney is going to Pennsylvania.
* And Biden will be on Letterman tonight.
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The Fix
November 1, 2012 Thursday 9:40 PM EST
Ohio moves back into the 'tossup' category on Fix electoral map;
Ohio is the state that both President Obama and Mitt Romney covet. And today we are moving it from "lean Obama" to "toss up".
BYLINE: Chris Cillizza;Aaron Blake
LENGTH: 934 words
The Fix is moving Ohio from "lean Obama" to "tossup" in our presidential ratings amid a slew of polling that suggests that the race has tightened over the past month, even as the incumbent retains the slightest of edges.
With the move, there are now 95 electoral votes - including Ohio's 18 - from eight states in our "tossup" category. President Obama has 237 electoral votes either solidly in his camp (186) or leaning his way (51). Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney has 206 electoral votes either solidly red (170) or leaning in his direction (36).
We first moved Ohio from "tossup" to "lean Obama" in late September after a series of polls - including one conducted by The Post - suggested that Obama had a high-single-digit to low-double-digit edge in the state. That surprisingly wide margin was attributed to (a) a barrage of television advertising from President Obama, (b) a state economy over-performing the sluggish national one, and (c) the sustained popularity of the auto bailout.
What's changed since then? Well, let's look at what hasn't changed first. The state's unemployment rate remains below the national average (7 percent in September) and the auto bailout remains popular, as evidenced by Romney's flailing attempts to muddy the waters on the issue in recent days.
What has changed is that Romney's performance in the first debate in early October bumped him back into contention in the state - as it did in virtually every other swing state, as well as nationally - and the natural partisanship of the state started to assert itself.
The simple fact is that Ohio has been too close for too long to expect that Obama would win it by five points or more. (Even the most optimistic pro-Obama types would have acknowledged that a month ago.)
In the four presidential elections prior to 2008, Democratic candidates got 9,060,521 total votes in Ohio, as compared to 8,965,170 for the Republican candidates, according to calculations made by the Cleveland Plain Dealer. In 2008, despite routing John McCain nationally, Obama carried the state by just 262,224 votes out of more than 5.6 million cast.
No one expects Romney to underperform McCain in the state - both because he is far better funded than the Arizona senator was and the incumbent is far less popular than he was in 2008.
After reviewing all of the available public polling data as well as talking to operatives in both parties about the private polls they are privy to, we are convinced that Ohio is a 1-3 point race in President Obama's favor at the moment.
That - coupled with the state's electoral history and the absolute necessity for Romney to win the state if he wants to be president - leads us to move it back to the "tossup" category.
Put simply: Ohio today has much more in common with Iowa, Florida, New Hampshire and Virginia (all "tossups" in the Fix rankings) than it does with New Mexico and Minnesota ("lean Obama" states in the Fix rankings).
60-Plus looks to expand the map: The conservative retiree group 60-Plus is adding to the GOP's effort to expand the map, dropping a $4.1 million ad buy in Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Florida.
The buy features two ads: one featuring a World War II veteran worried about wasteful spending and the other featuring singer Pat Boone attacking Obama's cuts to Medicare.
Multiple GOP groups are now funding ads in Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Michigan, which lean blue but which Republicans hope to make competitive in the face of tough Electoral College odds.
Fixbits:
The total amount set to be spent on this election: $6 billion.
A new Pew poll suggests Obama's and Romney's voter contact efforts have been about equal. Washington Post-ABC polling showed very much the same thing earlier this week.
Biden 2016? The vice president jokes that a voter will "vote for me in 2016."
Jeb Bush says Obama's strategy is all about blaming his brother.
The Democratic super PAC American Bridge is spending $30,000 on talking mailers hitting Indiana GOP Senate candidate Richard Mourdock for his comments on rape and pregnancy.
Former Nebraska Republican senator Chuck Hagel will reportedly endorse former Democratic Nebraska senator Bob Kerrey on Thursday. Hagel, who has drifted from his party in recent years, also backed the Democrat in the 2010 Pennsylvania Senate race, then-Rep. Joe Sestak.
An edited report of the investigation into a 2009 boat crash involving Senate candidate Rep. Dennis Rehberg (R-Mont.) has been released.
Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and his Senate campaign are up with an ad featuring Romney talking directly to camera.
Independent Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee has very poor numbers.
Democratic super PACs are targeting Republican House and Senate candidates on stem cell research.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's (I) super PAC spends $1.3 million against Rep. Joe Baca (D-Calif.).
A new ad from Rep. John Tierney's (D-Mass.) opponent, Richard Tisei (R), features a serene view of the beach in Massachusetts and nothing else (besides his campaign logo) for 30 seconds.
Arizona voters will vote on whether to institute a "top two" primary system on Tuesday. Such systems are currently in place in California and Washington state.
Must-reads:
"Head of Crossroads GPS once a McConnell aide, now his political ally" - T.W. Farnam, Washington Post
"What State Polls Suggest About the National Popular Vote" - Nate Silver, New York Times
"Idealism Harder to Find From Young Volunteers" - Jesse McKinley, New York Times
"Some things to watch in the final days" - Dan Balz, Washington Post
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November 1, 2012 Thursday 8:12 PM EST
GOP sees new hope in 3 states
BYLINE: Dan Balz;Jerry Markon;Paul Kane
SECTION: A section; Pg. A01
LENGTH: 1331 words
After a season dominated by talk of Ohio, Virginia and Florida, Campaign 2012 suddenly shifted focus to a new trio of states Wednesday amid a new verbal battle about which candidate is better positioned to win on Tuesday.
The new geographic front in the political war focuses on Pennsylvania, Michigan and Minnesota, three states that have backed Democrats dating back at least to 1988 but which Republicans say are ripe for GOP nominee Mitt Romney in his challenge to President Obama.
Republican super PACs have been advertising in those states for some time, and Romney's campaign has joined in two of them, Pennsylvania and Minnesota, but not Michigan as of Wednesday.
Money spent in unexpected places by the campaigns or their super PACs says little at this point. That's because, unlike in past presidential campaigns, both sides are flush with cash and have extra funds to play with down the stretch.
The fact that Romney's campaign has put some money into ads in Minnesota and now Pennsylvania doesn't say a lot so far, and the fact that his campaign has not put money into ads in Michigan may say more about the campaign's assessment of the electoral map.
Still, Romney advisers said the action in Pennsylvania, Minnesota and Michigan showed that Republicans are expanding the electoral map and have more options to get to 270 electoral votes.
"I think we're in a great position to win," Romney senior adviser Russ Schriefer told reporters during a conference call, citing Republican enthusiasm and the fact that the president is not above 50 percent in recent polls of those states. "Can we win all of them? Probably not," he added. "Can we win some of them? I think probably so."
Confidence in Obama camp
In response, Obama's campaign has thrown ads on television in all three states but advisers said the decision was made out of prudence, not concern. They insisted that the fact that Romney appears to be probing those states is a sign of weakness, not strength, because he is roadblocked in the true battlegrounds in his bid for 270 electoral votes.
Obama's chief strategist, David Axelrod, went so far as to promise on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" that he would shave off his mustache if Obama lost any of the three states. He later said, "I'm very confident that I'll still have this mustache on November 8th. We're going to win those states. So, the bottom line on all this is that this professed momentum of the Romney campaign is really 'faux-mentum.' "
Another Obama adviser, speaking on the condition of anonymity to be candid about strategy, said that earlier in the campaign, Obama might have waited to see whether GOP ad buys in these states were having an effect. But, he said, with just days remaining in the election, the campaign will take nothing for granted.
Polls have tightened in Pennsylvania and Michigan. Republicans cite that as evidence that the momentum has shifted toward Romney and that the challenger is in a position to overtake the incumbent in states that once appeared off the boards. But with national polls showing a dead heat, as most do right now, it's expected that states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan and even Minnesota will be relatively close contests.
In Pennsylvania, pollsters and political strategists not affiliated with either presidential campaign suggested that the race was close but that Obama had a clear lead. There's bipartisan agreement that the race has narrowed because the president has grown more unpopular in the southwestern portion of the state, in part because he has been attacked as being anti-coal.
Christopher Nicholas, a former GOP consultant who is now political director for the Pennsylvania Business Council, said of Romney: "He's doing less poorly in Philadelphia suburbs than a basic Republican has, and the president is collapsing in the southwest."
"The lead here is four or five [percentage points], and I don't think one week of TV is going to alter that," said former governor Edward G. Rendell (D). He also indicated that Obama has a significantly larger get-out-the-vote operation than Romney does.
Rich Beeson, Romney's political director, countered by telling reporters that Romney's ground operation is "incredibly strong" in Pennsylvania and has been in place "since day one" of the campaign.
Long shot in Minnesota
Minnesota would seem to be a reach for Romney: It hasn't voted Republican since 1972, making it the state with the longest streak of voting for Democratic presidential candidates. But it has elected two Republican governors and an independent over the past two decades and while the current governor, Mark Dayton, is a Democrat, Republicans control the legislature.
Romney, however, has had scant presence in the state, leading analysts to question whether this is all a head fake by the GOP. "Romney has absolutely no ground game [in Minnesota]," said one outside Romney adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to be candid in assessing the race. "I can't imagine it's real."
Others familiar with Minnesota politics, on both sides of the aisle, said that while Romney remains slightly behind in the state, the race is tighter, making it a smart move for the Republican candidate to invest some of his extensive resources there.
They pointed to a recent Minneapolis Star-Tribune poll conducted by Mason-Dixon Polling and Research that showed Obama ahead by only three points, within the margin of error, and said Romney is doing well among the independent voters who tend to decide elections in Minnesota.
Michigan may be the most difficult of the three for Romney because of his opposition to Obama's bailout of the automobile industry. The bailout has proven to be an obstacle to Romney in Ohio and could be an even bigger factor in Michigan.
Mark Brewer, the Democratic Party chairman in Michigan, said that while Democrats have prepared for a potentially close election, "Michigan's not in play . . . We didn't expect the president to win by 17 points like he did in 2008. That was a once-in-a-lifetime election."
Matt Frendewey, communications director for the Michigan Republican Party, said Democratic support is "very underwhelming" and that Republicans have the infrastructure in place to turn out their voters. He added, however, that local Republicans "would love a visit" by Romney.
Until four years ago, Michigan and Pennsylvania were considered true battlegrounds, even though Democrats had won them consistently. Obama changed that with big victories in both, which may be one reason Republicans have been reluctant to make a more serious play for them.
In the past three elections, Democratic nominees have gotten a higher percentage of the vote in those states than nationally. But if the national polls are showing a dead heat, as most of them do right now, it's expected that such states as Pennsylvania, Michigan and even Minnesota will show relatively closer contests than four years ago.
That doesn't mean the balance has shifted to Romney in those states, which is why Romney advisers stopped short of predicting victory. It only means that if the national numbers show the race essentially tied or with one candidate ahead by a point, these states aren't going to show the president ahead by seven or eight or nine points. If Romney were to win a big victory in the popular vote, he could carry one or more of these states.
Instead of watching the advertising dollars, a more telling indicator of what states are in play is where the candidates spend their time in the final days. Romney's campaign announced a big rally in Ohio Friday night, which will feature a huge cast of elected officials from around the country. They will then fan out in groups across 11 states, including Pennsylvania and Michigan but not, according to the Romney release, Minnesota. Romney's schedule for Saturday through Monday has not been released.
balzd@washpost.com
kanep@washpost.com
markonj@washpost.com
Felicia Sonmez contributed to this report.
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November 1, 2012 Thursday 8:12 PM EST
Romney eyes the decideds in Ohio
BYLINE: Rosalind S. Helderman
SECTION: A section; Pg. A03
LENGTH: 1046 words
PERRYSBURG, Ohio - For more than 35 years, Earl Danforth worked as a tool engineer at a GM plant in Toledo, the kind of plant the Obama administration's auto bailout is supposed to have rescued.
But Danforth may be exactly the kind of voter targeted by a controversial anti-auto-bailout ad from Mitt Romney running on radio and television in the northwest corner of this battleground state.
It's not that Danforth's undecided. ("As far as I'm concerned, Obama's nothing but a liar, a cheater," he said.) It's that Danforth hasn't voted yet. And that makes him a prized target for Romney in a state where public polls show the GOP nominee is likely to lose among voters who cast their ballots before Election Day. Romney will need every supporter like Danforth to head to the polls Tuesday to make up the difference.
So in an area heavily reliant on the auto business, and where Republicans may be tired of hearing that President Obama saved the industry, the ads could provide one last bit of encouragement to Romney supporters such as Danforth to make it out next week.
"I see this more as a turnout game than a persuasion ad," said Patrick Haney, a political science professor at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. "I take it as an indication that they believe they're behind. . . . So they might as well be a little riskier and on the edge."
That catch-up urgency may explain why Romney has undertaken a potentially risky strategy with the ads, which indicate that General Motors and Chrysler are expanding in China and may leave some Ohioans with the impression that U.S. jobs, including at Toledo-based Jeep, are moving there. Democrats have attacked the ads as untrue, and independent analysts, including The Washington Post's Fact Checker, have criticized them as, at the least, misleading.
Romney aides say they are confident their candidate has momentum and will win Ohio. They say the wording of the ads is accurate and provides important context on an issue Obama has run on for months.
But the potential peril of the ads for Romney was made clear Tuesday, when top executives at Chrysler and GM took the rare move of publicly weighing in. Chrysler chief executive Sergio Marchionne sent his employees an e-mail saying that Jeep will remain in the United States and that it is "inaccurate to suggest anything different."
A top GM spokesman said that the campaign had entered "some parallel universe" and that only "politics at its cynical worst" would undercut the company's record of U.S. job creation.
That could hurt Romney not just in Ohio, where one in eight jobs is linked to the auto industry, but also in Michigan, where Romney has been trying to make inroads.
Democrats have pounced on the corporate critique of Romney, who has run as a friend of business.
In Florida on Wednesday, Vice President Biden offered Democrats' harshest response yet to the ads, calling them "scurrilous" and "flagrantly dishonest," an attempt to falsely convince workers that they might lose their jobs.
"They're trying to scare the living devil out of a group of people who have been hurt so badly over the last - the previous four years before we came to office," he said in Sarasota. "What a cynical, cynical thing to do."
Republicans insist the ads are correct. As asserted in the ads, GM has added jobs in China and Chrysler is considering new Jeep production there.
And while Democrats have slammed Romney for advocating that U.S. car companies go bankrupt in a November 2008 New York Times column, GM and Chrysler did end up entering a managed bankruptcy, albeit as part of a deal to receive government assistance that Romney opposed.
"American taxpayers are on track to lose $25 billion as a result of President Obama's handling of the auto bailout, and GM and Chrysler are expanding their production overseas," Republican vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan said in a statement in response to Biden on Wednesday.
"These are facts that voters deserve to know as they listen to the claims President Obama and his campaign are making," Ryan said. "President Obama has chosen not to run on the facts of his record, but he can't run from them."
Danforth explained why he, like Romney, opposed government aid for GM. "It's not that they wouldn't have gone through bankruptcy, because they would have," he said. "But they would have come out better and stronger and we would not have owed billions."
He added: "I saw an article where GM now, they're embracing China. China's going to be the headquarters of GM. That disturbed the heck out of me."
GM has no plans to move its Detroit-based headquarters to China - but the fear that iconic American companies will move to China is particularly acute in Ohio, which has been hit hard by manufacturing job losses.
Romney played on that fear in a rally last week in Defiance, Ohio - a deeply conservative rural town in which the largest employer is a GM plant. He told the crowd that he had read a news article indicating that "one of the great manufacturers in this state, Jeep, now owned by the Italians, is thinking of moving all production to China."
Chrysler, which manufacturers Jeep vehicles, responded that it is considering opening a plant in China to build Jeeps for the Asian market but has no intention of moving jobs from a Toledo plant, which is being renovated and is adding jobs.
A television ad airing in Toledo says simply that Jeep is looking at hiring in China. A companion radio ad hits GM as well, noting that the company has cut U.S. jobs and is now expanding in China.
"Barack Obama says he saved the auto industry. But for who? Ohio or China?" a narrator says in the radio ad.
Romney aides said again Wednesday that they believe they have momentum in a very tight Ohio contest.
They are wagering that the ads will not lose them votes, even as Democrats use them to energize their own supporters. In this area, a number of voters said they were upset by the spots.
"I hate it. It's horrible. It's a lie," said one such voter, Bowling Green State University professor Pam Bechtel, 56. "I'm so tired of living in Ohio, in a targeted state, where we just get bombarded with this stuff."
But, like Danforth, she's not undecided, either. She has already cast an early ballot, for Obama.
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November 1, 2012 Thursday 8:12 PM EST
As Obama tours storm damage, Romney carefully steps back onto trail
BYLINE: Philip Rucker
SECTION: A section; Pg. A05
LENGTH: 699 words
CORAL GABLES, Fla. - The presidential campaign picked up where it left off before Hurricane Sandy roared ashore, as the bitter, leave-no-attack-unsaid contest steamed ahead Wednesday with less than a week until Election Day.
President Obama spent the day touring the storm-battered New Jersey coastline, and his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, carefully avoided attacking him by name as he stepped gingerly back onto the campaign trail.
But their surrogates held little back as they lashed out at the other side in search of any advantage in the tight race.
In Sarasota, Fla., Vice President Biden admonished Romney for a deceptive advertisement in Ohio suggesting that Jeep would move manufacturing jobs to China. Biden called the ad "scurrilous" and "one of the most flagrantly dishonest ads I can ever remember in my political career" - which spans four decades.
At an event 200 miles away in Coral Gables, former Florida governor Jeb Bush said while introducing Romney that Obama is so divisive, he is incapable of bringing Washington together to solve problems.
"His entire strategy is to blame others - starting with my brother, of course," said Bush, a younger brother of former president George W. Bush.
In an even more stinging rebuke at the same Romney event, Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) asserted, falsely, that Obama had traveled to Egypt "to apologize" and to tell the world on behalf of the United States that "we are so sorry for the sacrifices of the Americans for generations."
Diaz-Balart, one of three Cuban American leaders to address Romney's South Florida rally, later charged that Obama is ignoring questions about September's deadly attack on a U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi.
"In Libya, they murder our ambassador, kill three other brave Americans, and the president is nowhere to be found to answer what happened," Diaz-Balart said.
The verbal assault came despite a pledge from Romney adviser Kevin Madden that the campaign would "strike a positive tone" on Wednesday because relief efforts were underway across the Eastern Seaboard.
The mixed messages from both campaigns underscored the tricky politics of the moment - how simultaneously to acknowledge the suffering caused by Hurricane Sandy and to press ahead in the closing days of a hard-fought campaign.
The back-and-forth is likely to return to full force Thursday, when Obama rejoins the campaign trail with stops in Wisconsin, Nevada and Colorado. Romney has three rallies scheduled across Virginia: in Roanoke, the Richmond area and Virginia Beach.
On Wednesday, Romney opened his rallies with a plea for donations to support storm victims and a call for national unity. He also stripped from his remarks the harsh attacks on the president that had become staples of his stump speech.
Instead, Romney spoke of the nation coming together as "we're going through trauma in a major part of the country." And he called on Americans to come together on Nov. 7, the day after the election. Until then, he said, both candidates would be talking about their differences.
At a morning rally in Tampa, Romney tried to energize his supporters by promising "real change." He laid out his vision for the country and an economic agenda that includes overhauling the tax code and loosening government regulations - a sharp contrast with the president's record.
"I believe that this is the year for us to take a different course. I will bring real change and real reform and a presidency that brings us together," Romney said. "Now, I don't just talk about change; I actually have a plan to execute change and to make it happen."
He stressed his promise to work across the aisle with Democrats and govern in a bipartisan fashion.
Meaningful changes to the economy, he said, will require "something that Washington talks about but hasn't done in a long, long time, and that is truly reach across the aisle and find good Democrats and good Republicans that will come together and find common ground and work in the interest of the American people, not just in the interest of politics."
Even then, amid Romney's talk of bipartisan harmony, a supporter in the crowd yelled, "Fire Obama!"
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November 1, 2012 Thursday 8:12 PM EST
Campaigns still have money to burn
BYLINE: Dan Eggen
SECTION: A section; Pg. A19
LENGTH: 714 words
The two presidential candidates said they had nearly $300 million in the bank for the final leg of the campaign, raising a simple question: What in the world are they going to do with all that money?
The answer, of course, is that they are going to spend it - at a rate never seen before in the annals of American politics.
In previous presidential contests, candidates such as Democrat John Kerry or Republican Bob Dole often began pulling back from broad swaths of the country near the end of the race to focus their dwindling resources on the most contested states. Most candidates since the 1970s also have been constrained by voluntary public financing limits that kept a lid on how much money they had available.
President Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney, by contrast, have money to burn and have shown every sign of setting fire to it.
The Romney campaign and the Republican National Committee had a combined reserve of $169 million in cash on hand as of Oct. 17, according to the last full disclosure report before the Nov. 6 election. The Obama campaign and the Democratic National Committee together had $125 million.
That money would allow the two campaigns to spend about $16 million a day through the election, and that doesn't count the millions more that each side has continued to raise since the mid-October tally.
The totals also don't include the well-funded super PACs and nonprofit groups spending big on behalf of the two candidates, particularly Romney.
Restore Our Future, a pro-Romney super PAC, spent about $31 million a week on ads in early October and has booked another $40 million in ads through Election Day.
Some of the money on the campaign side will be used for get-out-the-vote efforts, particularly in key swing states, not to mention costs for a blizzard of candidate travel, rallies and other last-ditch events. One complication that emerged this week was Hurricane Sandy, which stalled campaigning and fundraising by both candidates as it battered the Eastern Seaboard.
But the bulk of the cash during the final stretch goes to the most expensive line item in any campaign's budget: broadcast advertising. Even after months of saturation-level advertising in Ohio, Virginia, Florida and other key states, both sides further escalated their spending in the hope of persuading undecided independents or moving more of their avid supporters to the polls.
"Most of it will go to TV," Republican strategist Mark McKinnon said about campaign spending in the homestretch. "And most of it will be wasted."
The campaigns and outside groups, who already aired more than $50 million per week in ads in early October, have increased expenditures further in the final days, particularly in states such as Ohio, Florida and Wisconsin. The Republicans have outpaced the Democrats in ad spending for weeks, but studies show Obama has been able to keep pace in the number of commercials aired by taking advantage of discounts and choosing cheaper time slots.
Both campaigns also have sent signals this week that they intend to throw resources at states that seem like long shots.
The two camps each made modest ad purchases in Minnesota, which is considered a likely Obama win but has shown tighter polling recently. Vice President Biden even added Minnesota to his travel itinerary.
Restore Our Future also made a $2.1 million purchase in Pennsylvania, a state that has been written off for months as a near-certain Obama victory. The Republican super PAC has spent more than $5 million in the Keystone State this cycle, and has also spent millions in blue-leaning Michigan.
The Obama campaign scoffed at the purchase as a sign of GOP desperation, but also said it would counter with a Pennsylvania buy of its own.
Political strategists say the reason for such behavior is simple: Campaigns and their surrogates strive to spend every dime by Election Day in the hope that something will give them an edge. The Obama campaign, which has raised a bit more than $1 billion with the DNC, even took out a $15 million credit line this fall, just in case it needs a little extra.
"We're not taking anything for granted," Obama adviser David Axelrod told reporters earlier this week.
eggend@washpost.com
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November 1, 2012 Thursday 8:09 PM EST
Why isn't Oregon a slam dunk for President Obama?
BYLINE: Sean Sullivan
LENGTH: 933 words
In typical discussions about the most competitive swing states in the presidential election, Oregon and its seven electoral votes are almost never part of the conversation. While President Obama is likely to carry the Oregon next week, the state is more competitive than most people probably think. But, why?
Some of it is just business as usual in a state in which recent presidential elections have been surprisingly competitive. Another part of it has to do with the state's stark geographic divisions and libertarian streak.
Let's start with the current state of play in Oregon.
An Oregonian newspaper poll released this week showed Obama leading Mitt Romney by just six points, 47 percent to 41 percent. The survey was in line with the Real Clear Politics average of recent polling of the race in Oregon, which also showed Obama up by six.
To better understand why Oregon is more competitive than it may seem at first blush, it's useful to look at the way the state has voted in recent elections. The Democratic presidential nominee has carried the state during the last six presidential elections. But that only tells part of the story.
While Obama won there by 17 points in 2008, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) defeated George W. Bush by just four points in 2004. In 2000, Bush came even closer to winning, with Democrat Al Gore outpacing him by less than one percentage point. What's more, in 2010, Republican Chris Dudley came within two points of winning the governor's race.
It's worth noting that in 2000, Bush's success might have been a bit overstated considering the that Green Party nominee Ralph Nader carried about five percent of the vote - much of which would likely have otherwise gone to Gore.
"I wouldn't want to overstate the swing nature of Oregon in presidential politics," cautioned Dan Lavey, a strategist who advised Dudley's campaign and once served as an adviser to former senator Gordon Smith (R-Ore.).
Obama's wide margin of victory in 2008 might also have overstated the strength of the Democratic brand in Oregon. "His margin was inflated by the fact that the Republicans' brand was horrifically in the toilet," said non-partisan pollster and political analyst Tim Hibbits.
Lavey chalked up the closeness of the current presidential contest in Oregon to dearth of on-the-ground campaigning.
"There really hasn't been much of a campaign here, and so the natural blue drift that would occur - the energizing of Democrats - has not occurred because there has been no campaign here," he said.
The West Coast, populous as it is, rarely gets much attention in presidential campaigns. (We know of what we speak as a native of Washington State.) Because of its consistent Democratic tilt, candidates spend hardly any time there. (The last time any of the three states went for the Republican nominee was 1988, when California voted for George H.W. Bush.) And when they do make the trip, it's often for fundraisers in Southern California or Silicon Valley.
But lumping Oregon in with California and Washington, politically speaking, is an oversimplification; the Real Clear Politics average of polls in California shows Obama leading by almost 14 points while in Washington his lead is about 12 points.
What is it about Oregon itself that makes it somewhat hospitable to Republicans?
One possible reason: The economy is not doing so great, which could explain why Romney's call for a change of course is resonating there, to an extent. Oregon's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in September was 8.7 percent - higher than the national average.
But unemployment was even higher in California (10.2 percent) and about the same in Washington (8.5 percent). So there must be something more about Oregon.
There is. On its surface, the state may look like a purely a left-leaning part of the country. Portland's reputation as a cyclist and public transportation-friendly city with environmentally-friendly inhabitants is well-established. It's also among the least religious states, polling shows.
The eastern and southern parts of the state, though, are much more rural and conservative than the western portion, where Portland is located. And there is a decided independent/libertarian undercurrent in Oregon that has led some GOP strategists to express optimism about its future in the state.
Here's what GOP strategist Karl Rove said about the state at a breakfast in Tampa during the Republican National Convention:
"You also have something going out there, sort of this libertarian, Western, iconoclastic I'm-not-going-to-be-put-in-a-box. But something's going on in Oregon. They've got a 30-30 statehouse. And Republicans came within 15,000 votes of winning the governorship and yet it's the most unchurched state in the union. So it's a weird conglomeration. Oregon might be next."
Oregon voters have demonstrated a tendency to want the government out of their lives on social issues and fiscal matters, Hibbits noted. "It's kind of a weird mix of truly 'leave me alone,'" he said.
Oregon is a vote-by-mail state, where the deadline to postmark ballots arrives on Friday in the Portland area. (After that, voters can hand-deliver them). Forty-four percent of the ballots returned so far are from registered Democrats, while 35 percent have come from registered Republicans.
For now, Oregon appears primed to remain in Democratic hands for yet another election. Neither Obama nor Romney is hitting the TV airwaves with new ad buys there, suggesting neither side really believes state is in play late in the race. But the Democratic Party's grasp over Oregon isn't as firm as it might seem.
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Election 2012
November 1, 2012 Thursday 6:13 PM EST
Romney ad touts newspapers
BYLINE: Rachel Weiner
LENGTH: 85 words
Mitt Romney, "Iowa Newspapers Agree"
What it says: 'Mitt Romney offers a fresh economic vision,' with those words The Des Moines Register makes history, endorsing Mitt Romney for president. ... Mitt Romney's earned the support of every major newspaper in Iowa."
What it means: Like President Obama's ad touting the endorsement of former secretary of state Colin Powell, this spot is aimed at burnishing Romney's bipartisan appeal.
Who will see it: Iowa.
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Election 2012
November 1, 2012 Thursday 6:10 PM EST
New Obama ad: 'Cynical'
BYLINE: Rachel Weiner
LENGTH: 104 words
Obama for America, "Cynical"
What it says: "GM calls Romney's ads 'politics at its cynical worst,' and Chrysler's CEO said it's simply not true. We know the truth, Mitt." The ad ends, as many recent Obama ads do, with a clip of Mitt Romney saying, "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt."
What it means: Romney is aiming to turn out his base with risky ads that suggest that American auto jobs are moving to China. Obama's campaign is now using the misleading spots - and the reaction from Chrysler and GM - to rile up auto industry workers.
Who will see it: Michigan and Ohio.
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Election 2012
November 1, 2012 Thursday 4:33 PM EST
Romney ad ties Obama to Castro, Chavez, Che
BYLINE: Rachel Weiner
LENGTH: 247 words
A Spanish-language ad from Mitt Romney's campaign ties President Obama to three Latin American figures hated in Florida's Cuban population: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, former Cuban leader Fidel Castro and communist revolutionary Che Guevara.
The ad has not been released by the campaign; the Miami Herald caught it on Spanish-language TV in Miami, where the paper says it is running frequently. (Update: It is now on Romney's YouTube page.)
The ad features clips of Chavez and Mariela Castro (Fidel Castro's niece) saying they would vote for Obama if they could. The narrator adds that "to top it off, Obama's Environmental Protection Agency sent e-mails for Hispanic Heritage month with a photo of Che Guevara."
More on that e-mail here; the EPA says it was sent by a staffer without approval. Both Chavez and Castro did say they would vote for Obama. Polls give Romney a slight edge in Florida. He needs strong support from Cuban Americans to win.
The full translation, courtesy of the Herald:
NARRATOR: Who supports Barack Obama?
CHAVEZ: "If I were American, I'd vote for Obama."
NARRATOR: Raúl Castro's daughter, Mariela Castro, would vote for Obama.
CASTRO: "I would vote for President Obama."
NARRATOR: And to top it off, Obama's Environmental Protection Agency sent e-mails for Hispanic Heritage month with a photo of Che Guevara.
CHAVEZ: "If Obama were from Barlovento (a Venezuelan town), he'd vote for Chávez."
ROMNEY: I'm Mitt Romney, and I approve this message.
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Election 2012
November 1, 2012 Thursday 3:34 PM EST
Dems outspent 6-to-1 in Pa.
BYLINE: Rachel Weiner
LENGTH: 135 words
PoliticsPa crunches the numbers and finds that Republicans are spending $8.8 million in Pennsylvania in the final week of the campaign, while President Obama is spending $1.6 million.
But that doesn't mean there are six times as many GOP ads. Candidates qualify for discounted ad rates and can pay much less than outside groups for the same space. Most of the Republican money comes from outside groups; Romney himself has spent $930,000.
Republicans are bullish on Pennsylvania, Michigan and Minnesota. Obama advisers have put up ads in all three states but say they're acting out of prudence, not concern.
Quinnipiac stopped polling Pennsylvania a while back. "We haven't bothered with Pennsylvania in these last polls," polling director Maurice Carroll told Slate's David Weigel. "It's in the bag for Obama."
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November 1, 2012 Thursday 3:29 PM EST
Romney wants no 'Secretary of Business';
Mitt Romney is pushing the comment as a sign that the president can't handle business policy on his own.
BYLINE: Rachel Weiner
LENGTH: 99 words
Mitt Romney, "Secretary of Business"
What it says: "Secretary of Business? His solution to everything is to add another bureaucrat. Why not have a president who actually understands business?"
What it means: In an MSNBC interview this week, President Obama floated the idea of consolidating business and trade-related agencies under a "Secretary of Business." Mitt Romney is pushing the comment as a sign that the president can't handle business policy on his own.
Who will see it: Romney's campaign does not release details of ad buys.
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The Washington Post
November 1, 2012 Thursday
Met 2 Edition
GOP sees new hope in 3 states
BYLINE: Dan Balz;Jerry Markon;Paul Kane
SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A01
LENGTH: 1324 words
After a season dominated by talk of Ohio, Virginia and Florida, Campaign 2012 suddenly shifted focus to a new trio of states Wednesday amid a new verbal battle about which candidate is better positioned to win on Tuesday.
The new geographic front in the political war focuses on Pennsylvania, Michigan and Minnesota, three states that have backed Democrats dating back at least to 1988 but which Republicans say are ripe for GOP nominee Mitt Romney in his challenge to President Obama.
Republican super PACs have been advertising in those states for some time, and Romney's campaign has joined in two of them, Pennsylvania and Minnesota, but not Michigan as of Wednesday.
Money spent in unexpected places by the campaigns or their super PACs says little at this point. That's because, unlike in past presidential campaigns, both sides are flush with cash and have extra funds to play with down the stretch.
The fact that Romney's campaign has put some money into ads in Minnesota and now Pennsylvania doesn't say a lot so far, and the fact that his campaign has not put money into ads in Michigan may say more about the campaign's assessment of the electoral map.
Still, Romney advisers said the action in Pennsylvania, Minnesota and Michigan showed that Republicans are expanding the electoral map and have more options to get to 270 electoral votes.
"I think we're in a great position to win," Romney senior adviser Russ Schriefer told reporters during a conference call, citing Republican enthusiasm and the fact that the president is not above 50 percent in recent polls of those states. "Can we win all of them? Probably not," he added. "Can we win some of them? I think probably so."
Confidence in Obama camp
In response, Obama's campaign has thrown ads on television in all three states but advisers said the decision was made out of prudence, not concern. They insisted that the fact that Romney appears to be probing those states is a sign of weakness, not strength, because he is roadblocked in the true battlegrounds in his bid for 270 electoral votes.
Obama's chief strategist, David Axelrod, went so far as to promise on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" that he would shave off his mustache if Obama lost any of the three states. He later said, "I'm very confident that I'll still have this mustache on November 8th. We're going to win those states. So, the bottom line on all this is that this professed momentum of the Romney campaign is really 'faux-mentum.' "
Another Obama adviser, speaking on the condition of anonymity to be candid about strategy, said that earlier in the campaign, Obama might have waited to see whether GOP ad buys in these states were having an effect. But, he said, with just days remaining in the election, the campaign will take nothing for granted.
Polls have tightened in Pennsylvania and Michigan. Republicans cite that as evidence that the momentum has shifted toward Romney and that the challenger is in a position to overtake the incumbent in states that once appeared off the boards. But with national polls showing a dead heat, as most do right now, it's expected that states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan and even Minnesota will be relatively close contests.
In Pennsylvania, pollsters and political strategists not affiliated with either presidential campaign suggested that the race was close but that Obama had a clear lead. There's bipartisan agreement that the race has narrowed because the president has grown more unpopular in the southwestern portion of the state, in part because he has been attacked as being anti-coal.
Christopher Nicholas, a former GOP consultant who is now political director for the Pennsylvania Business Council, said of Romney: "He's doing less poorly in Philadelphia suburbs than a basic Republican has, and the president is collapsing in the southwest."
"The lead here is four or five [percentage points], and I don't think one week of TV is going to alter that," said former governor Edward G. Rendell (D). He also indicated that Obama has a significantly larger get-out-the-vote operation than Romney does.
Rich Beeson, Romney's political director, countered by telling reporters that Romney's ground operation is "incredibly strong" in Pennsylvania and has been in place "since day one" of the campaign.
Long shot in Minnesota
Minnesota would seem to be a reach for Romney: It hasn't voted Republican since 1972, making it the state with the longest streak of voting for Democratic presidential candidates. But it has elected two Republican governors and an independent over the past two decades and while the current governor, Mark Dayton, is a Democrat, Republicans control the legislature.
Romney, however, has had scant presence in the state, leading analysts to question whether this is all a head fake by the GOP. "Romney has absolutely no ground game [in Minnesota]," said one outside Romney adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to be candid in assessing the race. "I can't imagine it's real."
Others familiar with Minnesota politics, on both sides of the aisle, said that while Romney remains slightly behind in the state, the race is tighter, making it a smart move for the Republican candidate to invest some of his extensive resources there.
They pointed to a recent Minneapolis Star-Tribune poll conducted by Mason-Dixon Polling and Research that showed Obama ahead by only three points, within the margin of error, and said Romney is doing well among the independent voters who tend to decide elections in Minnesota.
Michigan may be the most difficult of the three for Romney because of his opposition to Obama's bailout of the automobile industry. The bailout has proven to be an obstacle to Romney in Ohio and could be an even bigger factor in Michigan.
Mark Brewer, the Democratic Party chairman in Michigan, said that while Democrats have prepared for a potentially close election, "Michigan's not in play . . . We didn't expect the president to win by 17 points like he did in 2008. That was a once-in-a-lifetime election."
Matt Frendewey, communications director for the Michigan Republican Party, said Democratic support is "very underwhelming" and that Republicans have the infrastructure in place to turn out their voters. He added, however, that local Republicans "would love a visit" by Romney.
Until four years ago, Michigan and Pennsylvania were considered true battlegrounds, even though Democrats had won them consistently. Obama changed that with big victories in both, which may be one reason Republicans have been reluctant to make a more serious play for them.
In the past three elections, Democratic nominees have gotten a higher percentage of the vote in those states than nationally. But if the national polls are showing a dead heat, as most of them do right now, it's expected that such states as Pennsylvania, Michigan and even Minnesota will show relatively closer contests than four years ago.
That doesn't mean the balance has shifted to Romney in those states, which is why Romney advisers stopped short of predicting victory. It only means that if the national numbers show the race essentially tied or with one candidate ahead by a point, these states aren't going to show the president ahead by seven or eight or nine points. If Romney were to win a big victory in the popular vote, he could carry one or more of these states.
Instead of watching the advertising dollars, a more telling indicator of what states are in play is where the candidates spend their time in the final days. Romney's campaign announced a big rally in Ohio Friday night, which will feature a huge cast of elected officials from around the country. They will then fan out in groups across 11 states, including Pennsylvania and Michigan but not, according to the Romney release, Minnesota. Romney's schedule for Saturday through Monday has not been released.
balzd@washpost.com
kanep@washpost.com
markonj@washpost.com
Felicia Sonmez contributed to this report.
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November 1, 2012 Thursday
Suburban Edition
Romney eyes the decideds in Ohio
BYLINE: Rosalind S. Helderman
SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A03
LENGTH: 1042 words
DATELINE: PERRYSBURG, OHIO
PERRYSBURG, Ohio - For more than 35 years, Earl Danforth worked as a tool engineer at a GM plant in Toledo, the kind of plant the Obama administration's auto bailout is supposed to have rescued.
But Danforth may be exactly the kind of voter targeted by a controversial anti-auto-bailout ad from Mitt Romney running on radio and television in the northwest corner of this battleground state.
It's not that Danforth's undecided. ("As far as I'm concerned, Obama's nothing but a liar, a cheater," he said.) It's that Danforth hasn't voted yet. And that makes him a prized target for Romney in a state where public polls show the GOP nominee is likely to lose among voters who cast their ballots before Election Day. Romney will need every supporter like Danforth to head to the polls Tuesday to make up the difference.
So in an area heavily reliant on the auto business, and where Republicans may be tired of hearing that President Obama saved the industry, the ads could provide one last bit of encouragement to Romney supporters such as Danforth to make it out next week.
"I see this more as a turnout game than a persuasion ad," said Patrick Haney, a political science professor at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. "I take it as an indication that they believe they're behind. . . . So they might as well be a little riskier and on the edge."
That catch-up urgency may explain why Romney has undertaken a potentially risky strategy with the ads, which indicate that General Motors and Chrysler are expanding in China and may leave some Ohioans with the impression that U.S. jobs, including at Toledo-based Jeep, are moving there. Democrats have attacked the ads as untrue, and independent analysts, including The Washington Post's Fact Checker, have criticized them as, at the least, misleading.
Romney aides say they are confident their candidate has momentum and will win Ohio. They say the wording of the ads is accurate and provides important context on an issue Obama has run on for months.
But the potential peril of the ads for Romney was made clear Tuesday, when top executives at Chrysler and GM took the rare move of publicly weighing in. Chrysler chief executive Sergio Marchionne sent his employees an e-mail saying that Jeep will remain in the United States and that it is "inaccurate to suggest anything different."
A top GM spokesman said that the campaign had entered "some parallel universe" and that only "politics at its cynical worst" would undercut the company's record of U.S. job creation.
That could hurt Romney not just in Ohio, where one in eight jobs is linked to the auto industry, but also in Michigan, where Romney has been trying to make inroads.
Democrats have pounced on the corporate critique of Romney, who has run as a friend of business.
In Florida on Wednesday, Vice President Biden offered Democrats' harshest response yet to the ads, calling them "scurrilous" and "flagrantly dishonest," an attempt to falsely convince workers that they might lose their jobs.
"They're trying to scare the living devil out of a group of people who have been hurt so badly over the last - the previous four years before we came to office," he said in Sarasota. "What a cynical, cynical thing to do."
Republicans insist the ads are correct. As asserted in the ads, GM has added jobs in China and Chrysler is considering new Jeep production there.
And while Democrats have slammed Romney for advocating that U.S. car companies go bankrupt in a November 2008 New York Times column, GM and Chrysler did end up entering a managed bankruptcy, albeit as part of a deal to receive government assistance that Romney opposed.
"American taxpayers are on track to lose $25 billion as a result of President Obama's handling of the auto bailout, and GM and Chrysler are expanding their production overseas," Republican vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan said in a statement in response to Biden on Wednesday.
"These are facts that voters deserve to know as they listen to the claims President Obama and his campaign are making," Ryan said. "President Obama has chosen not to run on the facts of his record, but he can't run from them."
Danforth explained why he, like Romney, opposed government aid for GM. "It's not that they wouldn't have gone through bankruptcy, because they would have," he said. "But they would have come out better and stronger and we would not have owed billions."
He added: "I saw an article where GM now, they're embracing China. China's going to be the headquarters of GM. That disturbed the heck out of me."
GM has no plans to move its Detroit-based headquarters to China - but the fear that iconic American companies will move to China is particularly acute in Ohio, which has been hit hard by manufacturing job losses.
Romney played on that fear in a rally last week in Defiance, Ohio - a deeply conservative rural town in which the largest employer is a GM plant. He told the crowd that he had read a news article indicating that "one of the great manufacturers in this state, Jeep, now owned by the Italians, is thinking of moving all production to China."
Chrysler, which manufacturers Jeep vehicles, responded that it is considering opening a plant in China to build Jeeps for the Asian market but has no intention of moving jobs from a Toledo plant, which is being renovated and is adding jobs.
A television ad airing in Toledo says simply that Jeep is looking at hiring in China. A companion radio ad hits GM as well, noting that the company has cut U.S. jobs and is now expanding in China.
"Barack Obama says he saved the auto industry. But for who? Ohio or China?" a narrator says in the radio ad.
Romney aides said again Wednesday that they believe they have momentum in a very tight Ohio contest.
They are wagering that the ads will not lose them votes, even as Democrats use them to energize their own supporters. In this area, a number of voters said they were upset by the spots.
"I hate it. It's horrible. It's a lie," said one such voter, Bowling Green State University professor Pam Bechtel, 56. "I'm so tired of living in Ohio, in a targeted state, where we just get bombarded with this stuff."
But, like Danforth, she's not undecided, either. She has already cast an early ballot, for Obama.
heldermanr@washpost.com
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The Washington Post
November 1, 2012 Thursday
Suburban Edition
As Obama tours storm damage, Romney carefully steps back onto trail
BYLINE: Philip Rucker
SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A05
LENGTH: 694 words
DATELINE: CORAL GABLES, FLA.
CORAL GABLES, Fla. - The presidential campaign picked up where it left off before Hurricane Sandy roared ashore, as the bitter, leave-no-attack-unsaid contest steamed ahead Wednesday with less than a week until Election Day.
President Obama spent the day touring the storm-battered New Jersey coastline, and his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, carefully avoided attacking him by name as he stepped gingerly back onto the campaign trail.
But their surrogates held little back as they lashed out at the other side in search of any advantage in the tight race.
In Sarasota, Fla., Vice President Biden admonished Romney for a deceptive advertisement in Ohio suggesting that Jeep would move manufacturing jobs to China. Biden called the ad "scurrilous" and "one of the most flagrantly dishonest ads I can ever remember in my political career" - which spans four decades.
At an event 200 miles away in Coral Gables, former Florida governor Jeb Bush said while introducing Romney that Obama is so divisive, he is incapable of bringing Washington together to solve problems.
"His entire strategy is to blame others - starting with my brother, of course," said Bush, a younger brother of former president George W. Bush.
In an even more stinging rebuke at the same Romney event, Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) asserted, falsely, that Obama had traveled to Egypt "to apologize" and to tell the world on behalf of the United States that "we are so sorry for the sacrifices of the Americans for generations."
Diaz-Balart, one of three Cuban American leaders to address Romney's South Florida rally, later charged that Obama is ignoring questions about September's deadly attack on a U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi.
"In Libya, they murder our ambassador, kill three other brave Americans, and the president is nowhere to be found to answer what happened," Diaz-Balart said.
The verbal assault came despite a pledge from Romney adviser Kevin Madden that the campaign would "strike a positive tone" on Wednesday because relief efforts were underway across the Eastern Seaboard.
The mixed messages from both campaigns underscored the tricky politics of the moment - how simultaneously to acknowledge the suffering caused by Hurricane Sandy and to press ahead in the closing days of a hard-fought campaign.
The back-and-forth is likely to return to full force Thursday, when Obama rejoins the campaign trail with stops in Wisconsin, Nevada and Colorado. Romney has three rallies scheduled across Virginia: in Roanoke, the Richmond area and Virginia Beach.
On Wednesday, Romney opened his rallies with a plea for donations to support storm victims and a call for national unity. He also stripped from his remarks the harsh attacks on the president that had become staples of his stump speech.
Instead, Romney spoke of the nation coming together as "we're going through trauma in a major part of the country." And he called on Americans to come together on Nov. 7, the day after the election. Until then, he said, both candidates would be talking about their differences.
At a morning rally in Tampa, Romney tried to energize his supporters by promising "real change." He laid out his vision for the country and an economic agenda that includes overhauling the tax code and loosening government regulations - a sharp contrast with the president's record.
"I believe that this is the year for us to take a different course. I will bring real change and real reform and a presidency that brings us together," Romney said. "Now, I don't just talk about change; I actually have a plan to execute change and to make it happen."
He stressed his promise to work across the aisle with Democrats and govern in a bipartisan fashion.
Meaningful changes to the economy, he said, will require "something that Washington talks about but hasn't done in a long, long time, and that is truly reach across the aisle and find good Democrats and good Republicans that will come together and find common ground and work in the interest of the American people, not just in the interest of politics."
Even then, amid Romney's talk of bipartisan harmony, a supporter in the crowd yelled, "Fire Obama!"
ruckerp@washpost.com
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The Washington Post
November 1, 2012 Thursday
Suburban Edition
Campaigns still have money to burn
BYLINE: Dan Eggen
SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A19
LENGTH: 714 words
The two presidential candidates said they had nearly $300 million in the bank for the final leg of the campaign, raising a simple question: What in the world are they going to do with all that money?
The answer, of course, is that they are going to spend it - at a rate never seen before in the annals of American politics.
In previous presidential contests, candidates such as Democrat John Kerry or Republican Bob Dole often began pulling back from broad swaths of the country near the end of the race to focus their dwindling resources on the most contested states. Most candidates since the 1970s also have been constrained by voluntary public financing limits that kept a lid on how much money they had available.
President Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney, by contrast, have money to burn and have shown every sign of setting fire to it.
The Romney campaign and the Republican National Committee had a combined reserve of $169 million in cash on hand as of Oct. 17, according to the last full disclosure report before the Nov. 6 election. The Obama campaign and the Democratic National Committee together had $125 million.
That money would allow the two campaigns to spend about $16 million a day through the election, and that doesn't count the millions more that each side has continued to raise since the mid-October tally.
The totals also don't include the well-funded super PACs and nonprofit groups spending big on behalf of the two candidates, particularly Romney.
Restore Our Future, a pro-Romney super PAC, spent about $31 million a week on ads in early October and has booked another $40 million in ads through Election Day.
Some of the money on the campaign side will be used for get-out-the-vote efforts, particularly in key swing states, not to mention costs for a blizzard of candidate travel, rallies and other last-ditch events. One complication that emerged this week was Hurricane Sandy, which stalled campaigning and fundraising by both candidates as it battered the Eastern Seaboard.
But the bulk of the cash during the final stretch goes to the most expensive line item in any campaign's budget: broadcast advertising. Even after months of saturation-level advertising in Ohio, Virginia, Florida and other key states, both sides further escalated their spending in the hope of persuading undecided independents or moving more of their avid supporters to the polls.
"Most of it will go to TV," Republican strategist Mark McKinnon said about campaign spending in the homestretch. "And most of it will be wasted."
The campaigns and outside groups, who already aired more than $50 million per week in ads in early October, have increased expenditures further in the final days, particularly in states such as Ohio, Florida and Wisconsin. The Republicans have outpaced the Democrats in ad spending for weeks, but studies show Obama has been able to keep pace in the number of commercials aired by taking advantage of discounts and choosing cheaper time slots.
Both campaigns also have sent signals this week that they intend to throw resources at states that seem like long shots.
The two camps each made modest ad purchases in Minnesota, which is considered a likely Obama win but has shown tighter polling recently. Vice President Biden even added Minnesota to his travel itinerary.
Restore Our Future also made a $2.1 million purchase in Pennsylvania, a state that has been written off for months as a near-certain Obama victory. The Republican super PAC has spent more than $5 million in the Keystone State this cycle, and has also spent millions in blue-leaning Michigan.
The Obama campaign scoffed at the purchase as a sign of GOP desperation, but also said it would counter with a Pennsylvania buy of its own.
Political strategists say the reason for such behavior is simple: Campaigns and their surrogates strive to spend every dime by Election Day in the hope that something will give them an edge. The Obama campaign, which has raised a bit more than $1 billion with the DNC, even took out a $15 million credit line this fall, just in case it needs a little extra.
"We're not taking anything for granted," Obama adviser David Axelrod told reporters earlier this week.
eggend@washpost.com
For previous Influence Industry columns, go to washingtonpost.com/fedpage.
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The New York Times
October 31, 2012 Wednesday
Late Edition - Final
2 American Automakers Rebut Claims by Romney
BYLINE: By JIM RUTENBERG and JEREMY W. PETERS; Jim Rutenberg reported from Toledo, and Jeremy W. Peters from New York.
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; Pg. 11
LENGTH: 596 words
TOLEDO, Ohio -- Mitt Romney's latest advertising campaign suggesting that the auto bailout recipients Chrysler and General Motors were shifting jobs to China drew him into a public argument with top executives at both companies, who condemned the advertisements as false on Tuesday.
''The ad is cynical campaign politics at its worst,'' Greg Martin, a spokesman for General Motors, said in an interview late Tuesday. ''We think creating jobs in the U.S. and repatriating profits back in this country should be a source of bipartisan pride.''
General Motors was pulled into the fray on Tuesday after Mr. Romney began running a new radio advertisement in which an announcer says, ''Barack Obama says he saved the auto industry, but for who, Ohio or China?''
It went on to say that General Motors and Chrysler were planning to increase the number of cars they manufacture in China: ''What happened to the promises made to autoworkers in Toledo and throughout Ohio?''
It was a variation on a television ad running here that reports that Chrysler, which produces Jeeps here, is planning to ''return Jeep output to China.''
The spot has been widely criticized for leaving the misleading impression that Chrysler is planning to shift jobs here in Toledo to China. In fact, Chrysler says that it is discussing new plants for sales in China that do not affect American hiring, and that it is adding workers in Toledo. The spot earned a ''Pants on Fire'' designation from the fact-checking site Politifact.
In an e-mail to employees on Tuesday, Chrysler's executive, Sergio Marchionne, said that Jeep's commitment to the United States was unequivocal. ''I feel obliged to unambiguously restate our position: Jeep production will not be moved from the United States to China,'' he wrote. ''It is inaccurate to suggest anything different.''
Mr. Marchionne's response came as the auto bailout took center stage in the fight for Ohio's 18 electoral votes.
The politics of the auto bailout have become a vexing problem for Mr. Romney. He opposed Mr. Obama's approach to what was an $80 billion bailout, and some supporters in the Midwest have questioned his stance that Chrysler and General Motors should have gone through bankruptcies without federal bailout funds. They argued that such financing was not available at what was the height of the financial crisis.
As his campaign increases its focus on winning in this critical state -- where polls have continually given a slight edge to Mr. Obama -- it has sought to undermine the support the bailout is giving Mr. Obama here.
It was unclear whether Mr. Romney's new strategy is advantageous, given the reaction.
The Romney campaign has insisted that its ad merely states the truth: Jeeps are not currently made in China and soon will be, creating jobs there instead of at home. ''It would be better if they expanded production in the U.S. instead of expanding in China,'' said Stuart Stevens, a senior adviser to Mr. Romney.
''That is absolutely bereft of any fundamental understanding of the global automotive industry,'' Mr. Martin said. ''All global manufacturers, whether General Motors, Ford, Chrysler or VW, build historically in the markets in which we sell.''
Mr. Martin said that General Motors had invested $7.3 billion in United States production since 2009 and ''brought nearly 19,000 back to work.''
Mr. Stevens said that he agreed with Mr. Martin's statement that General Motors' recovery should be a source of bipartisan pride, but that Mr. Romney's proposed policies would make it easier for companies like G.M. to produce cars for export.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/31/us/politics/2-american-automakers-rebut-claims-by-romney.html
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The New York Times
October 31, 2012 Wednesday
Late Edition - Final
The 'I' of the Storm
BYLINE: By MAUREEN DOWD
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Editorial Desk; OP-ED COLUMNIST; Pg. 23
LENGTH: 830 words
WASHINGTON
The dramatic homestretch ad for President Obama, running on every network and in all media markets, is a home run, devastating for Mitt Romney.
And, best of all, the president didn't have to pay for it, or even say, ''I approve this message.'' It was a total gift -- and from a Republican and top Romney surrogate.
Gov. Chris Christie, the fleece-wearing, order-barking Neptune of the Jersey Shore, was all over TV Tuesday, effusively praising the president for his luminous leadership on Hurricane Sandy, the same president he mocked last week at a Romney rally in Virginia as a naif groping to find ''the light switch of leadership.''
As Romney roams the Midwest and Florida struggling to stay relevant, miming coordinating storm response with G.O.P. governors and collecting canned goods to send East, his fair-weather pal Christie failed to give Mittens any disaster relief.
On ABC, CBS and NBC, Christie hailed Obama as ''outstanding.'' On MSNBC, he said the president ''has been all over this,'' and on CNN, he called Obama ''incredibly supportive.'' The big guy even tweeted his thanks to the slender one.
Most astonishing of all, the New Jersey governor went on Fox News and spoke words rarely heard on that network: ''I have to give the president great credit.''
''I spoke to the president three times yesterday,'' Christie gushed. ''He called me for the last time at midnight last night, asking what he could do.''
Christie also extolled FEMA, even though Romney has said it is ''immoral'' to spend money on federal disaster relief when the deficit is so big.
''Fox & Friends'' co-host Steve Doocy must have forgotten Christie's self-regarding keynote speech at Romney's convention, which had more ''I'' than ''he'' in it. Doocy asked Christie if there was ''any possibility that Governor Romney may go to New Jersey to tour some of the damage with you?'' The governor replied dismissively: ''I have no idea, nor am I the least bit concerned or interested,'' adding: ''If you think right now I give a damn about presidential politics, then you don't know me.''
White House officials seemed a bit flummoxed by Christie's bearhug. ''It's unnerving,'' one laughed, noting how odd it is that a Romney big gun might help break the stubborn tie in the electorate in Obama's favor.
They speculate that Christie, who always puts Christie first, has decided that it's better for his presidential ambitions to be a maverick blue-state governor with a Democratic chief executive exiting in 2016 than to have President Romney and Tea-Party Republicans in Congress pulling him over to the extreme right for the next eight years. He also knows he'll need a boatload of federal cash to make his state whole again.
Christie was in full ''Sopranos''-at-the-shore mode in his blue fleece pullover. When Irene hit last year, he yelled at lingering frolickers, ''Get the hell off the beach!'' This time, the governor blistered the Atlantic City mayor for sending what he called ''mixed messages'' on evacuation orders and warned stranded residents: ''We will not be able to come and help you until daylight tomorrow.''
The president is still overcompensating for his first-debate pout, determined not to be a loser. He made a false start and erred on the side of politics, wasting a round-trip to Florida. He wanted to squeeze in one more rally before the storm, so he risked flying to Orlando Sunday night for a campaign event Monday morning with Bill Clinton. Told that Air Force One pilots said he needed to leave before the rally or he might get stuck outside Washington -- where sun and palms would be an unfortunate backdrop -- he went back to the White House.
Just about the only criticism the president got on his storm stewardship was, amazingly enough, from ''Heck of a Job, Brownie'' Michael Brown, the FEMA chief during Katrina, who naturally thought Obama acted too quickly and efficiently.
With Obama forced off the trail, Clinton and Joe Biden could fulfill their shared fantasy: to be the presidential candidate. In Youngstown, Ohio, the two ''Last Hurrah'' pols plunged into a thrilled throng to shake hands, pose for pictures, bounce babies and sign books. Biden employed his classic move of holding the cheeks of a delighted older woman, then reaching around her in a full body hug to grab the hands of a woman behind. As ''Your Love Keeps Lifting Me Higher'' blared, the prolix, snowy-haired pair scanned for anyone to schmooze or squeeze as the arena emptied out. The Big Dog lingered even longer than C-Span cameras.
Rather than campaigning, which he finds draining, the president was in the Oval calling a Republican to work things out. But this time, unlike with John Boehner at a fateful moment, a flattered Christie took Obama's calls. While Romney campaigns in Florida Wednesday, Christie and Obama plan to tour storm damage in New Jersey, a picture of bipartisanship, putting distressed people above dirt-slinging politics.
And that's a grand bargain for both of them.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/31/opinion/dowd-the-i-of-the-storm.html
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October 31, 2012 Wednesday
Late Edition - Final
Ohio Working Class May Offer Key to Second Term for Obama
BYLINE: By JEFF ZELENY and DALIA SUSSMAN; Jeff Zeleny reported from Columbus, and Dalia Sussman from New York. Reporting was contributed by Allison Kopicki, Marjorie Connelly and Megan Thee-Brenan in New York, and Craig Duff in Cincinnati.
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COLUMBUS, Ohio -- As President Obama and Mitt Romney enter the closing week of the presidential race, where the 18 electoral votes of Ohio are seen by both sides as critical to victory, Mr. Obama's ability to prevent erosion among working-class voters may be his best path to re-election.
In Ohio, according to the latest poll of likely voters by Quinnipiac University/New York Times/CBS News, Mr. Obama runs nearly even with Mr. Romney among white voters who do not have college degrees.
That helps explain why he appears slightly better positioned there in the closing week of the campaign than in Florida and Virginia, where the polls found that Mr. Romney holds an advantage of about 30 percentage points among those voters.
The presidential contest has become an intense state-by-state fight, with the climate in Ohio shaped by months of efforts by the Obama campaign to portray Mr. Romney as a job killer who opposed the president's decision to bail out the auto industry.
Mr. Obama, who has a 50 percent to 45 percent edge here, also appears to be benefiting from an economic recovery in Ohio that is running ahead of the national recovery.
The poll found that nearly half of all white voters without college degrees here say the economy is improving, and most give Mr. Obama some credit. Only about a quarter of those voters in Virginia and Florida say their economy is getting better.
The polls, along with interviews with strategists and supporters in the three battleground states, illustrate the dynamic facing both campaigns in the final days of the race. The race is essentially tied in Florida and Virginia, the polls found.
The presidential race is now brimming with even more uncertainty as Mr. Obama canceled a trip to Ohio on Wednesday and stays off the campaign trail for a third straight day. Mr. Romney was set to resume his schedule in Florida and Virginia, but he faced a delicate task of campaigning during a natural disaster.
But the campaign is still very much alive here in Ohio, where Mr. Romney and Mr. Obama are locked in a bitter duel over blue-collar voters. A dispute over the Obama administration's 2009 effort to rescue the auto industry boiled over yet again on Tuesday, with the Romney campaign arguing in a new radio commercial that the government's $80 billion assistance plan helped China more than the United States.
The chief executive of Chrysler, Sergio Marchionne, took the rare step of disputing a presidential candidate by calling the assertion ''inaccurate.'' He said production would not be moved from the United States to China, adding: ''Jeep is one of our truly global brands with uniquely American roots. This will never change.''
The Ohio economy's recovery has complicated Mr. Romney's efforts to portray Mr. Obama as an ineffective leader. The president is seen in a favorable light by 52 percent of likely voters, compared with 46 percent who have a favorable opinion of Mr. Romney.
Yet the poll here showed that the race is tight, with Mr. Obama's five-point edge the same as last week but cut in half from a month ago.
Among the likely voters in Ohio who say they are paying a lot of attention to the race, Mr. Obama's edge narrows to one percentage point, or essentially tied, which underscores the extent to which the race will turn on the get-out-the-vote efforts of each campaign.
''It seems like the economy is on an upswing,'' Kathleen Foley, a special-education teacher in Dayton, said in a follow-up interview. ''I truly believe that in the next few years, our economy is going to see an upswing. I'd like Obama to get some credit for the work he's done.''
In the closing stages of the race, Mr. Romney has taken steps to emphasize the moderate elements of his record. His campaign was running a television advertisement here on Tuesday reminding voters that he supports abortion rights in the case of rape, incest or to protect the life of the mother. Democratic groups and the Obama campaign countered with their own ads.
The economy remains the top issue on the minds of voters, the poll found, and the ads were dismissed as not relevant by one poll respondent, Dana Hogan of Cincinnati.
''Do I really think we're going to go back to the point where women won't be able to have abortions or birth control is going to be rationed? That's just silly to even think of,'' said Ms. Hogan, who works at a small company and spoke in a follow-up interview. ''Some women do still get really riled up by that, but I think it's just a scare tactic. Really, you think women are that dumb?''
The presidential race, which has largely played out in nine swing states, is suddenly showing signs of expansion. The Romney campaign and Republican groups announced new investments in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Minnesota, a reflection that the contest was tight across the country and their options in the existing battleground states may not be enough for Mr. Romney to reach the necessary 270 electoral votes.
A nationwide poll of likely voters from The New York Times and CBS News, which was released Tuesday evening, found that more voters now view Mr. Romney as a stronger leader on the economy and Mr. Obama as a better guardian of the middle class. The president was the choice of 48 percent, with 47 percent for Mr. Romney. The poll had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus four percentage points.
But the biggest focal point of the race remains in seven states, particularly Ohio, where Mr. Romney appeared for the last three days. Mr. Obama had been scheduled to make two stops in Ohio on Wednesday before the storm hit the East Coast. Both candidates are set to make multiple trips back to the state before Election Day, aides said.
The Times, in collaboration with Quinnipiac and CBS News, has tracked the presidential race with recurring polls in key battleground states. The three latest surveys, which were conducted Oct. 23 to 28 among likely voters on landlines and cellphones, are the final series in the project.
In Florida, the overall race has narrowed considerably from a month ago, with Mr. Obama now the choice of 48 percent to 47 percent for Mr. Romney. In Virginia, Mr. Obama has 49 percent, with 47 percent for Mr. Romney. The results in each state have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.
In each state, Mr. Obama holds a double-digit lead among female voters, while Mr. Romney does better among men, especially white men. Most voters age 65 and older in each state prefer Mr. Romney, while younger voters support Mr. Obama. Voters who call themselves independents are closely split in Florida and Ohio, the polls found, but support Mr. Romney by a wide margin in Virginia.
The polls offer a window into the intensity of the campaign in these states, with more than three in four likely voters in each state saying they are paying a lot of attention to the election and wide majorities saying they have been contacted by one or both campaigns.
Few voters in each state -- just 3 percent in Florida and Virginia, and 4 percent in Ohio -- remain undecided. And just 3 percent of voters who support a candidate in Florida, and 4 percent in Ohio and Virginia, say they might change their mind.
In Ohio and Florida, the voting is already well under way. The Ohio poll found an advantage for the Obama campaign in their efforts to get out early voters. Nearly one in four voters in Ohio said they had already cast their ballots, and 6 in 10 of them say it was for Mr. Obama, compared with 34 percent for Mr. Romney.
The poll found a closer race among the one in five voters in Florida who said they had already voted, with 50 percent of them saying they backed Mr. Obama and 44 percent saying they supported Mr. Romney.
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October 31, 2012 Wednesday
Late Edition - Final
Pressing Obama: A New Effort in Pennsylvania
BYLINE: By JEREMY W. PETERS
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; THE CAUCUS; Pg. 12
LENGTH: 324 words
Another major Republican player is making a big bet that Mitt Romney has a chance of winning Pennsylvania.
Americans for Prosperity, the conservative advocacy group that is backed by the Koch brothers, will spend $1.5 million to run commercials there criticizing President Obama.
Pennsylvania has suddenly become a hotbed of action in the presidential race, after appearing largely out of play for the last few months.
But with polls showing Mr. Romney closing in on the president's lead there, Republican groups have rushed to get on the air and forced the Obama campaign to spend more than it had hoped to defend its position.
Restore Our Future and Americans for Job Security, two "super PACs" backing Mr. Romney, and the Republican Jewish Coalition are all spending large sums of money to advertise in Pennsylvania.
Their moves prompted the Obama campaign to announce on Monday that it would shift resources to the state. As of Tuesday afternoon, the campaign had reserved about $1.1 million in commercial time.
The new Americans for Prosperity campaign will add even more pressure on the president.
"The president likes to say, 'Look at the math,' " said Tim Phillips, the group's president. "Well, when you look at the math in Pennsylvania, it's dangerous for the president."
Mr. Phillips said Republicans believed the president's standing among women was particularly vulnerable now, and said that much of his group's advertising effort would be aimed at reaching undecided women in the Philadelphia suburbs.
The group will run two ads. One features former supporters of the president's who explain why they have changed their minds. The other features a Canadian woman who says that her country's government-run health care system prevented her from receiving valuable treatment.
Americans for Prosperity will also spend another $1.5 million advertising in Michigan.
This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.
URL: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/30/another-republican-group-buys-pennsylvania-air-time/
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October 31, 2012 Wednesday
Late Edition - Final
Storm Pushes Aside Presidential Politics, Mostly
BYLINE: By MICHAEL BARBARO and MICHAEL D. SHEAR; Michael Barbaro reported from Dayton, Ohio, and Michael D. Shear from Washington. Jeremy W. Peters contributed reporting from New York.
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; Pg. 12
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DAYTON, Ohio -- Perhaps nothing better encapsulated the tricky calculus of running for president in the midst of a natural disaster than the mixed messages flashing on a giant screen here Tuesday at an event for Mitt Romney.
At one moment, the screen featured a public service announcement instructing crowd members to text a $10 donation to the American Red Cross on their cellphones. The next, it displayed a glossy campaign video describing Mr. Romney as ''charismatic'' and ''authentic.''
In a corner of the high school gymnasium where the event was held, people lined up to deposit boxes of bottled water and bags of brown rice for victims of the storm. In another, a woman proudly held up a T-shirt that read ''Obama, you're fired.''
The storm that ravaged much of the East Coast has pushed the presidential campaign into a delicate and ambiguous phase. Suddenly, it was a sideshow, with a caveat: Americans were still watching and assessing an improvised leadership test for both candidates as they navigated the politics of a deadly storm.
Mr. Romney, a challenger without the trappings and authority of office to respond to the crisis, made a single stop in the Dayton area. His campaign called it a ''storm-relief event,'' even though it was at the same gym where he was previously set to hold a traditional campaign rally.
At the last minute, campaign signs were taken down, the 2,000 attendees were asked to bring canned goods, and a tieless Mr. Romney delivered sober words standing atop a black and silver trunk.
''A lot of people hurting this morning,'' said Mr. Romney, who grabbed bags of food from some members of the crowd and thanked them one by one. ''They were hurting last night. And the storm goes on.''
Yet the existence of the event, at a large site, meant that Mr. Romney would still appear on television after his aides said they would cancel ''all events currently scheduled'' for Tuesday, out of sensitivity to the storm's victims.
As Mr. Romney accepted the bags of supplies, reporters repeatedly asked him about his comment last year that seemed to question the role of the Federal Emergency Management Agency in disaster relief. In a debate during the Republican primaries, he vaguely suggested that emergency management should be pushed to states, though he did not directly address the future of FEMA, whose work has made it popular in swing states like Florida. Mr. Romney did not respond to the shouted questions.
The presidential contest steamed ahead at full force on at least one important front. The Romney campaign reserved at least $12 million in advertising time for the final week of the election. Though the campaign was still making purchases on Tuesday afternoon, it had so far set aside large sums for nine states, including $1.3 million in Wisconsin, $2.7 million in Ohio, $2.7 million in Florida, $1.5 million in Iowa and $1.2 million in Nevada.
A ''super PAC'' backing Mr. Romney's campaign began broadcasting a new ad in eight states that features a woman expressing disappointment about President Obama's first term. Another released two ads across many of the battleground states criticizing Mr. Obama's handling of the economy.
After months of unanswered Republican super PAC ads, the Obama campaign bolstered its Michigan campaign with at least $64,000 in ads, the first time it has advertised there since the Republican primaries. It also continued to broadcast ads criticizing Mr. Romney's economic proposals and promoting the president's plans for a second term.
Representatives for the candidates still held rallies. Former President Bill Clinton pressed ahead with two planned stops in Colorado on Tuesday. Mr. Romney's wife, Ann, attended a ''victory rally'' in Iowa after making a stop at a storm-related event in Wisconsin.
With the election approaching and polls showing a close contest, each camp confronted the same quandary: whether moving ahead in campaigning would earn it the votes they needed to win or whether it would be seen as crass, unpresidential behavior as cities coped with deaths and extensive flooding.
Mr. Romney's storm-relief event here, with the singer Randy Owen as a guest performer, tried to find a compassionate way forward. Hundreds of people arrived with food to donate.
Devante Williams, 22, said he had driven three hours from Indiana after hearing that he could contribute to the relief effort. He wanted to make a $100 cash donation. ''It's just the right thing to do,'' he said.
Mr. Romney, surveying the piles of donated goods, recalled a time in high school when classmates discovered a football field littered with trash.
''And the person who was responsible for organizing the effort said, just line up along the yard lines. You go between the goal line and the 10-yard line. And the next person, between 10 and 20, and then just walk through and do your lane. And if everybody cleans their line, why, we'll be able to get the job done. And so today, we are cleaning one lane, if you will,'' he said.
But he did not talk politics.
Another person at the event, Paulette Flaum, said that she had long been skeptical of Mr. Romney, but that his decision to turn a rally into a storm-relief event was evidence that he was ''a generous man.''
''He wants to help people,'' Ms. Flaum said. She peered around the room. ''This is a nonpartisan event. But most of us are Republicans.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/31/us/politics/storm-pushes-presidential-race-from-spotlight.html
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October 31, 2012 Wednesday
The Sound of Silence
BYLINE: LINDA GREENHOUSE
SECTION: OPINION
LENGTH: 1319 words
HIGHLIGHT: A month into another blockbuster term (Affirmative action! Voting rights! Same-sex marriage!), the Supreme Court is curiously missing from our national conversation.
Reading about the belated scramble by Massachusetts regulators to inspect the compounding pharmacies in their state in the wake of the meningitis crisis left me wondering about the apparent lack of federal oversight of the $3 billion compounding pharmacy industry. And that thought in turn called to mind an obscure Supreme Court decision from a decade ago that invoked the First Amendment to block one avenue of attempted federal regulation.
In that 2002 decision, Thompson v. Western States Medical Center, the court held by a vote of 5 to 4 that a congressional restriction on advertising by compounding pharmacies violated the companies' right to free speech. The advertising restriction was part of a bargain that Congress made with the industry in a 1997 law, the Food and Drug Administration Modernization Act. Under this deal, compounded drugs - those specially formulated to meet the needs of patients not served by drugs generally available on the commercial market - would not have to go through the Food and Drug Administration's approval process as long as the pharmacies that made them abided by certain rules.
One of the rules concerned soliciting business through advertising. A pharmacy could advertise its general availability for compounding, but could not "advertise or promote the compounding of any particular drug, class of drug, or type of drug." The idea, as the government later explained to the Supreme Court, was that compounding pharmacies could continue to serve their traditional role of filling doctors' prescriptions for individual patients, but would be limited in their ability to solicit business on a big scale or to engage in large-scale drug production - in other words, to conduct the kind of multi-state business in which the New England Compounding Pharmacy was engaged before it was shut down in the wake of the meningitis cases tied to its tainted product.
In the Supreme Court's view, the government's regulatory rationale was not sufficient to justify infringing on the pharmacies' right to engage in "commercial speech." The government had failed to explain why "forbidding advertising was a necessary as opposed to merely convenient means of achieving its interests," Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote for the majority, adding: "If the First Amendment means anything, it means that regulating speech must be a last - not first - resort."
The notion that the First Amendment protects the advertising of goods and services, although familiar today, is not of ancient lineage, deriving only from a Burger court decision in another pharmacy-related case in 1976. Justice Stephen G. Breyer's dissenting opinion in the compounding case warned against allowing this newly minted right to trump sensible federal regulation. "An overly rigid 'commercial speech' doctrine will transform what ought to be a legislative or regulatory decision about the best way to protect the health and safety of the American public into a constitutional decision prohibiting the legislature from enacting necessary protections," Justice Breyer wrote. Then he added: "Any such transformation would involve a tragic constitutional misunderstanding."
I don't know enough food and drug law to presume to know whether a Supreme Court decision the other way might have prevented the current medical and regulatory crisis. I offer this reflection on a decade-old Supreme Court case as a reminder that the court matters, in ways big and small, in ways we anticipate and ways that come into focus only in retrospect. A month into another blockbuster term (Affirmative action! Voting rights! Same-sex marriage!) we shouldn't need such a reminder, so here's the question: where is the Supreme Court in our national conversation?
I'm hardly the first - in fact, this close to Election Day, I may be just about the last - to note the court's absence from the presidential campaign. Not only haven't the candidates talked about the court, no one has even asked them. Every time a member of the audience at the second presidential debate, the town-hall debate, got up to ask a new question, I thought that surely the court's moment had come at last, but no. Of all the words uttered at the national party conventions, "Supreme Court" did not pass the lips of a single speaker at either one. If that sounds implausible - as it did to me - then check the handy interactive tool that the Times Web site posted after the conventions. Type in any word or phrase ("middle class," "American dream") and the tool will tell you how often it was mentioned by any speaker "per 25,000 spoken words." Type in "Supreme Court" and you will learn that "Democrats mentioned 'Supreme Court' 0.0 times per 25,000 words" and "Republicans mentioned 'Supreme Court' 0.0 times per 25,000 words."
Here, surely, is a mystery. During the Republican contest for the nomination, the court was much with us, even too much. Newt Gingrich, in his fleeting moment as front runner, published a 28-page screed attacking "lawless" federal judges in general and the Supreme Court in particular, warning that its power must be curbed "if we are going to retain American freedoms and American identity." And, of course, during the run-up to the Affordable Care Act decision, everyone had something to say about the court. Since then - silence.
A common explanation is that neither side has much to gain by talking about the Supreme Court. The Republicans are tongue-tied, this theory goes, due to the supposed apostasy of their one-time golden chief justice, John G. Roberts Jr., whom Mitt Romney once held up as a model of the kind of justice he would appoint. The Democrats for their part can hardly bash a court whose chief justice saved the president's signature legislative achievement. And talking about the court's future requires at least a gesture toward something specific - who? what? - an exercise evidently not for the faint-hearted.
Even if these observations are completely accurate, they seem somehow less than satisfying as explanations for how a central institution of American government could go in a span of weeks from preoccupation to invisibility, less worthy of attention than a Jeep factory in China. Surely something else must be going on.
One thought, suggested to me by Nathaniel Persily, a public opinion expert at Columbia Law School, is that the Supreme Court has become so politicized in the public mind that there's almost nothing left for politicians to say about it, no base that remains open to mobilization or inspiration. An analysis of recent polling data by Professor Persily and Andrea Campbell, a political scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, documents a partisan gulf of startling dimension that has opened since the court issued its decision in the health-care case in late June. (Adam Liptak discussed the Campbell and Persily unpublished study in his column several weeks ago.) After the ruling, Democrats' favorable view toward the Affordable Care Act rose substantially to 71 percent, while Republicans' favorable view sank to seven percent. Democrats give the court a 48 percent overall job approval, while only 31 percent of Republicans approve of the court. In polling in mid-July, only 21 percent of Republicans, compared to 43 percent of Democrats, thought the health-care ruling was the result of the justices' legal analysis rather than their personal preferences. In the face of such polarization, political strategists might well question whether talking about the Supreme Court, with all its inherent risks, is worth the candidates' time.
Understandable, perhaps. And yet, in a democracy, it seems the strangest and saddest of missed opportunities. While the candidates keep their silence, the justices have the last word.
Reaping the Whirlwind
Idiot's Delight
Happy (Un)constitution(al) Day
Obama, D'Souza and Anti-Colonialism
Should We Cancel the Election? (A Socratic Dialog)
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October 31, 2012 Wednesday
Who Should You Vote For?
BYLINE: GARY GUTTING
SECTION: OPINION
LENGTH: 978 words
HIGHLIGHT: A brief guide for the undecided.
This has been a presidential campaign of percentages: the 1 percent, the 99 percent and, more recently, the 47 percent. Here is a column for the 4 percent: those who still haven't decided. As a philosopher, I don't propose to tell you who to vote for, but to offer a rational framework for making a decision. Also, I'm assuming that your indecision isn't because of ignorance of the candidates and their views. You've been following the campaign, have an adequate knowledge of the candidates' records and view, but still haven't been able to make up your mind. So how can you decide?
A first suggestion is to avoid the fallacy of the most recent information. You already know a great deal, pro and con, about Obama and Romney, and it hasn't led you to a decision. How could a few further facts - a last-minute gaffe, a change in the unemployment rate, a new attack ad - make a decisive difference? Don't privilege the tiny sliver of data that comes in during the next few days over the substantial body of information you've accumulated over months and even years.
If this is right, then you can't make your decision through an assessment of the candidates' competence in governing. If their past records and actions over the long campaign haven't convinced you that one will be more competent, deciding the question from what happens between now and the election will commit the fallacy of the most recent information.
Similarly, there's no reason to think that you will learn of some further detail or nuance of Obama's or Romney's policy positions that will make all the difference. You know what their positions are. The question is which to prefer. Answering this question requires a view of what is at stake in this election. Since foreign policy is on the back burner for most voters, I'll focus on domestic policy.
Mitt Romney has recently been insisting that the choice in this election is between the Status Quo (Obama) and a Big Change (Romney). Democrats like Paul Krugman might well agree, since they think the choice is either to preserve or to reject the New Deal. I think we can combine these two analyses in a way that avoids the partisan presuppositions of each and provides a helpful framework for deciding how to vote.
There is a sense in which the New Deal is the issue in this election. In response to the Great Depression, Franklin Roosevelt introduced the New Deal as system of governmental activism to achieve social and economic goods. After the Second World War this system gained wide acceptance. Even Republicans like Eisenhower and Nixon initiated programs (the federal highway system, the Environmental Protection Agency) in the spirit of the New Deal.
Beginning in the 1960s, Democrats extended the original New Deal's social commitments to issues of civil and personal rights for women and various minorities. Many Republicans had little sympathy for this "expanded" New Deal. Further, with Ronald Reagan, many Republicans began to oppose not only the expanded New Deal but also the original New Deal's approach of solving social and economic problems through government spending and regulation. The striking success of the Tea Party in the 2010 Congressional elections established this opposition as Republican orthodoxy.
Many Democrats see the current Republican Party as committed to "dismantling" the New Deal. Logically, however, Republicans can claim that their program does not renounce the New Deal's goals of prosperity, security and even equal rights for all citizens. Rather, they can contend, they intend to achieve these goals in a fundamentally different way: through the private sphere rather than government action. Democrats may well argue that this new approach won't work, so that the practical effect will simply be to abandon the New Deal. But whether this is so is an empirical question on which a logical analysis of our political choices must remain neutral.
We can, therefore, following Romney, see this election as a choice between the status quo and fundamental change. But the status quo is not, as Romney suggests, merely the policies of the Obama administration. A vote for Obama endorses what has been the governing structure of our society since the New Deal: a free-market system balanced with government regulations, tax-funded social programs and legislative and judicial guarantees of civil rights - all to protect citizens from the excesses of the private sphere.
The current Republican Party is committed to replacing this structure with one that seriously reduces the role of government. The idea is to rely primarily on the private sphere to regulate itself and to solve social problems through increased production and wealth. Although a President Romney might resist his party's base, there is a good chance that, willingly or not, he would mostly follow the official party commitments. Therefore, a vote for Romney may well be a vote for a major change in the longstanding role of government in our society. This is the new American revolution urged by the Tea Party.
Thinking in terms of the above framework reverses the standard polarity of the two parties. Those who are conservative in the traditional sense of resisting abrupt major changes in established institutions should vote for Obama. Those who support a fundamental change should vote for Romney. Oddly enough, Obama's hopes for a second term may turn on the support of conservative voters.
Gary Gutting is a professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame and an editor of Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. He is the author of, most recently, "Thinking the Impossible: French Philosophy Since 1960," and writes regularly for The Stone.
Reconsidering Obama the Pragmatist
Stone Links: On Capital-T Theory, Coetzee and More
Can Neuroscience Challenge Roe V. Wade?
Stone Links: Beauty in Our Time
Sleight of the 'Invisible Hand'
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October 31, 2012 Wednesday
False Advertising
BYLINE: ANDREW ROSENTHAL
SECTION: OPINION
LENGTH: 424 words
HIGHLIGHT: Information flows at warp speed and in unlimited quantities, but the Romney campaign figures it can get away with pretty much anything.
Back in the good old pre-Internet days, politicians figured they could get away with pretty much anything. They'd repeat the same old well-debunked lies and constantly shape shift to suit a particular audience, but it was hard for voters to catch them in the act. There was no easy, reliable way for someone in Rock Island, IL, to know what a candidate said the day before in Spokane, WA, or the day before that in Miami.
Now that information flows at warp speed and in unlimited quantities, and it's possible to triangulate remarks and hold candidates to account, the Romney campaign, at least, still figures it can get away with pretty much anything.
In the final days before the election, the Romney campaign is running a radio ad that, as Andrew Sullivan put it, triples down on the lie that the auto bailout did nothing but create more jobs in China. Mr. Romney already tried that attack in a television ad that was immediately and widely panned but the Republican nominee is showing real fortitude when it comes to ignoring the truth.
Mr. Romney is also running an ad that repeats his absolutely false claim that Mr. Obama "gutted the work requirements" in the welfare laws passed under President Bill Clinton.
And in Pennsylvania, the Republican has an ad out declaring "I like coal," which blasts the president as a coal hater.
But the campaign's cunning plan to fool as many of the people as possible all of the time isn't limited to ads. Off the air, Mr. Romney's surrogates are hard at work confusing anyone who'd like to know the candidate's positions.
On Monday, former Senator Norm Coleman of Minnesota told a Jewish group in Beechwood, Ohio, that Mr. Romney would not seek to reverse Roe v Wade. I guess Mr. Coleman assumed that none of the people in the audience, or anyone else with access to a computer and the Internet, would remember that Mr. Romney has said explicitly that he would pick judges who would overturn Roe.
It's obvious that Mr. Romney is against abortion. He says he backs exceptions in cases of rape, incest, or when the mother's life is threatened. But he has also supported "personhood" amendments that would not only ban all forms of abortion, but some means of birth control. And Mr. Romney has said repeatedly that he intends to get rid of federal funds that support Planned Parenthood.
He and other politicians who lie are betting that voters won't punish them for it. We'll see if that theory pans out on Tuesday.
Apocalypse Now
Romney's New Auto Ad
Obama's Stamina
Richard Mourdock on God's Intentions
Bilingual Lies
LOAD-DATE: November 1, 2012
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October 31, 2012 Wednesday
Obama vs. Hoover
BYLINE: ROBERT S. MCELVAINE
SECTION: OPINION
LENGTH: 1077 words
HIGHLIGHT: Let's compare the record on unemployment, G.D.P. and the stock market of the two presidents who faced the worst economic collapses in the last hundred years.
The question Americans should be asking ourselves isn't whether we're better off than we were four years ago. It's whether we're better off than we were 80 years ago.
Unemployment falling below 8 percent in September was certainly good news for the president politically, but it has not stopped his opponents from charging that the recovery under Obama has been slower and weaker than that following any other modern recession. As Mitt Romney likes to say, "This is not what a real recovery looks like."
He's not alone. Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS put out an ad that begins with Scott Pelley of CBS News saying, "This is the worst economic recovery America has ever had." It goes on to charge that this is the result "of President Obama's failed stimulus policies."
The performance of Barack Obama has been measured against those of many previous presidents, including Franklin D. Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.
But the most appropriate presidential term to use as a benchmark is Herbert Hoover's. He was the last president to face an economic crisis on a scale similar to the one that confronted Obama when he took office.
I have been studying the Great Depression for the better part of four decades. A comparison of these two presidencies is both clarifying and highly favorable to Barack Obama. Mitt Romney himself has drawn attention to the implicit parallel between the crises faced by Hoover and Obama. "This is the slowest job recovery since Hoover," Romney declared in June 2011. He did not, of course, intend the association to be a positive one for the current president. Obama has returned the favor. In the final debate, he told Romney that "when it comes to our foreign policy, you seem to want to import the foreign policies of the 1980s, just like the social policies of the 1950s and the economic policies of the 1920s."
While everyone knows that the economic collapse that began in 2008 was a major disaster, most people have come to believe that it was not as dangerous as the one that began in 1929, the year after Hoover was elected president. Part of the reason for this impression is simply linguistic: the current situation has come to be called the Great Recession, which does not sound as bad as the Great Depression. More important, we now have a social safety net that somewhat eases the impact. And as the figures below will confirm, the truth is that our very bad situation today is not nearly as bad as things were eight decades ago, when Hoover was seeking re-election.
But it does not necessarily follow from the comparatively better situation today that the 2008 collapse was that much less severe than 1929's. In fact, by many measures, what began four years ago this fall was even worse than what started in the fall of 1929. World industrial production, world trade and worldwide equity prices all fell more sharply in 2008-9 than they did in 1929-30. The prospect of a second Great Depression was very real when Barack Obama took office.
The genuine similarity of the situations they faced is the reason why the economic record under Hoover is the most meaningful gauge by which to measure the effectiveness of Obama's recovery policies.
And, contrary to the charges made by his political opponents, the main reason that the Panic of 2008 became the Great Recession instead of the Second Great Depression is that the policies that have been employed by the Obama administration to combat it have been so much better than those undertaken by the Hoover administration in 1929. One major reason why the recovery has been so slow is that, thanks in no small part to Obama's allegedly "failed stimulus policies," the recession officially ended a scant nine months after the 2008 crash. In contrast, the economy was still in its deepening downward spiral more than three years after the 1929 crash. This difference means that the clock on recovery was started at much earlier point for Obama.
Timing is critical to public perception. The fact that Barack Obama took office only four months after an economic collapse has made it possible for his opponents to convince many voters that it is his policies, not those of his predecessor that are at fault. When Herbert Hoover sought re-election in 1932, he had been overseeing an economy in free fall for three years, and voters had no confusion about whom they should blame.
Let's compare the records in the most important statistical categories of the two presidents who faced the worst economic collapses in the last hundred years.
Unemployment
The government did not collect employment data during the Hoover years, but the best estimate indicates that unemployment soared from 3.1 percent when he took office. (Since the 1929 depression did not begin until seven months after Hoover took office, the comparison with the record under Obama is not exact, but the very different trajectory is clear.)
Under Obama, unemployment continued to rise in the early months of his administration, clearly the result of the near-depression that he inherited, peaking at 10.0 percent in October 2009. The improvement since then has been painfully slow, but it has moved in the right direction, reaching 7.8 percent - a record vastly better than that in the last similar collapse.
G.D.P.
G.D.P. plummeted by more than 25 percent under Hoover; it has increased by almost 7 percent under Obama.
Stock Market
Share prices had their worst losses in history under President Hoover, losing four-fifths of their value during his term. Under President Obama, the stock market has had the second largest average annual gain experienced under any president (the best was under that other raise-taxes-a-bit-on-the-wealthy president, Bill Clinton), so far increasing its value by almost two-thirds.
These comparisons are particularly relevant in the current election year because today's Republicans are ideologues, as Hoover was, although their faith in the market and "trickle-down economics" is far more absolute than his was. It is an ideology that has failed disastrously twice before, in 1929 and 2008, yet Republicans propose to try it again.
Robert S. McElvaine is a historian at Millsaps College. His most recent book is a 25th anniversary edition of "The Great Depression: America, 1929-1941." He is currently completing a book manuscript, "Oh, Freedom! - The Young Sixties."
Liberty to Lie
Billionaires Going Rogue
Google's Crystal Ball
Obama's Narrow Victory
Premature Desperation
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October 31, 2012 Wednesday
Storm Aftermath: Live Updates
BYLINE: THE NEW YORK TIMES
SECTION: NYREGION
LENGTH: 16314 words
HIGHLIGHT: Live updates from the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.
Coverage from October 31 and November 1, 2012, of the storm that disrupted power and transportation for millions of people in more than a half-dozen states.
Much of the eastern edge of the nation continued to deal Wednesday with the aftermath of the storm, with mass transit in the New York metropolitan area still crippled, power still out for millions and the death toll continuing to climb.
In New York City, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced temporary measures to alleviate unusually heavy car traffic, saying that only cars with three passengers or more would be allowed to use the city's main bridges and tunnels.
The city transit authority said that some service would be restored north of Midtown Manhattan on Thursday. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo declared a transportation emergency and waived all fares on the authority's commuter rails, subways and buses Thursday and Friday.
Live Updates
Tracking the storm that has disrupted power and transportation for millions of people in more than a half-dozen states, leaving behind the daunting task of cleaning up.
1:11 A.M. | The View From Above
A time-lapse video of images - before, during and after the storm - from the 51st floor of the New York Times building.
- The New York Times
11:57 P.M. | In New Jersey, Governor Plans to Restrict Water Usage
Gov. Chris Christie said Wednesday night that he planned to put in place mandatory restrictions on water usage in New Jersey because power outages had strained the state's water-treatment system.
At a media briefing, Mr. Christie said he would sign an executive order that prohibited the watering of lawns and landscaping as well as the outdoor washing of cars or pavement. He also asked residents to try to conserve.
"Maybe take a little bit of a shorter shower," Mr. Christie suggested.
He also praised President Obama, who traveled to New Jersey on Wednesday to survey storm damage with him. Mr. Christie, who has been a sharp critic of the president, said he had talked to Mr. Obama six times since Sunday.
"The president couldn't have been better today," he said.
Mr. Christie said that he and Mr. Obama were "big boys" and that their political differences had not stopped them from working together to deal with the storm.
Acknowledging that his interactions with Mr. Obama were of political interest, Mr. Christie said, "I'm aware of all the atmospherics. I'm not in a coma. But the fact is, I don't care." He added, "There will be some folks who will criticize me for complimenting him. Well, you know what? I speak the truth. That's what I always do."
Mr. Christie was also asked about climate change, which Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York invoked on Wednesday as he warned that the area would likely see additional extreme storms in the future. Mr. Christie said he did not "have an opinion at the moment on what's causing this stuff."
"The reason I don't have an opinion is because I don't have time to think about it," Mr. Christie said. "My day is consumed by a million different details right now, none of which involve global warming."
- Thomas Kaplan
11:17 P.M. | Gasoline Quickly Running Out in Queens
Commuters slogging back from work through extraordinary amounts of traffic, were met with even more frustration in Queens, where scores of gas stations had closed up shop, their stores of gasoline bone dry.
In the water-deluged Rockaways, power was still out, and gas stations were boarded up from the storm or completely dark.
In Woodhaven, where there was electricity, cars flitted from filling station to station, only to find the pumps at each wrapped with caution tape, or with hand-scrawled signs saying "sorry, no gas."
On Woodhaven Boulevard, one Mobile station had pulled flatbed tow trucks across its entrances, giving a clear message: no gas here.
A few blocks away, on the other side of Woodhaven, another Mobile had a line of about 50 cars that filled up one lane of the boulevard. But at 8:15 p.m., the man directing traffic in the parking lot there said the station had only about 30 more minutes before the fuel lines ran dry.
By 8:30 p.m., a BP station on a Queens Boulevard service road was one of the few stations that still had gas to sell, and the lines were unexpectedly short. Hong Han, the owner, was marshaling customers with the precision of an air traffic controller.
"I'm trying to help them out, I don't need fighting," he said, before turning to scold a driver trying to cut in line. "We try to do our best," he said, estimating that in an hour, his tanks would be empty. "We're getting a little nervous. Everybody is getting a little excited."
David Liu, 23, had driven his delivery van to six gas stations across Queens before finding the BP station. He was harried, but said that, in wandering from gas pump to gas pump that night, he had met others in far worse situations. One man he had commiserated with was filling up a dozen two-gallon canisters. The man said he had come from New Jersey to Queens get gas, Mr. Liu said. Yesterday, the man had made the same run to Pennsylvania.
Mr. Liu said he was worried that by tomorrow all the gas stations would be closed.
His backup plan? "Pray that there is one open."
- Sarah Maslin Nir
10:42 | Cuomo Waives M.T.A. Fares for Thursday and Friday
Gov. Andrew Cuomo declared a transportation emergency Wednesday night and said all fares on the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's commuter trains, subways and buses would be waived on Thursday and Friday.
He said that the goal was to help alleviate the kind traffic that had clogged city streets on Wednesday.
"The gridlock was dangerous, frankly," Mr. Cuomo said.
Joseph Lhota, the chairman of the M.T.A., said that roughly half of the commuters who take Metro-North trains would see regular service starting Thursday morning. The Harlem and the New Haven lines will both be running normal schedules to Grand Central Station, he said.
Mr. Cuomo also said that in response to reports that there were people in high-rise buildings who were running out of food and water, FEMA would begin distributing one million prepackaged meals and one million gallons of water to those in need, starting Thursday morning.
- Marc Santora
10:18 P.M. | Bellevue Hospital Evacuated After Backup Power Fails
Bellevue Hospital Center, New York City's flagship public hospital and the premier trauma center in Manhattan, shut down Wednesday after fuel pumps for its backup power generators failed, and it worked into the night to evacuate the 300 patients left in its darkened building. There were 725 patients there when Hurricane Sandy hit.
At a news conference Wednesday night, Alan Aviles, the president of the Health and Hospitals Corporation, which runs Bellevue, described third-world conditions, with no hot water, no lab or radiology services and pails of water hauled up the stairs to use for flushing toilets.
After pumping out 17 million gallons of water from the basement, the water is still two and a half feet deep in the cavernous basement where the fuel pumps apparently shorted out and became inoperable - unable to feed the 13th-floor backup generators, Mr. Aviles said.
"If we can get this hospital back up within two to three weeks we will be doing really well," he said. "Nothing has happened like this in Bellevue's 275-year history." Read more »
- Nina Bernstein and Anemona Hartocolis
10:16 P.M. | Governor Declares Transportation Emergency
BREAKING from Gov: I am declaring a transportation emergency and authorizing MTA wave fares through the end of the wk #sady
- Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) November 1, 2012
10:05 P.M. | Lower Deductibles for Storm-Tossed Homeowners
Tens of thousands of homeowners who suffered wind and storm damage this week will get financial relief from rulings by several governors that insurers must treat Sandy as a tropical storm, and not a hurricane.
Among those to benefit is Dana Spada, a school social worker who watched from the top floor of her apartment building in Long Beach, N.Y., as the ocean smashed through a concrete wall and flooded her second-floor studio condominium with four feet of water.
When she called her insurance company, she was told she might have to pay as little as a couple of thousand dollars or as much as 10 percent of her condo's value, depending on whether the storm turned out to be officially a hurricane.
Read more...
- Mary Williams Walsh and Shaila Dewan
9:50 P.M. | The New New Journalism: Sifting Fact From Fiction on Twitter
As our colleague Jenna Wortham reports, along with some remarkable images documenting the storm's impact this week, users of social networks have been sharing photographs that turned out to be inaccurate. Some were simply old images mistaken for - or passed off as - new ones; others were completely fake, fabricated by pranksters who took advantage of the new focus on social media as a source for journalists, which makes it easier than ever for a lie to make it halfway around the world before the truth gets its Google image search on.
Don't fall for these 6 fake Hurricane #Sandy pics in your feeds http://t.co/UhgfPlCb
- Pete Cashmore (@mashable)29 Oct 12
Increasingly, that means the work of journalists and bloggers with a desire to keep fact and fiction apart turns into debunking false reports during natural disasters. As the editors of The Atlantic's technology channel pointed out, one excellent source of lie-detection as the storm hit was the Tumblr "Is Twitter Wrong?" described by its editor as "A public service pedantry hub."
The site's editor, Tom Phillips, who works for MSN when he is not busy scouring Twitter for errors, pointed out that one striking image, of soldiers guarding the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington despite driving rain was not taken on Monday, but in September, despite what the Twitter feed @OMGFacts, and The Washington Post, initially claimed.
Amazing soldiers standing at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier during hurricane Sandy. http://t.co/h2AKd0kJ
- OMG Facts (@OMGFacts)29 Oct 12
The same site explained in detail that an image of a terrifying cloud formation over the Statue of Liberty was a fake, created by digitally merging a photograph of a storm that hit Nebraska in 2004 with one of the New York landmark. Mr. Phillips also explained to a reader of his site's Twitter feed that there were no sharks in the flooded New York City subway system.
A new one for you, @IsTwitWrong https://t.co/Z3gZeTly
- Fabiola (@PHAVZ)30 Oct 12
Still, in a world where a shirtless jogger in a horse mask did make it into a television news report on the storm in Washington, sifting fact from fiction is not always an easy task.
The news crew is down the block, Im thinking horse mask and swimming trunks?
- Jimmy Kruyne (@howtoJimmyK)29 Oct 12
Watch on Youtube.
- Robert Mackey
9:36 P.M. | Storm Closes City Schools for a Week
New York City public schools will remain closed through the rest of the week, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said Wednesday, creating an enormous scheduling headache for harried parents.
The mayor said he expected almost all schools to reopen on Monday. He acknowledged it was an "inconvenience for parents" for children to miss a week of school, but said he decided to cancel classes Thursday and Friday because many schools - about 200 of the city's 1,400 school buildings, according to the Education Department - had been damaged by the effects of Hurricane Sandy. Eighty-six schools had no power on Wednesday, and others had flooding, structural damage and plumbing problems.
At Public School 15 in Red Hook, Brooklyn, a dozen workers were struggling to pump water out of the basement Wednesday. The effort had started the night before. "That's a lot of water down there," said Elliott Cassas, a department employee.
Private schools seemed to be following in the city's footsteps, though Bay Ridge Preparatory and Saint Ann's in Brooklyn said they would open Thursday.
In New Jersey, dozens of school districts will be closed Thursday. On Nov. 8 and 9, Atlantic City was set to welcome New Jersey public school teachers for an annual convention billed as the largest gathering of its kind in the world. Students were scheduled to be off those days. Read more »
- Jenny Anderson
9:29 P.M. | Long Gas Lines, Clogged Roads and Hope for a Better Day
With commutes that took hours, half-mile lines at suburban gas stations and city buses stuffed beyond capacity, the transportation systems in most of the region slowed to a crawl on Wednesday, amid promises that some subway and commuter rail services would be restored by the Thursday morning commute.
Beginning at 6 a.m., some service will resume on 14 of the city's 23 subway lines, but several critical lines - the No. 3 and 7 trains and the B, C, E, G and Q trains - remain entirely dark. Many trains will have gaps in their routes, including the No. 4 train, which will have no service between 42nd Street in Manhattan and Borough Hall in Brooklyn.
And if New Yorkers want to try their luck at driving into Manhattan on Thursday, most will require company: Beginning at 6 a.m., the city planned to bar private vehicles carrying fewer than three people from entering Manhattan over most major bridges, like the Robert F. Kennedy, Manhattan, Brooklyn and Williamsburg Bridges. Read more »
- Matt Flegenheimer
8:13 P.M. | In Long Beach, a Plea to Leave
LONG BEACH, N.Y. - With no water, sewage, electricity, or cell-phone service expected to be restored to this Long Island beach community of 35,000 for several days, city officials went up and down streets with bullhorns Tuesday and Wednesday pleading with residents to leave for shelters on the Nassau County mainland.
"At first people were determined to stay with their homes," said Fran Adelson, a City Council member. "But without the most basic sanitary services, they are getting worn down. We've literally had older people in buildings screaming to get them out."
City officials said 4,000 people were evacuated by county buses on Tuesday. "We're expecting another fleet of buses any time now," Mike Robinson, the city's director of community development, said Wednesday. Because shelters in the middle of the island, at the Nassau County Coliseum and in Levittown were filled, residents were being transported to Manhasset High School on the North Shore.
As much as five feet of water surged up streets on Monday night, hitting the town from both the ocean side on the south and the bay side on the north, flooding homes and washing in walls of sand that blocked roads and buried cars.
Much of the city's 2.2-mile boardwalk buckled, and in many places was destroyed. The lifeguard headquarters at National Boulevard disappeared into the ocean. To keep gawkers away, members of the National Guard were stationed at the 14 ramps leading up to the boardwalk.
In the canals section of the city, a car caught fire on Monday night, and the flames quickly spread, destroying seven homes. On Hudson Street, members of the National Guard went door to door checking for gas leaks.
Because of the breakdown in the sewage system, city officials made plans to put portable toilets on the corners of the city's main street, Park Avenue.
Wednesday afternoon the state police set up blockades at the three roads leading into Long Beach, allowing only city residents to enter. Traffic on Long Beach Road was backed up at least a mile, as drivers waited to show identification and be waved through.
A curfew was put in place from 7 p.m. to 6 a.m. "It's pitch black at night and there's so much debris on the streets, we can't have people injuring themselves," said Ms. Adelson. "The hospital was evacuated and closed down, even the emergency room."
While there had been news reports of looting, Michael Tagney, the police commissioner, said he knew of only one break in, at Frank's Barber Shop and Watch Repair on Park Avenue. Frank Oliviero, who has been in Long Beach more than fifty years, said among the things taken were over 800 batteries, a recent shipment of watch bands, and $300 from the register.
For some people, the biggest losses were their cars, which were destroyed by salt water and sand. Carmen Convertino, a bus driver, lost a car and motorcycle, he said, despite parking them on what he thought was high ground.
Sgt. Eric Cregeen said officials could see the fire from city hall a mile away, but could not get up Farrell Street because the water was five feet high. "In my 20 years, I never felt so frustrated, to be able to see it and not help," he said. "Cars were floating by us.
Fire departments responded from all over the county, including those from Hempstead, Roosevelt, Manhasset, and Elmont.
Wednesday, bulldozers plowed sand off Broadway, the main road along the beach, making 10-foot high hills at every corner. At Lido Towers, a condominium, the ocean washed over the dunes, submerging the first floor apartments.
Though Long Beach was without water and sewage service, neighboring Lido Beach, which is part of the town of Hempstead, did not lose service. To let residents know, town officials went door to door, leaving flyers, assuring residents that it was safe to drink the water.
Gas stations in the city were also closed. Residents drove several miles to Rockville Centre, where long lines made for long waits.
- Michael Winerip and Sandy Keenan
8:04 P.M. | Video From Staten Island, as Residents Take Stock
Our colleague Erik Olsen was in Staten Island's Tottenville neighborhood on Wednesday, as residents started to clean up their flooded homes. He filed this video report on the effort to salvage as many precious, waterlogged items as possible.
- The New York Times
7:45 P.M. | Google Crisis Map Shows Power Losses
Google's Crisis Response project has created a useful interactive map, collecting links to updated information on the effort to restore power in storm-damaged areas and eyewitness video posted on YouTube showing the impact of Sandy across much of the northeastern United States.
The larger map on Google's own Web site allows users to zoom in on a specific address and also add more layers of information, including useful Twitter accounts and storm shelters in operation.
- Robert Mackey
7:06 P.M. | New York Restaurant Industry Takes a Hit
Across Lower Manhattan and into Brooklyn, this week's storm dealt a stinging blow to New York City's restaurant industry. With power out and walk-in refrigerators warming up, "we're basically going to lose all our product," said Andrew Carmellini, the chef at the Dutch in SoHo and Locanda Verde in TriBeCa.
That's not all he lost. In advance of Hurricane Sandy, Mr. Carmellini rented a car to help make sure that around-town transportation would be taken care of. He parked the car on 23rd Street. "The car got destroyed in the flood," he said. "The water went over the dashboard."
Then there was the truffles. Mr. Carmellini had been gearing up for his annual Trufflepalooza festival at Locanda Verde. "Now he's got $15,000 or $16,000 worth of truffles going bad," said Ken Friedman, a partner in that restaurant, as well as in properties associated with April Bloomfield like The Breslin, The John Dory Oyster Bar and the Spotted Pig. "We thought of doing a pop-up at the Breslin, but the chefs at the Breslin said nobody wants truffles."
It's not hard to see why restaurant folks, at least, might not be in the mood for luxury. Matt Abramcyk, an entrepreneur behind several bars and restaurants in TriBeCa, including Super Linda, estimated that he had lost $40,000 in spoiled food. Joe Bastianich and Mario Batali, who own several restaurants downtown, also suffered large losses, including at Eataly, their food store and restaurant space opposite Madison Square Park.
The Spotted Pig, in the West Village, has no power, no heat and no running water. "I thought, can't we just open with candlelight and bartenders?" Mr. Friedman said. "But we have no bathrooms, so that wouldn't work.''
In the financial district, flooding left Delmonico's, which originally opened in 1837, in disarray. "The water picked everything up and spun it round," said Dennis Turcinovic, one of the owners. "It was almost like a 'Wizard of Oz' effect. One of the refrigerators ended up in a private dining room."
But at Russ & Daughters, the iconic appetizing shop on the Lower East Side since 1914, Josh Russ Tupper, an owner, raced before, during and after the hurricane to put fish on ice, place supplies of caviar in "secure locations" and borrow a generator.
Moving quickly led to "very minimal losses," he said.
He could count himself lucky compared to Brooklyn restaurants like the Governor in Dumbo and the River Café, built on a barge in the East River. Both had substantial flooding.
Danny Meyer tweeted that the power loss had forced the shutdown of much of his citywide empire, including Maialino, Union Square Cafe and Gramercy Tavern. Remarkably, though, his newest restaurant, the North End Grill in the much-battered Battery Park City, was spared. Its chef, Floyd Cardoz, tweeted that it never lost refrigeration and was opening with a limited menu on Wednesday afternoon.
North End Grill open tonight. Kudos to extraordinary efforts of entire team, who's ready to work and welcome! http://t.co/FZrSzW0U
- Danny Meyer (@dhmeyer)31 Oct 12
Meanwhile, scores of restaurants in other parts of Manhattan experienced a rush in customers who were fleeing the darkened streets of downtown. Gail Simmons, the special projects director at Food & Wine magazine and a judge on "Top Chef," could be found with friends on Wednesday afternoon at Bar Americain, in Midtown, where she sought refuge from her powerless apartment (and near-empty pantry) in the West Village. "We are trying to ring up as big a tab as we can and order as much alcohol as we can so that we can charge our laptops and cellphones," she said. "There's not much left to eat at home."
In some spots, though, the battle to find food (and electrical outlets) seems to be stirring up tension. Consider the John Dory Oyster Bar and the Breslin, both of which are in the Ace Hotel, at the corner of Broadway and 29th Street.
"The lobby at the Ace is like a refugee camp," Mr. Friedman said. "People are milling around with their bags. They can't get their flights, they're grumpy and unhappy and not tipping. We had two restaurants open but ran out of food. It's not a good vibe.''
- Jeff Gordinier
6:22 P.M. | On Christie's Tour, Hugs, Tears and a Personal Touch
Gov. Chris Christie's aerial tour alongside President Obama on Wednesday of New Jersey's storm damage was being observed in intensely political terms.
But down on the ground, earlier in the day, the governor's interactions with displaced residents displayed the personal gifts that have won him a broad following. His visit was documented by a pool reporter.
In Sayreville, across Raritan Bay from Staten Island, the foundations of several homes were washed away, following the rush of a five-foot surge that had marooned some 200 people who were rescued, mostly by boat.
Several women cried in Mr. Christie's arms as they told him how much they had lost. The governor alternatively embraced them, put his hands on both shoulders and spoke softly with an arm around their backs.
"I don't feel safe in my house and I don't know what to do," said a crying Elaine Konopka.
Mr. Christie said the Federal Emergency Management Agency would be helping out soon. Some people said FEMA hadn't treated them appropriately after Tropical Storm Irene. Mr. Christie said: "Don't you worry about it. I'll be with the president this afternoon, and the head of FEMA."
In telling the governor about her situation, another resident, Deborah Decker, said she didn't want to be too much of a nuisance.
"Don't worry," Mr. Christie answered. "I'm as big of a pain in the ass as anybody."
As the governor walked down the street, he approached several people who wanted to show him their homes.
"Please help us," Theresa Mills said.
"That's what I'm here to do," he responded.
He told a 95-year-old woman who recently had heart surgery: "I want you to relax. You had all that work done on your ticker. I don't want you to get wound up."
To give residents a perspective of what they were dealing with, Mr. Christie repeatedly told them that "this is the worst storm we've seen." He said 95 percent of customers for their utility, Jersey Central Power & Light, were without power, but governors from Mississippi and Massachusetts told him Wednesday morning that they would be sending additional crews to help restore electricity.
"This is going to be a bit of a haul," Mr. Christie said.
Kim Bosso introduced the governor to her son, who has cystic fibrosis. He has been cut off from his breathing machines since the power went out, and she said the utility company had told her that she was not a priority case and her insurance wouldn't cover her if she went to a hospital.
"This is my lawyer," Mr. Christie said, introducing her to Charles McKenna, his chief counsel. "He's going to take care of you."
Mr. McKenna took down Ms. Bosso's information.
A disabled great-grandmother, Dolores Beaton, 62, asked the governor to go into her home. He took her hand and led her through a huge puddle up onto her porch. Furniture was toppled over and the house smelled like mildew. Bills were lying on a table, wet. She said the recliner that she sleeps on had been ruined.
"Everything's gone," she said. "I don't have anything to lose; I can't replace anything - I have no money."
The governor told her that he was going to make sure FEMA opened an office in Middlesex County.
After he left the house, he talked with Assemblyman John Wisniewski, a Sayreville native, about what happened to the neighborhood.
"It came in so quickly," Mr. Wisniewski said.
"The storm surge was incredible," Mr. Christie said.
Patricia Smith showed the governor an outside door to her basement, where water had filled up.
"I'm devastated over this," she said. "I've been trying to keep it together but it's very hard."
"Of course it is," he responded. "That's why I came."
Samantha Hartung, 31, cried to Mr. Christie about her house, which she said was damaged beyond repair. She said she was hiding her pain from her children.
"Because that's what we do, right?" he said. "It's not your fault. You were ready, but you can't be ready for that."
He told a group of people: "Hang in there, O.K.? Sayreville's a tough place."
"The fact that we didn't have any loss of life here in Sayreville is a testimony to the people of this town and the government here that were able to put the right people in place to handle these kind of circumstances," he said.
He said he wanted to visit Sayreville before he met with the president so Mr. Obama understood "that it's not just the Jersey Shore that's been devastated."
6:44 P.M. | Some Zoos to Reopen, but Aquarium Remains Closed
The Wildlife Conservation Society, which runs the city's zoos and its aquarium, has updated its schedule for reopening:
Prospect Park Zoo will reopen on Thursday.
The Bronx Zoo will reopen on Saturday.
The Queens and Central Park Zoos will be closed Thursday and the society plans to issue an update soon.
The New York Aquarium will be closed indefinitely.
- The New York Times
5:46 P.M. | New England Fishing Industry Hurt by Storm's Impact on Demand
BOSTON - Hurricane Sandy spared Massachusetts' coastal towns the worst of its physical damage, but left an economic chill over this region's fishing industry, causing boats to stay docked while eroding demand for fresh fish throughout the Northeast.
"Basically, nobody's buying fish from the mid-Atlantic up," said Chris Duffy, who manages operations at the Cape Ann Seafood Exchange, a seafood auction in Gloucester, Mass. "It just caused a big price drop, and everybody was backed up with fish."
The storm left processors unable to send shipments out of the region, and kept some from receiving shipments from other countries. The closing of the Fulton Fish Market, a major industry hub at Hunts Point in the Bronx, as well as markets in New Jersey and Philadelphia, has kept demand - and thus, prices - down, even while supply remains low.
"We're off by 75 percent on Monday and Tuesday, and probably 50 percent today," said Jack Flynn, the president of Mariner Seafood, a fresh-fish processing plant in New Bedford,Mass.
The trouble for the industry began late last week, when scores of fishermen cut trips short and came ashore at the same time, filling the market with product when buyers already expected low or nonexistent demand during the storm.
"There was no one to buy it - and it was like, oh my God," said Marty Odlin, who fishes for species like haddock, pollock and monkfish with a five-boat fleet in Portland, Me. "Prices just dropped, I'd say, at least 30 percent, 50 percent probably."
Then, the onset of the storm grounded fleets.
Mike Machado, the operations manager for Boston Sword and Tuna, which harvests and processes fish, said the storm cost the company one of the 10 to 12 fishing trips Boston Sword and Tuna makes a year.
"We've held our boats from going fishing, mostly because putting men in front of danger like that - it just got too rough, too nasty," Mr. Machado said. "We lost maybe a 10th of our gross income for the year on those boats."
By Wednesday, the industry was coming back to life, as trucking service picked up, restaurants reopened, and the markets began to stir. Buyers hoped the market would return to normal by the end of the week, and fisherman prepared to return to sea.
"We're sending the first boat out tonight," said Mr. Odlin, the fisherman, who said he was unsure how quickly prices would pick up. "This type of situation, it's part of fishing. So we deal with it."
- Jess Bidgood
5:52 P.M. | La Guardia Airport to Reopen Thursday
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said on Wednesday that La Guardia Airport would reopen at 7 a.m. Thursday. Both runways will be open.
- The New York Times
5:46 P.M. | M.T.A. Map of Partial Subway Service for Thursday Morning
As Matt Flegenheimer reported earlier, "Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on Wednesday afternoon released an update of mass transit conditions, including details of the subway service restorations to begin on Thursday. Officials have said that for the gaps in service along typical subway routes, buses will often be added to make the necessary connections."
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority distributed links to a (.pdf) map of the partial service planned to begin at 6 a.m. Thursday via its @MTAInsider Twitter feed.
This is a map of our post-storm subway service to start at approximately 6 a.m. tomorrow. http://t.co/HYQUwxtC
- MTA (@MTAInsider)31 Oct 12
M.T.A. Subway Map for Thursday (click at lower right to enlarge)
The M.T.A. also posted images showing the damage to tracks across Jamaica Bay used by the A train on the Rockaway line on Flickr.
Several video clips posted on the transit system's YouTube channel give a sense of the damage caused by the storm. Among the most dramatic was footage of the flooded South Ferry station at Whitehall Street in Lower Manhattan.
Video of flooding in a Lower Manhattan subway station, released by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
- Robert Mackey
4:54 P.M. | Pumping 30,000 Gallons a Minute From the Trade Center Site
There are a half-dozen pumps sucking 30,000 gallons of water a minute out of the sub-basements at the World Trade Center site, as the cleanup from Hurricane Sandy continues on the 16-acre property.
Officials with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the site, estimated that 200 million gallons of water from New York Harbor poured into Lower Manhattan and the trade center site during the storm on Monday and Tuesday.
The recovery effort at the trade center will focus primarily on "de-watering" the site and re-establishing a connection to the electrical grid, officials said. The Port Authority still has to assess any damage to equipment, given that the chiller plant, which cools air for the complex, is under seven feet of water, and the transit hub is under 25 feet.
More pumps, provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and private contractors, are on the way. Still, drying out the sub-basement known as B4, which is more than 70 feet below the street, could take four more days. In many areas of that basement, the water is 10 to 15 feet high. But there are no major electrical or mechanical systems on that level, which will be used mainly used for parking.
Elsewhere on the site, there is little if any serious damage to the main office towers under construction, or the cranes, hoists, or the memorial plaza, although there is water in the basements of the towers at 1 and 4 World Trade Center. At 1 World Trade Center, which is being built by the authority and the Durst Organization, there is 20 feet of water in one sub-basement and 15 feet in another. The Port Authority is working closely with the developer Larry Silverstein, who is building two towers on Church Street, on the cleanup.
Aside from some debris, the memorial appears to be in good shape, although the underground museum has been turned into a 100,000-square-foot pool.
The water has been removed from the basement of Mr. Silverstein's tower across Vesey Street, at 7 World Trade Center, and the lobby has been cleaned. He is now trying to reconnect to the power system.
At the World Financial Center, there is little apparent damage to the buildings. The lights are on, and the center will be open Thursday, although it is difficult for commuters to reach Lower Manhattan by public transportation.
- Charles V. Bagli
5:16 P.M. | Debate Over the Marathon Sunday
Shouldthe New York City Marathon take thisyear off?
The race, the world's largest, with a field of nearly 50,000 runners, is scheduled for Sunday morning - barely six days after Hurricane Sandy left parts of the city in ruins and crippled its transportation system.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and marathon organizers have said the race will go on as scheduled, as it has every year since 1970, as a symbol of the city's resilience during hard times. But that plan has been hit by a backlash.
- The New York Times
4:37 P.M. | Gas Lines Cut to New Jersey Barrier Island
Utility crews in New Jersey are working to cut natural-gas lines that ignited and re-ignited fires on New Jersey's northern barrier island, which was pummeled by the storm.
The crews could not get access to the tiny town on the island, Mantoloking, until noon on Wednesday, said Renée Amellio, a spokeswoman for New Jersey Natural Gas. All fires had been put out, and there was no imminent threat to life or property, she said.
Workers are moving from house to house and turning off gas at the meters. Ms. Amellio said the company decided not to cut off a main gas line because it would leave tens of thousands of customers without hot showers or cooking gas.
The Associated Press reported as many as 10 homes had caught fire in neighboring Brick Township during the storm, rupturing gas lines.
Rich Peterson, a spokesman for Ocean County, said no one was in danger. He said everyone on the island had evacuated, and most of their homes were swept into the ocean.
"We're pretty confident there's no one left," he said.
Mantoloking was Ocean County's hardest-hit town, Mr. Peterson said. Houses were lifted from their foundations and seen floating in the bay, he said. One house smashed into the entrance of the Mantoloking bridge, but the bridge "seems structurally perfectly fine," he said.
In another case, Mr. Peterson said, a large front-end loader moved to clear sand that nearly swallowed a house whole. There were people inside, alive, who crawled into the shovel of the big tractor to be rescued. They were then gently deposited into a dump truck to climb to safety.
- Andrew Phelps
4:57 p.m. | Obama and Christie Display Unity in Storm's Aftermath
President Obama stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Chris Christie, the Republican governor of New Jersey, on Wednesday afternoon, providing reassurance after Hurricane Sandy - and a politically powerful picture of bipartisanship.
After touring through a hard-hit community on a barrier island in the state, the two men praised each other and expressed satisfaction with the cooperation of their governments.
"He has worked incredibly closely with me since before the storm hit," Mr. Christie said, with Mr. Obama standing just behind him. "It's been a great working relationship."
Mr. Christie - who has been one of Mr. Obama's biggest critics on behalf of Mitt Romney - testified on Wednesday to the president's personal help.
"I cannot thank the president enough for his personal concern and compassion for our state," Mr. Christie said. He introduced the president, saying that it was his "honor" to present him for remarks.
Mr. Obama was equally effusive, saying that Mr. Christie, "throughout this process, has been responsive."
"He's been aggressive," the president continued, "in making sure" that the state was prepared in advance of the storm.
"I think the people of New Jersey recognize that he's put his heart and soul" into the recovery after the storm. "I just want to thank him for his extraordinary leadership and participation."
The pair of political rivals standing next to each other less than a week before a presidential election testified to the magnitude of the storm, which brought them together despite their political differences.
Aides to both men had said they were not concerned about the political implications of the imagery at a time when people are suffering the effects of the storm and its aftermath.
- Michael D. Shear
4:10 P.M. | For Coast Guard, Waterways Are 'Eerily Quiet'
Keeping clear of floating debris and making sure buoys are secure have been the Coast Guard's two biggest jobs in New York Harbor since Hurricane Sandy washed through.
The Coast Guard has not been called to rescue anyone by boat, though it did help coordinate some of the efforts in which stranded people were rescued by helicopter, said Lt. Cmdr. William Walsh of the Guard's New York station.
"The waterways have been eerily quiet, and that's good," Commander Walsh said Wednesday as his 45-foot rescue boat cruised through the calm waters of New York Bay.
The Coast Guard gave a few journalists a brief tour of the approximate route traveled on normal days by the Staten Island Ferry. Since the storm, the bay has been nearly empty, except for boats piloted by the Coast Guard, the New York Police Department, the Fire Department and the Army Corps of Engineers, which are tasked with clearing up debris.
"It hasn't been this quiet since 9/11," Commander Walsh said. "And it started to get busier, faster then."
There are no pleasure boats allowed in New York Harbor, and no commercial ships except for those with specific permission from the Coast Guard, the commander said. On Wednesday afternoon, with journalists on board, the Coast Guard vessel spotted a group of three people sailing on a small boat called the "Chandi Nerissa." The Guard vessel pulled up alongside and gave the boat's occupants a warning.
"They're in violation of the rule to stay out of the water for now," Commander Walsh said.
Even the sturdy Coast Guard boat had to be careful, he said. The bay was spotted with bobbing chunks of pier, construction debris, logs, trash and other hazards. The boat could not safely get close to a section of the Staten Island shore where a tanker ship had washed up. At one point the Coast Guard boat had to stop and reverse its engines to clear debris.
The storm presented the Guard with many obstacles, Commander Walsh said, starting with the fact that its Staten Island headquarters flooded on Monday night. Guard officers have been sleeping in and working from a nearby firehouse.
The Guard's biggest job in the storm's aftermath is making sure all buoys around New York are still properly placed. The buoys are to ship traffic what street signs are to cars and trucks.
"Nowdays a lot of people navigate with GPS," the commander said. "But the buoys are more accurate."
The next challenge for the Coast Guard will be trying to assess what pollutants, and in what quantities, spilled into the bay. The Coast Guard has begun contacting businesses that store liquid pollutants, including gasoline, to find out if any are missing, Commander Walsh said.
As the Coast Guard vessel was close to its dock near Battery Park, a distress signal came in.
"We've got two kids in the water off South Beach," the commander called to his six crew members. "That's all I know right now."
- Nate Schweber
4:22 P.M. | Thousands Trapped by Flooding in Hoboken
National Guard troops sought on Wednesday to rescue thousands of residents still trapped by sewage-laced floodwaters in Hoboken, N.J., on the Hudson River, as local officials pleaded for volunteers to help. A significant part of Hoboken remained under several feet of water after most of the low-lying land on the west side was engulfed by the storm surge from Hurricane Sandy. Read more...
- David M. Halbfinger and Julia Preston
4:39 P.M. | President Obama and Gov. Chris Christie Speak
President Obama and Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey are discussing the aftermath of the storm at a news conference.
- The New York Times
4:22 P.M. | Obama and Christie Deliver Brief Remarks
Reporters traveling with President Obama and Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey have provided a fuller transcript of the comments by both men at a shelter in Brigantine Beach, N.J.
"I want to just let you know that your governor is working overtime to make sure that as soon as possible, everybody can get back to normal," Mr. Obama said. "Hopefully if your homes aren't too badly damaged we can get the power back on and get you back in. For those of you whose homes are damaged we've also got Director Fugate of FEMA, and one of the things we're going to do is to activate and make sure you guys are getting the help you need as quickly as possible."
A few moments later, Mr. Christie offered the following:
"I just want to tell all of you exactly what the president just said. I know he means it. We took a whole tour of the coast. He got a chance to see the destruction along the coast of New Jersey and we've been working with Director Fugate here to make sure that we need the things we need to get here. This state is working hard, too; you know we're working hard. I want to thank the president for coming here today. It's really important to have the president of the United States acknowledge all the suffering that's going on here in New Jersey and I appreciate it very much. We're going to work together to make sure we get ourselves through this crisis and get everything back to normal. Thank you for coming, sir."
- Michael D. Shear
3:49 P.M. | Couple From Randolph, N.J., Are Killed in Storm
A Randolph, N.J., couple who were active in pharmaceutical circles and in the equestrian world were killed when a tall tree fell on their pickup truck as they drove through Mendham Township on Monday night at the height of the storm.
According to the police, the couple, Richard and Elizabeth Everett, were driving north on North Gate Road, in a four-door Chevrolet Silverado when the accident took place.
Their 11- and 14-year-old sons, Pierce and Theo, were in the back seat when a 30-inch wide, 100-foot tall tree to the right of the car struck "and severely impacted" the cab, leaving the parents dead at the scene, the Mendham Township police chief, Steven Crawford, said.
Chief Crawford said the boys managed to climb out of the wreckage as first responders made their way to the scene. "My sergeant was the first one on the scene, and when he rolled up, one of the children was already out of the vehicle, and after he tended to the first, the second one exited the vehicle,'' he said.
Gov. Chris Christie initially told reporters that the couple had been struck after getting out of their truck. But the police on Wednesday confirmed that the couple died while driving.
"They were just trying to get home," Chief Crawford said. "It's very unfortunate."
The boys were taken to Morristown Memorial Hospital, the more seriously injured of the two with a head injury, the police said. Neighbors of the family said that the children had been released, and that relatives were en route who could help the orphaned children.
Besides the two passengers in the vehicle, the couple also had two older teenagers, Zoe and Thalia.
The family had recently opened the Blue Crest Riding Center in Long Valley, N.J., where the children pitched in, according to its Web site.
Over a long career in the pharmaceutical industry, Ms. Everett, who was 48 and known as Beth, had been the chief information officer for Organon USA and ImpactRx, and an associate director at SmithKline Beecham. She was most recently employed as a senior consultant at Carter McKenzie Select in Pine Brook, N.J.
"It's tough for the neighborhood," said Jason Williams, a neighbor. "They were a big part of the community."
- Alison Leigh Cowan
3:39 P.M. | New Jersey Town Issues 'Gridlock Alert'
The police department of Morristown, N.J., issued a "Gridlock Alert," via text message on Wednesday afternoon, reading: "Avoid Morristown. Gas stations are out of fuel, please make other arrangements."
A local news site, Morristown Green, reported Wednesday morning from a Getty Station where more than 100 cars were in a long line, "Gas station attendants said delivery trucks have not arrived in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy; Morristown police were dispatched to break the news to long lines of unhappy motorists." Berit Ollestad, a Morristown Green reporter, posted video of the line of cars on YouTube.
Video shot by Berit Ollestad, a Morristown Green reporter, showed a line of cars waiting to buy gas on Wednesday morning in Morristown, N.J.
- Robert Mackey
3:38 P.M. | Bloomberg Ends Briefing by Remembering Those Killed
Mr. Bloomberg has left the Blue Room of City Hall. In his brief appearance, he alerted parents that they would have children home from school for two more days, and warned drivers that the calculus of Manhattan commuting would be temporarily, significantly changed: if you have fewer than three passengers in the car, you will not be allowed to cross a bridge or tunnel.
The mayor began and ended his remarks with words for those who lost a loved one to Hurricane Sandy's wrath. Would the city be back to normal? Perhaps, Mr. Bloomberg said, but not for families missing a child, a parent, a sibling. "The bottom line is, we've lost some people," the mayor said in his concluding moments on the stage. He said the city must ensure that workers can still get into the office, that tourists can still visit attractions, and that New York achieve all this "in the name of those we lost."
Mr. Bloomberg played the same direct, logistic-minded engineer that New Yorkers have come to know. But these softer grace notes, along with a few light moments about his now-broken plans to attend the canceled Knicks-Nets game, were a subtle contrast to his usual, let's-keep-this-efficient approach.
- Michael M. Grynbaum
3:33 P.M. | Scenes From Lower Manhattan
By lunchtime on Wednesday, Water Street, the broad thoroughfare that runs up from the Battery parallel with the East River, just a block away from where the tidal surge poured over the sea wall and churned through the financial district's streets Monday night, was crowded with all manner of trucks and contractors. And as generators hummed and pumps forced water into the street, cellphone service in the area around Manhattan's southernmost tip seemed to improve somewhat.
In addition to the dozens of Consolidated Edison trucks and vans, there were giant flatbed and tractor-trailer trucks from companies as far away as Virginia, unloading pumps and other heavy equipment. There were demolition contractors, plumbers, electrical contractors, equipment leasing companies, telecommunications contractors and general construction companies along with disaster services contractors from around the country.
A giant black tractor-trailer truck from the Cotton Global Disaster Services, based in Houston, was packed with pumps, equipment for dehumidification and extraction, along with safety gear and food, according to a crisis director for the company who did not want to give his name because he does not generally speak to the media.
"We help business prepare for, respond to and recover from devastating events and we do that in a variety of ways," he said.
He said the company had as many as 10 clients in the New York City area, but he did not want to name the client or type of company it was working for on Water Street, saying only, "Well, we're working here in the financial district." He said its work would include pumping out water, "mucking out," drying and stabilizing the building along with cleaning and treatment.
"The endstate," he said, "is to put it in a pre-loss condition."
A few blocks to the north, for most of the smaller businesses along Peck Slip and Front Street, also a block from the river, the damage - and the amount of work required to reach anything approaching a "pre-loss condition" - was far more evident. For these restaurants, bars and small shops, it could be measured, perhaps on a smaller scale, but in more tangible terms: the piles of damaged tables and chairs, broken crockery, broken refrigeration units and pots and pans.
Alessandro Giannini, the manager of Il Brigante on Front Street, worked with several of the other employees cleaning out the swamped six-year-old Italian restaurant, whose tables and chairs were piled in the street. "None of us were prepared," said Mr. Giannini, waving down the block toward the other eateries and shops.
He said they had boarded up the windows with wooden panels but the water just poured in. He pointed to a mark on the wall about five feet up. "We can buy a new refrigerator," he said, but the wiring in the walls was likely damaged by salt water, something that they needed to determine before switching on any new equipment. Despite what appeared to be a daunting challenge, he said the restaurant hoped to reopen in two weeks or so.
Down the block, Jack Mazzola was much luckier. His Jack's Coffee II, one of four shops, is about three feet higher than most of the other businesses on the block, a small flight of steps. While he said the shop was flooded - he pointed to a spot on the wall about 2 \xC2 or 3 feet high that marked the high water - it fared far better than most of his neighbors and he said he hoped to open soon.
Mr. Mazzola, an energetic man who himself seems to be highly caffeinated, said his shops were designed to be community meeting places.
"We get power and we can do cash and carry and get the neighborhood caffeinated," he said.
- William K. Rashbaum
3:29 P.M. | Bloomberg Warns Drivers Who Disobey Restrictions
What will happen to drivers who try to enter Manhattan on Thursday with fewer than three passengers in the car? "We'll stop you," Mr. Bloomberg said emphatically. "You're not going to be able to get in." A reporter had asked whether a ticket or fine might be issued. The mayor suggested that scofflaw motorists would face a harsher penalty: shame. "Everybody's going to be driving by and honking at you, I assume," the mayor said.
- Michael M. Grynbaum
3:15 P.M. | Power Restored in Small Part of Manhattan
Power has been turned back on in the first section of Manhattan that lost it, a Consolidated Edison executive said Wednesday afternoon.
Electricity is flowing again to about 2,000 of the more than 220,000 Manhattan customers that have not had power since the East River surged up and swamped a Con Edison station at the east end of 14th Street. Most of the restored service is to large buildings, filled with either offices or apartments.
The rest of the company's customers below Midtown that lost power probably will not get it back until Friday or Saturday, said John Miksad, senior vice president for electric operations. But the Brighton Beach area of Brooklyn should have power again by 4 p.m. Wednesday, he said.
The "re-energized" network serves an area below Vesey Street on the west side of the southern tip of Manhattan, from the World Trade Center down to Battery Park. Mr. Miksad said it was restored first because it was the least damaged of all of the networks knocked out by the flooding.
All told, the company has restored power to more than 110,000 customers, but more than 785,000 are still without power in the city and Westchester County, he said.
- Patrick McGeehan
3:25 P.M. | Obama and Christie Exchange Words of Praise
At the Brigantine Beach Community Center, President Obama praised Chris Christie, the governor of New Jersey, for his efforts in responding to the storm.
"I want to let you know that your governor is working overtime," Mr. Obama said to people who fled to the community center as a shelter from the storm.
Mr. Christie quickly returned the compliment, saying of Mr. Obama, "he's been working with me," and adding, "It's really important to have the president of the United States here."
Both men spoke privately with some of the people at the shelter.
- Michael D. Shear
3:24 P.M. | Bloomberg Hopes City Will Be Mostly Normal by Monday
"Do you believe in crossing your fingers? I hope so." - Mayor Bloomberg's response to being asked if the city might be mostly back to normal by Monday. He said he was hopeful that mass transit and power would be mostly restored by then. Schools will be open, too. "In general context, yes, it will be back," Mr. Bloomberg concluded, but he added, "If you lost somebody, it's never going to be."
- Michael M. Grynbaum
3:18 P.M. | Halloween Parade and Basketball Called Off
Mr. Bloomberg said the Knicks-Nets game on Thursday at the Barclays Center had been canceled "at my recommendation." The mayor said he had planned to attend with his daughters and his companion, Diana Taylor, but he believed the lack of mass transit would cause too many difficulties. "I was looking forward to it," Mr. Bloomberg said.
The New York City Marathon will be held on Sunday as planned, the mayor said.
Mr. Bloomberg also said that Greenwich Village's Halloween parade would go on "some day next week," with a date yet to be determined. "Is trick-or-treating on tonight? Well, I suppose that's between you and your neighbors," Mr. Bloomberg said.
- Michael M. Grynbaum
3:17 P.M. | Labor Report on Jobs to Arrive Friday on Schedule
WASHINGTON - The October jobs report - the most anticipated piece of economic data still to be released before the election - will come out as scheduled on Friday morning, the government said on Wednesday.
Hurricane Sandy had shut down federal offices on Monday and Tuesday, and threatened to delay the release of the monthly jobs numbers. That led to hand-wringing in the presidential campaigns and even some accusations that the Obama administration might delay the numbers for its political benefit.
But a Labor Department spokesman said Wednesday in an e-mail that the report would come out as planned, at 8:30 a.m. Eastern time on Friday.
Read more...
- Annie Lowrey
3:16 P.M. | Obama and Christie Return from Air Tour
After touring New Jersey's coastal damage from the air, President Obama and Gov. Chris Christie are now at a community center in Brigantine Beach that is being used as a shelter.
A White House official told reporters that the president would talk to some of the 50 people who remain at the shelter.
- Michael D. Shear
3:13 P.M. | City Parks May Reopen This Weekend
The mayor hopes to reopen parks and playgrounds by the weekend. Until then, residents should stay away from parks, Mr. Bloomberg said. The parks department is still responding to reports of broken or dangling tree limbs. Mr. Bloomberg said the weekend "will be a good time to take the kids to the parks. Everyone will have been cooped up all week."
- Michael M. Grynbaum
2:51 P.M. | At La Guardia, Workers Trickle In; Cleanup Continues
La Guardia Airport was still closed Wednesday morning, with police officers sealing off approach roads and denying access to the public. Airport staff members and cleanup workers came and went as stranded passengers hunkered down in nearby hotels, trying to make alternative arrangements.
Along the edge of the now-receded water, piles of garbage lay washed up on the shore, up to the airport perimeter. Rotten fruit, flotation devices, soccer balls and thousands of glass and plastic bottles created a filthy rim of rubbish, showing the highest point to which the water rose during the storm. Shredded plastic bags dangled from tree branches.
Some airport staff members showed up for work for the first time since the hurricane. Michael DeLuca, 27, an electrician from Astoria, Queens, said he had arrived at dawn but departed half an hour later as so few of his colleagues had shown up. "The airport looked fine, but there's a natural dirt path that takes you into the airport and you can see where the water came in. It had to be 15 feet up from the low-tide mark," he said. He would show up for work again tomorrow, he said. "That's all we can do."
As he left the airport at the end of his night shift Abdallah Zeba, 42, a security guard, said that inside the building the airport was all right, but on the runway some of the water was up to knee level. "There is still water on the runway and even though the water may dry within a few hours, we love our customers and we don't want a risk," he said. "We will wait for the engineers to come and test the runway and prove it's safe before we can resume any work."
By early afternoon, from a vantage point in a nearby building overlooking the airport, large stretches of the tarmac appeared to be clear of flood water. However some pools remained, and service vehicles shuttled back and forth, continuing the clearance effort.
- Stephen Farrell
3:10 P.M. | Schools to Be Closed for the Rest of the Week
Public schools in New York City will remain closed for students for the remainder of this week, Mr. Bloomberg said. Teachers will be asked to report to work on Friday to prepare for reopening facilities next week.
"I realize this is a great inconvenience for parents," Mr. Bloomberg said.
- Michael M. Grynbaum
3:08 P.M. | Business Leader Donates Money to Recovery Work
Mr. Bloomberg said that a business leader has committed $2.5 million to assist the city with its recovery efforts. He said the identity of the benefactor would be revealed at a later time.
- Michael M. Grynbaum
3:08 P.M. | Dangling Crane to Be Secured in Coming Days
The city is hoping to tie down the dangling crane on 57th Street in Midtown; an additional crane will have to be constructed at the building to remove the broken boom. "The street will not be fully reopened until sometime this weekend at the earliest," Mr. Bloomberg said.
- Michael M. Grynbaum
3:07 P.M. | Special Bus Lanes Set Up Linking Manhattan and Brooklyn
Dedicated bus lanes will be created to help buses travel from Brooklyn into Manhattan on Thursday, Mr. Bloomberg said.
The Police Department will also set up nearly 200 "light towers" in downtown Manhattan on Wednesday evening, to provide illumination for a swath of the city that remains without power for the second full day. The mayor said the city had also been in touch with representatives of major cellphone companies to discuss the difficulties with service in Lower Manhattan.
- Michael M. Grynbaum
3:02 P.M. | Car Restriction to Be Enforced on Several Crossings
Mr. Bloomberg said the restriction on automobiles with fewer than three passengers would be enforced at the free East River bridges - the Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queensboro and Williamsburg Bridges - along with the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge (formerly the Triborough); the Lincoln Tunnel; and the Henry Hudson Bridge in Upper Manhattan. An exception will be made for the George Washington Bridge, he said.
- Michael M. Grynbaum
1:40 P.M. | Broken Crane Is Paralyzing Nearby Carnegie Hall
The crane boom dangling over West 57th Street like a broken violin bow has paralyzed life at Carnegie Hall, one of the world's most precious concert spaces almost directly across the street.
The hall canceled all concerts on Tuesday and Wednesday, and Thursday's performance by the Orchestra of St. Luke's. The city has cordoned off streets surrounding the hall and cut off utilities to the area for safety reasons, making it impossible for audience members, performers and anybody else to enter.
The closing comes at a critical time for Carnegie, which is in the heart of its season. Read more
- Daniel J. Wakin
3:01 P.M. | Mandatory Evacuation Orders to Remain in Place
The mandatory evacuation orders in Zone A remain in effect, and the mayor said they would not be lifted until the Buildings Department had a chance to inspect buildings in those areas. "I know it's annoying to everyone, but we don't need more loss of life," Mr. Bloomberg said.
- Michael M. Grynbaum
3:00 P.M. | Driving Into Manhattan to Be Restricted
Automobiles carrying fewer than three passengers will be temporarily prohibited from entering Manhattan, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced, a measure intended to streamline the commute for millions of New Yorkers trying to get to work as the subway system remains partly crippled.
The restrictions, similar to those imposed by the city in the months after the Sept. 11 attacks, will be enforced at nearly every major crossing into Manhattan, Mr. Bloomberg said. They will be in effect from 6 a.m. to midnight. The mayor suggested that an exception would be made for the George Washington Bridge.
- Michael M. Grynbaum
2:56 P.M. | Bloomberg Mourns Lives Lost in Storm
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has begun his latest briefing on the storm recovery.
"For all we do to recover, it's fair to say we can't replace the lives of the people lost in the storm," he began, speaking in softer tones than usual about the injuries and deaths caused by the hurricane. "Any loss of life is tragic; sadly, nature is dangerous, and these things occur. The best thing we can do for those who did die is make sure this city recovers for those who come out of this and build a better life for those left behind."
- Michael M. Grynbaum
2:46 P.M. | How Hurricane Sandy Slapped the Sarcasm Out of Twitter
Twitter is often a caldron of sarcasm, much of it funny, little of it useful. But as a social medium based on short-burst communication, Twitter can change during large events - users talk about "watching" the spectacle unfold across their screens. It is, after all, a real-time service, which means that you can "see" what is happening as it happens.
As a media reporter, my Twitter feed has a strong Manhattan bias, serving as a sandbox for media and technology types that I follow. Under normal circumstances, we show up on Twitter to preen, self-promote and crack wise about the latest celebrity scene. If that New York cohort has a soul - insert your own joke here - you could see into it on Twitter.
And then along came Hurricane Sandy. For most of Monday, people on Twitter were watching an endless loop of hurricane coverage on television and having some fun with it, which is the same thing that happens when the Grammys or the Super Bowl is on. But as the storm bore down, Twitter got busy and very, very serious.
It is hard to data-mine the torrent - some estimates suggested there were three and a half million tweets with the hashtag #Sandy - but my feed quickly moved from the prankish to the practical in a matter of hours as landfall approached. I askedSimon Dumenco, who writes the Media Guy column for Advertising Age and is well versed in the dark arts of Twitter analytics, about the tonal shift via e-mail.
"I kept a close eye on the Top 10 Trends chart as Sandy was bearing down on the East Coast, and there was no shortage of gravitas on Twitter," he wrote. "The last time I checked before losing power in my Manhattan apartment, seven of the 10 trends were Sandy-related - New Jersey, ConEd, Hudson River, Lower Manhattan, FEMA, Queens and #SandyRI. Clicking on each of them yielded plenty of information."
At my home in suburban New Jersey, a 30-foot limb dropped down at 4 p.m., so the illusion that this was an event happening to someone else quickly dissipated. And at 8 p.m., just when we hunkered down in front of the big screen, the house went dark. This very large event would not be televised. We built a fire and sat around a hand-cranked radio, but I was diverted over and over by the little campfire of Twitter posts on my smartphone.
It was hard to resist. Twitter not only keeps you in the data stream, but because you can contribute and re-tweet, you feel as if you are adding something even though Mother Nature clearly has the upper hand. The activity of it, the sharing aspect, the feeling that everyone is in the boat and rowing, is far different from consuming mass media.
Read more...
- David Carr
2:39 P.M. | Basketball Game at Barclays Center Postponed
A day after the N.B.A. announced the game would go on, the Brooklyn Nets' debut at the Barclays Center, scheduled for Thursday night, was postponed because of the lingering effects of Hurricane Sandy.
- The New York Times
2:37 P.M. | Obama and Christie View Widespread Destruction
President Obama and Chris Christie, the governor of New Jersey, viewed widespread devastation along the New Jersey coast, according to a report from journalists in a helicopter following behind Marine One on Wednesday afternoon.
The two politicians have not yet spoken about what they saw, but the report from the journalists described the view from their ride.
"There was a carnival and a large pier that look like the storm took giant bites out of the ends of them," the pool reporter said, describing the town of Seaside Heights. "Houses flattened - not whole neighborhoods, but scattered here and there. Wood fragments everywhere. The boardwalk gone except for lonely posts here and there. The whole town looks like a beach with houses sprouting out from the middle of their first levels."
The pool reporter described the water's devastation, including a "fire, which appears to have taken out about eight homes to the ground. It is burning as we pass by."
Some of the towns along the coast seemed to have fared better, the reporter wrote.
"At Ship Bottom, things look better," the reporter said. "Roads only have sand on them within two blocks of the ocean. Streets are under water at the bayfront at what looks like loading docks for boats. There are a handful of what were once walkways to the beach that have been torn apart. Other walkways to the beach remain."
But there is clearly a lot of damage.
"The next town to the north, Point Pleasant Beach, again has sand and water everywhere. It is about four blocks inland before you can see concrete on the roads," the report says. "Someone has written 'ROMNEY' in large letters in the sand at the north end of Point Pleasant Beach."
- Michael D. Shear
2:16 P.M. | The Impact on the Rat Population, for Better and Worse
There are millions of rats in New York City and - usually, blessedly - they remain hidden, under the streets, inside subway tunnels, and in and around the waterfront. Hurricane Sandy has changed that, however.
The city's health department believes the storm has had a significant impact on the rat population, for better and worse. Sam Miller, a spokesman for the department, said that some percentage have most likely died in the deep floodwaters inside the subway tunnels. "They are pretty good swimmers," he said, "but they also drown, especially the young ones. The flooding kills them in their burrows."
The result, he said, may be a "net reduction" in the rat population.
Now for the bad news. The stronger rats have probably fled the rising waters and emerged on the surface. Pedestrians and bicyclists have reported seeing clusters of dead rats in Riverside Park and isolated victims on the bike path that runs along the West Side Highway. Mr. Miller said that the health department had yet to observe an increase on the streets and sidewalks, but he added, "We're monitoring that."
According to the department's rodentologist - yes, that's a job title - New Yorkers need not worry about increased numbers of rats in terms of disease. "There's no demonstrated health risk from flushed-out rats," said Mr. Miller, noting that the predominant species in the city was the Norway rat.
- Lisa W. Foderaro
1:56 P.M. | Details Released on Restoring Mass Transit Service
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on Wednesday afternoon released an update of mass transit conditions, including details of the subway service restorations to begin on Thursday. Officials have said that for the gaps in service along typical subway routes, buses will often be added to make the necessary connections. Here is the statement from the governor's office:
N.Y.C.T. SUBWAY SERVICE:
1 trains will operate local between 242nd Street (Bronx) and Times Square-42nd Street.
2 trains will operate between 241st Street (Bronx) and Times Square-42nd Street, with express service between 96th Street and Times Square.
3 trains are suspended.
4 trains will operate in two sections making all local stops:
Between Woodlawn (Bronx) and Grand Central-42nd Street
Between Borough Hall and New Lots Avenue
5 trains will operate express in Brooklyn between Atlantic Avenue-Barclays Center and Flatbush Avenue.
6 trains will operate local between Pelham Bay Park and Grand Central-42nd Street.
7 trains are suspended.
42nd Street Shuttle S trains will operate between Times Square and Grand Central.
A trains will operate in two sections making all local stops:
Between 168th Street (Manhattan) and 34th Street-Penn Station
Between Jay Street/MetroTech and Lefferts Blvd.
B and C service is suspended.
D trains operate in two sections:
Between 205th Street (Bronx) and 34th Street-Herald Square making all local stops
In Brooklyn, between Atlantic Avenue-Barclays Center and Bay Parkway making express stops between Pacific Street and 36th Street
E trains are suspended.
F trains operate in two sections making all local stops:
Between 179th Street (Queens) and 34th Street-Herald Square
In Brooklyn, between Jay Street-MetroTech and Avenue X
G trains are suspended.
J trains operate between Jamaica Center and Hewes Street making all local stops.
L trains operate between Broadway Junction and rockaway Parkway making all local stops.
M trains operate between Myrtle Avenue-Broadway and Metropolitan Avenue.
N trains operate between Ditmars Blvd. (Queens) and 34th Street-Herald Square making all local stops.
Q trains are suspended.
R trains operate in Brooklyn between Jay Street-MetroTech and 95th Street making all local stops.
Both the Franklin Avenue and Rockaway Park S shuttles are suspended.
SHUTTLE BUSES:
All shuttle buses will operate north on 3rd Avenue and south on Lexington Avenue.
Between Atlantic Avenue-Barclays Center and 57th Street-Lexington Avenue via the Manhattan Bridge
Between Jay Street-MetroTech and 57th Street-Lexington Avenue via the Manhattan Bridge
Between Hewes Street and 57th Street-Lexington Avenue via the Williamsburg Bridge
LONG ISLAND RAIL ROAD:
City Terminal - (Jamaica - Penn Station): Suspended (anticipate shuttle between these stations later tonight)
Ronkonkoma Branch: Suspended (goal to restore hourly service from Ronkonkoma to Penn Station for AM rush hour Thursday, Nov. 1)
Port Washington Branch: Suspended (goal to restore hourly service from Great Neck to Penn Station for AM rush hour Thursday, Nov. 1)
Babylon Branch: Suspended
Port Jefferson Branch: Suspended
Montauk Branch: Suspended
Hempstead Branch: Suspended
Long Beach: Suspended
Far Rockaway: Suspended
Oyster Bay Branch: Suspended
West Hempstead: Suspended
METRO-NORTH:
Hudson Line: Suspended
Upper Harlem Line: Suspended
Lower Harlem Line: Restored with hourly service
New Haven Line: Suspended
New Canaan Branch: Suspended
Danbury Branch: Suspended
Waterbury Branch: Suspended
West-of-Hudson:
Pascack Valley: Suspended
Port Jervis: Suspended
Bridges and Tunnels
Robert F. Kennedy Bridge: Open
Henry Hudson Bridge: Open
Throgs Neck Bridge: Open
Bronx-Whitestone Bridge: Open
Verrazano-Narrows Bridge: Open
Marine Parkway-Gil Hodges Memorial Bridge: Open
Cross Bay Veterans Memorial: Open northbound to Broad Chanel; Open southbound to Rockaways but subject to period closures for emergency equipment
Hugh L. Carey Tunnel: Closed
Queens Midtown Tunnel: Closed
- Matt Flegenheimer
12:39 P.M. | Dozens of National Parks Stay Closed or Partly Closed
The National Park Service reported that 69 parks were closed or partly closed as of Tuesday night, as teams of emergency managers converged on the Gateway National Recreation Area to focus on parks in northern New Jersey and in New York City and its harbor.
The park service's morning report has a preliminary rundown.
All electrical and mechanical systems on Ellis Island are under water, it said, and a fuel tank has been dislodged; Liberty Island may have lost all its high-voltage equipment.
Early reports show that the damage at some units of the park system is very severe, and in some cases the parks are likely to take a long time to reopen fully.
Some places that are prone to flooding, however, like Harpers Ferry, at the confluence of the Shenandoah and Potomac Rivers, are open today. A ranger has scheduled a program today about the town's historic floods.
Thousands of local and state parks also remain closed, including all of New York City's.
- John H. Cushman Jr.
1:58 P.M. | Obama's Storm-Damage Tour Is Not About Politics, Spokesman Says
Jay Carney, the president's press secretary, told reporters on Air Force One that the damage tour with Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey should not be seen as a political event.
"This is a time to focus on what was a devastating storm and the terrible aftermath of that storm," Mr. Carney said as Mr. Obama flew to New Jersey from Washington.
He added: "New Jersey was by many measures the hardest-hit state, I believe that's correct. It is entirely appropriate for the president to visit New Jersey and receive updates on the efforts there to recover and to view firsthand the damage inflicted by Sandy. This is not a time for politics."
Mr. Christie has been one of Mr. Obama's fiercest critics, accusing him of lacking the abilities to lead the nation effectively. But in the past several days, he has had nothing but praise for the president.
Asked why the president chose to visit New Jersey, Mr. Carney said that "we are very careful about making sure that the places that we visit we are not using resources that would otherwise be used in recovery efforts; that's the case here."
- Michael D. Shear
1:46 P.M. | Bellevue Hospital Is Being Evacuated
Bellevue Hospital Center, New York City's flagship public hospital, is evacuating about 500 patients, hospital officials said moments ago.
Bellevue, which is in Manhattan near the East River but not in the worst of the flood zone, has been operating on backup generators. Its lobby has been dark, with other lights working intermittently, doctors said.
The health department has authorized "surge capacity plans," hospital officials said. Appeals for other hospitals to take Bellevue patients have been marked "URGENT" and "ASAP."
Officials at other hospitals said that they were being asked to accept patients above their normal capacity, under rules put in place for catastrophic events.
On Tuesday, signs of stress were evident as people could be seen carrying babies down the staircase. One doctor questioned why the hospital was not fully evacuating, and thought it might be that because the nearby NYU Langone Medical Center had been forced to evacuate 300 patients, after discharging 100, and there was not enough room at other hospitals.
The hospital smelled bad, perhaps from fuel. Emergency lights were on. Ambulances were being diverted from the emergency room, which is one of the city's major trauma centers.
- Anemona Hartocollis
1:37 P.M. | Officials Hope to Secure Crane This Weekend
Officials are hoping this weekend to secure the broken crane boom that is dangling 1,000 feet above 57th Street, across from Carnegie Hall, forcing the evacuation of nearby buildings and street closings.
The steel boom, which sits atop a mast next to the skyscraper under construction at 157 West 57th Street, twisted and snapped in strong winds on Monday afternoon. The boom now points downward, swaying in the wind.
"It's possible that some work could be done tomorrow," said one city official who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter. "The vacate zones will be shrunk as we get closer to the weekend."
Executives from Extell Development, the developer, have been meeting with officials from the Buildings Department, engineers, the crane manufacturer and construction executives to devise a plan to lash the boom to the building and prevent it from plunging to the street below.
The boom extends from a swiveling platform at the top of the crane. Officials hope to be able to turn the platform, moving the boom closer to the building.
The mast itself is tied to the building at various intervals as it rises to the top of the tower.
On Monday night, building inspectors, along with firefighters rode it to the 20th floor, before climbing the remaining 54 floors to the top of the skyscraper where they inspected the damaged boom amid swirling winds. They determined that although the crane was stable, it needed to be further secured. After the storm eased Tuesday afternoon, the inspectors returned to the top of the tower for a second inspection. Since then, engineers and officials have been devising a plan to safely strap the broken boom to the building.
- Charles V. Bagli
1:30 P.M. | Christie Greets Obama as He Arrives in New Jersey
Chris Christie, the Republican governor of New Jersey, greeted President Obama as he emerged from Air Force One on Wednesday for a joint tour of the state's devastated coast.
The two shook hands at the bottom of the stairs from the president's plane, and Mr. Obama patted the governor on the back several times. Craig Fugate, the head of FEMA, also shook hands with Mr. Christie.
Mr. Christie and Mr. Obama talked to each other as they walked to Marine One, the president's helicopter, for the brief ride to the storm-damaged area. Mr. Obama gestured to Mr. Christie to board the helicopter first.
The tour of the area was expected to last about an hour
- Michael D. Shear
1:26 P.M. | Bloomberg to Speak at News Conference
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is scheduled to update New Yorkers on the storm recovery efforts at 1:30 p.m.
Watch live video of the news conference on nytimes.com or in the Top News sections of New York Times mobile apps.
- The New York Times
1:26 P.M. | Air Force One Lands in Atlantic CIty
Air force One lands in AC twitter.com/wendyruderman/
- Wendy Ruderman (@wendyruderman) October 31, 2012
President Obama touched down in Atlantic City shortly after 1 p.m. to begin his assessment tour of New Jersey with Gov. Chris Christie.
- Wendy Ruderman
1:11 P.M. | New Jersey Power Plant Ends 'Alert'
With Hurricane Sandy's surge receding, the Oyster Creek nuclear plant, in Lacey Township, N.J., ended its "alert" at 3:52 a.m. on Wednesday and returned to normal operations, meaning a shutdown for refueling that began a week before the storm.
The plant, about 60 miles east of Philadelphia, had declared an alert, the second lowest of the four-level emergency ranking established by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, when the water level rose in its cooling water intake structure. Had the level risen farther, it might have submerged the pumps that pull in cooling water, forcing the operators to resort to alternate methods of cooling.
But water levels did not rise high enough to prevent the normal functioning of plant equipment, according to Exelon, the plant operator.
At one point, the high-voltage grid failed and the plant's two emergency diesel generators started up to provide power, but a grid connection has been re-established, according to Entergy.
The storm disrupted the grid at several reactors and forced their shutdown, but only Oyster Creek reached the "alert" stage, a status that requires notification of various government agencies but no public action.
- Matthew Wald
12:55 P.M. | Cellphone Calls Continue to Fail
WASHINGTON - Cellphone calls in the Northeast region are continuing to fail because one-quarter of the transmission sites in areas ravaged by Hurricane Sandy were knocked out and many of those are not expected to come back online for several days at least, government officials say.
The Federal Communications Commission also said "a small number" of 911 service centers - the sites that receive emergency calls and link them with first responders - also were out of service after the storm, the second time in recent months that 911 service has experienced weather-related failures. Many emergency calls were rerouted, officials said, to call centers that survived the storm.
"Our assumption is that communication outages could get worse before they get better," Julius Genachowski, the F.C.C. chairman, told reporters in a conference call Tuesday afternoon. "I want to emphasize that the storm is not over," he said referring to the weather and the facilities.
Verizon said Wednesday that 6 percent of its cell sites remained down in storm-affected areas, although all of its switching and data centers "are functioning normally." T-Mobile issued a statement saying that roughly 20 percent of its network in New York City is out of service, as is up to 10 percent of its network in Washington.
AT&T declined to specify the status of its systems on Wednesday. All of the companies said they were working to assess and repair the damaged networks.
Most of the emergency calls that were affected by the storm were rerouted to other 911 service centers, Mr. Genachowski said, but a portion of those came into the new centers without electronic location information, which tells the 911 operator where the call originated, causing public safety officials to rely on callers for details about where an emergency was occurring.
F.C.C. officials declined to identify where the affected 911 centers were located, or which phone companies were responsible for servicing them.
Roughly one-quarter of the residents of the 10 states that were affected by Hurricane Sandy also lost cable television and broadband Internet service, killing most or all of the connections that millions of consumers were relying on for information.
The F.C.C. is currently in the middle of a formal inquiry into the causes of widespread outages of 911 networks in June resulting from the derecho, a violent wind-and-thunder storm.
- Edward Wyatt
1:05 P.M. | A Relief Offer From Iran, With Possible Strings Attached
TEHRAN - Iranian aid workers are at the ready to go to New York to assist victims of Hurricane Sandy, the head of Iran's Red Crescent Organization said Wednesday.
"We are ready to help the flood-stricken people of America," Mahmud Mozaffar, who leads the organization, told the semiofficial Fars News Agency. "If American authorities agree, we can send our rescuers with equipment and tools to American cities in the shortest period of time."
Dealing regularly with floods and earthquakes, the Red Crescent is experienced in providing immediate assistance following disasters.But according to documents disclosed by WikiLeaks, American officials suspect some Red Crescent employees operate as spies when providing help in other countries. Read more.
- Thomas Erdbrink
1:01 P.M. | Subway Service Likely Thursday North of Midtown Manhattan
The M.T.A. has not yet released details about which subway lines will run on Thursday, and where they will go. But Joseph Lhota, the agency's chairman, suggested that subway service would operate north of Midtown Manhattan. The agency is waiting for power to be restored in parts of Manhattan beneath Midtown before it can bring trains back into that area. Mr. Lhota said he would provide more details about Thursday's service plans after the governor's news conference.
Mr. Lhota said the M.T.A. was losing about $18 million in revenue each day that service is suspended.
- Michael M. Grynbaum
12:50 P.M. | Cuomo Paints Dire Power Picture on Long Island
In Westchester, power restoration "is going to depend on where you are," Governor Cuomo said. "But I believe it is going to be coming on earlier in Westchester" than in Long Island, which the governor called the worst situation in the state in terms of power. "The substations on the south side of the island have been destroyed," Mr. Cuomo said, and he added that it was difficult to find enough transportation to bring in workers from outside regions who can assist with the Long Island recovery effort.
- Michael M. Grynbaum
12:49 P.M. | Climate Change a Topic in Storm's Wake
Climate change, absent from this year's presidential contest, has come front and center during this briefing on Hurricane Sandy recovery. Senator Schumer is criticizing politicians who do not discuss the issue of global warming. "I don't think the federal government has done enough," he said. "I think there are a group of people in Washington who have denied the truth. I think there is a relationship between these once-in-a-lifetime storms we experience every couple of years and what's going on in the atmosphere."
- Michael M. Grynbaum
12:42 P.M. | Cuomo Says Area Vulnerable to Extreme Storms
Mr. Cuomo is sounding a sober note about the possibility of more extreme-weather situations in the New York City region. "Climate change is a reality," the governor said. "Given the frequency of these extreme weather situations we have had - and I believe it is an increased frequency - for us to sit here today and say this is a once-in-a-generation, and it's not going to happen again, I think would be short-sighted."
The governor said that New York must "anticipate more of these extreme weather-type situations in the future," and he said that elected officials had a responsibility to think about new designs, or new techniques, to prevent similar damage to the region's infrastructure in the face of future storms.
- Michael M. Grynbaum
12:34 P.M. | Schumer Says Federal Government Response Is Critical
Senator Charles E. Schumer, a New York Democrat, is offering a robust defense of the federal government's role to finance and assist with the recovery from Hurricane Sandy. "There are some in Washington who say we shouldn't do this," the senator said, seemingly a subtle dig at politicians who have criticized the taxpayer money spent for federal disaster relief. "This is one of the biggest disasters to have ever struck this state, and even this country," Mr. Schumer said. "The federal response has to measure that scope, and be equal to that scope. We cannot cut corners or count nickels and dimes."
- Michael M. Grynbaum
12:12 P.M. | Thousands Stranded in Hoboken
In Hoboken, N.J., a city of 50,000 people across the Hudson River from Manhattan, local officials issued dire warnings about thousands of people stranded by flooding, and the National Guard began moving in on Wednesday morning to try to rescue them.
"Keep an eye out, go down to the lowest possible floor, but do not go outside," the city said on its Facebook page. "Signal to get their attention."
When the storm surge hit, the Hudson River breached its banks on the north as well as the south of the city. Water poured into the low ground on the west side. As of Wednesday morning, many streets in Hoboken were still under water.
Observer Highway, the exit from the south end of town, was still impassable for most vehicles.
The ShopRite parking lot on Clinton Street was under water, as were many of the lower floors of recently developed luxury rental buildings.
Parking lots on the north end, where bus and taxi companies store their vehicles, had two or more feet of water, and some vehicles were bobbing. On several residential streets, parked cars were akimbo after being washed up on sidewalks during the storm.
- Julia Preston
12:28 P.M. | Cuomo Focuses on Offering Praise
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo is calm today. He disclosed the big news - that the subways in New York City would be restored on a limited basis on Thursday - with little fanfare. And he has spent much of his time congratulating first responders and soberly discussing the efforts by electrical utilities to bring thousands of workers into the downstate area to help restore power to millions of blacked-out customers.
- Michael M. Grynbaum
12:24 P.M. | Christie Cancels Halloween
By executive order, there shall be no Halloween in New Jersey today.
Gov. Chris Christie signed an edict this morning "postponing Halloween celebrations across New Jersey" until Monday.
That means no official celebrations, and no candy-seeking either.
The downed trees and power lines and other damage from the storm and the emergency work being done across the state, Mr. Christie said in a statement, makes it "unsafe and imprudent to participate in traditional celebrations, such as trick-or-treat walks."
"I've taken this action to minimize additional risks to lives and the public safety as we begin the process of rebuilding and recovering from Hurricane Sandy," Mr. Christie said.
Local officials, the governor added, are "advised to notify and encourage their communities and residents to delay any planned celebrations" until Monday.
- Andy Newman
12:23 P.M. | Limited Subway Service to Return Thursday
The subway will begin limited service in New York City on Thursday, supplemented by buses between Manhattan and Brooklyn. There will be no subway service below 34th Street in Manhattan because of a lack of electricity. Three of the subway's seven East River tunnels have been pumped out.
- Michael M. Grynbaum
12:22 P.M. | Limited Commuter Rail Service to Return
Metro-North and Long Island Rail Road will begin limited commuter rail service at 2 p.m. on Wednesday, Governor Cuomo has announced.
- Michael M. Grynbaum
12:21 P.M. | Cuomo Praises Obama on Storm Response
President Obama, who is touring New Jersey with Gov. Chris Christie today, also received praise from Mr. Cuomo. "President Obama has been on top of the situation, he has been very informed, I have spoken to him several times myself," Mr. Cuomo said.
- Michael M. Grynbaum
12:20 P.M. | Cuomo Returns From Tour of Storm-Damaged Areas
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo opened his noon briefing by congratulating the first responders across the state. He is just back from a helicopter tour of damaged areas; he was joined by Senator Charles E. Schumer, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, and the chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Joseph J. Lhota.
- Michael M. Grynbaum
11:57 A.M. | Gridlock Could Get Worse, Traffic Expert Says
As some New Yorkers still struggled to reach their destinations amid the gridlock of Wednesday morning, the city's reigning traffic expert delivered a disquieting reminder: It could get worse.
"I think the worst is yet to come as more and more people get to work and some of the electricity is turned on in Lower Manhattan," said Samuel I. Schwartz, a former city traffic commissioner known as "Gridlock Sam." "We're not seeing the full complement of people yet."
Major crossings like the George Washington and Verrazano-Narrows Bridges remained snarled; many waiting commuters were bypassed by city buses, which often could not accommodate any more passengers; and others chose to walk or bike over bridges rather than suffer the indignity of a slow crawl into Manhattan. On social media, some riders reported that buses had been rerouted substantially from their typical routes.
Mr. Schwartz called the nightmarish traffic situation "the equivalent of a subway strike, with several of our major tunnels closed." (The Brooklyn-Battery, Queens-Midtown and Holland Tunnels remained closed on Wednesday.)
The only analogous traffic episode he could recall was a storm that occurred during a transit strike more than 30 years ago. In that episode, Mr. Schwartz directed some tunnels to run only as outbound lanes. This time, the same option is not available with the flooded tunnels.
Still, transportation advocates said the city could be doing more. Paul Steely White, the executive director of Transportation Alternatives, called for high-occupancy vehicle rules that would ban private cars from entering Manhattan at certain points unless they carried at least two passengers. (The city issued similar rules during the transit strike of 2005.)
Mr. White also suggested temporary bike lanes, signaled by orange cones, in areas without clearly marked lanes. And particularly in areas without fully working lights, he said, the speed limit should be reduced to 20 miles per hour.
Messages left for the city's Transportation Department were not immediately returned.
Mr. White also noted that the city's bike-share program, which was scheduled to begin last summer but was delayed until next year, would have been an essential resource on days like this. "It would definitely be in full use," he said.
Some relief, at least, could come for railroad commuters. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority said some limited Metro-North Railroad service could return as soon as Thursday. The authority also said it would provide a more fulsome update on system-wide service restoration efforts by midday on Wednesday.
- Matt Flegenheimer
12:07 P.M. | In New Jersey, Some Power Back but Much Work Remains
The biggest utility that serves northern New Jersey is still trying to restore the main lines that send power to the areas around several cities after getting electricity flowing to Newark again, company officials said Wednesday.
The company, Public Service Electric and Gas, first must repair the equipment that carries power from the regional grid to substations around the state before crews can engage in the "hand-to-hand combat" of determining where overhead wires are down and which customers have lost power, said Ralph A. LaRossa, president of the utility.
Mr. LaRossa said the company had "re-energized" Elizabeth and Hoboken and parts of Jersey City. He said that even though power had been restored to Newark, including to the airport, up to 40 percent of the customers there were still in the dark for various reasons.
Many hospitals, including St. Barnabas, St. Joseph and the main hospitals in East Orange and Englewood, also were back on the grid, Mr. LaRossa said.
The developments have helped reduce the number of customers without power to about 900,000 from a peak of roughly 1.5 million, he said. But he said the damage caused to switches and substations by the tidal surge would take days to repair.
Assessing just which neighborhoods and homes need new poles and wires is in "the category of hand-to-hand combat that we won't really understand until we get these major assets back in service," Mr. LaRossa said.
"Until the switching stations feed the substations," he continued, "we don't really have the ability to say, 'Oh, Mr. and Mrs. Smith's house is out because of a tree on their line.'"
The flooding was the unforeseen part of Hurricane Sandy's impact on the electric system, said Ralph Izzo, chairman of the utility's parent company.
He said that the winds whipping around the north side of the eye of the hurricane did the most damages to overhead wires in the northern part of the state, particularly Bergen and Passaic Counties.
Mr. Izzo said the company was still seeking more crews from out of state to help with the repair work and hoped that some that had committed to work elsewhere would now be freed up to go to New Jersey.
- Patrick McGeehan
12:10 P.M. | U.S. Death Toll Rises to 59
The storm is blamed for at least 59 deaths in the United States, including 22 in New York City. Here is a state-by-state breakdown, according to reporting from The Associated Press.
New York: 29
Pennsylvania: 7
New Jersey: 6
West Virginia: 5
Connecticut: 3
Ohio: 2
Virginia: 2
Maryland: 2
North Carolina: 2
New Hampshire: 1
- The New York Times
11:53 A.M. | Commuters Tell Us Their Woes
As New Yorkers walked, biked, took to their scooters, drove in bumper to bumper to bumper traffic, shared taxis and squeezed into busses this morning, we asked them to tell us their commute stories on Twitter. Below, a selection of their mostly exasperated responses.
our co-worker's Nightmare Commute: Escape from Brooklyn: 8 blocks + 1.5 hrs = #AbsolutelyNoWhere(exit cab-walk back home-pj's on) #tellNYT
- randi jccnyc (@randijccnyc) October 31, 2012
#tellNYT line of cars to BK bridge extends length of Clinton Street (including a coned truck)
- Sasha S (@notsashaobama) October 31, 2012
@nytimes My total commute time from Astoria was approximately 2 hours and 15 minutes. I should have just walked across! #tellNYT
- Rainer Coloma (@RainerColoma) October 31, 2012
@lexinyt Lucky I was able to walk to work. Best part? No traffic to deal with and brisk, fresh air. Walking is underrated. #TellNYT
- Jason Chan (@jbchan) October 31, 2012
@nytmetro I made the call to turn around right before the BQE exit because cars were not moving. Will try again later today. #tellNYT
- RaquelCayre(@RaquelCayre) October 31, 2012
#tellNYT got on M15 at 79th St at 9:00... It's 10:40 and we're only at 57th St. Good thing it's free.
- michele fuchs (@chelfish7) October 31, 2012
@nytimes#tellNYT buses were overflowing in Manhattan and traffic was getting nowhere fast. Walked to midtown.
- Liz Lloyd (@LizLloyd) October 31, 2012
On the SelectService M15 & crawling down 2nd Ave. traffic better after 59th st bridge. Will have to walk to Bklyn from Houston tho #tellNYT
- Nuree Choe (@nureechoe) October 31, 2012
@nytmetro Yes: 18 hours from SF to NYC via Philly. Bus, plane, plane, car - and no train. #tellNYT
- TrustMeI'mAScientist (@TrustMeScience) October 31, 2012
We are continuing to gather responses throughout the day and into the evening commute.
See an updating selection of them here.
- The New York Times
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USA TODAY
October 31, 2012 Wednesday
FINAL EDITION
The March of Big Bird's fuzzy fighters
BYLINE: Trevor Burrus
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 8A
LENGTH: 890 words
This weekend, just days before the presidential election, we're still going to be talking about Big Bird and the federal budget. That's when the latest fallout from Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's debate quip about cutting funding for public broadcasting will hit the streets of Washington in the form of a "Million Puppet March" (more like 1,000 puppeteers), which will descend upon the National Mall to protest the mere mention of cuts.
That raises the question whether we can cut even a single item from the federal budget, or will we just ride our growing $16 trillion debt until the inevitable day of reckoning? That is what the debate over cutting federal funding from public broadcasting is about -- not Big Bird, All Things Considered, or NOVA. Those things will almost assuredly continue to exist if federal funding, which is only 15% of public broadcasting's budget, is taken away. Yes, the total federal money given to public broadcasting is literally a rounding error in the federal budget, and yes, public broadcasting produces some excellent programming. Nevertheless, if we cannot cut funding from something that doesn't even need federal funds to exist, then we are truly unprepared to meet the serious budget challenges that lie ahead.
Democrats and Republicans are, of course, equally culpable in running to the barricades to protect the status quo level of spending time and time again. Each side has its sacred cows and, between the two, it seems that nearly all the federal government's budget is off-limits from serious cutting. This is an untenable and dangerous position that only guarantees eventual fiscal collapse.
The Big Bird fracas illustrates how out of touch with reality our budget fights have become. In the first presidential debate, Mitt Romney called out public broadcasting, specifically Big Bird, as something he would cut because "I'm not going to keep on spending money on things to borrow money from China to pay for." In response, President Obama's campaign launched a tongue-in-cheek ad attacking Romney's focus on Sesame Street rather than on Wall Street corruption and cronyism (Sesame Street later asked the campaign to take the ad down).
Standing in the cross hairs, as it has so many times before, is public broadcasting. Since its inception, public broadcasting has been attacked by both the left and the right as inadequately serving its mission to broadcast in the "public interest."
Mandatory mush
As a result of such constant attacks -- Romney's comments being just the latest -- public broadcasting sits in a pool of mediocrity, constantly chastised and chided and thus unable to truly push any boundaries lest it steps on the wrong toes. It is both more than it should be and less than it could be. More than it should be because no one should be forced to subsidize views with which they disagree, and less than it could be because constant threats to its funding creates programming that is more sanitized and bland than it would be otherwise.
This is not mere supposition.
Before the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, non-commercial broadcasting thrived. Because it took no federal money, National Educational Television was able to run hard-hitting documentaries that challenged the status quo with titles such as Who Invited US?, The Poor Pay More, Black Like Me and Inside North Vietnam. The dirty secret of public broadcasting is that initially, federal funding was partially given as a way to make the message more palatable to government. Much of this history has been forgotten. For 45 years, public broadcasting has given us many hours of high-quality programming and some memorable moments. Thousands of people work for public broadcasting, and millions enjoy its programming.
Fundraising boom
And almost none of that has to go away. The announcement that federal funding would be drawn down over a five-year period would create the largest fundraising boom in public broadcasting's history. Foundations, corporate underwriters and viewers like us would dig deep to keep it going because it is worth our hard-earned money, voluntarily given. What would remain is a fully independent, non-commercial entity that depends on the generosity of people to keep going, which, save 15%, is essentially what we have now.
Yes, some things will change. Rural stations that are more dependent on federal money might have to shut down. Some people will lose their jobs. Even so, if we are not prepared to accept these inevitable consequences, then we are unprepared to seriously examine a dangerously bloated federal budget that is pushing us quickly over the edge into fiscal oblivion. After all, ending any federal program will eliminate jobs and drastically change some people's lives.
This basic truth is paralyzing Greece's attempts to pull itself out of fiscal quicksand. As Greece has learned, cutting government programs too late can lead to dire consequences and rioting far more severe than 1,000 perturbed puppeteers. Unless we face these truths head-on, then a future like Greece's is inevitable. Let's keep that from happening, and to show that we can do it, let's start with Big Bird.
Trevor Burrus, an analyst with the Cato Institute's Center for Constitutional Studies, is the author of If You Love Something, Set It Free: A Case for Defunding Public Broadcasting.
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October 31, 2012 Wednesday
FINAL EDITION
Romney campaign plans positive, respectful tone
BYLINE: Jackie Kucinich, @JFKucinich, USA TODAY
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 2A
LENGTH: 565 words
With less than a week to go before Election Day, Mitt Romney -- after several days dominated by talk of Hurricane Sandy -- will try to make the most of the few campaign days he has left.
His campaign ramps back up today after canceling events and dialing back rhetoric because of the superstorm.
Since the hurricane began pounding the East Coast on Monday, the Republican nominee has largely followed President Obama's lead, putting aside overt politicking.
In many ways, neither campaign has really stopped. Television ads still ran in key states and outside groups and surrogates for both nominees continued to argue the case around the country.
Romney held an event at an arena here Tuesday that was initially scheduled as a rally, but the campaign insisted it was now a "storm relief" event. Still, it bore a very strong resemblance to the rallies he has conducted across the country -- complete with a biopic of the Romneys that has been a campaign staple.
Attendees were encouraged to bring disaster relief supplies, and Romney helped bag them for shipping to affected areas of New Jersey. Romney has urged supporters to bring supplies to campaign offices and promised they will be delivered to the affected communities -- meaning his campaign offices have a new task to manage in the week before the election.
Shortly after Romney's remarks about hurricane aid and coming together, the campaign released a new ad attacking President Obama titled "Crushed by Your Policies" targeting voters in Pennsylvania coal country.
Romney is resuming his regular campaign schedule and will hold three events in Florida, even as Obama heads to New Jersey to assess hurricane damage side-by-side with Gov. Chris Christie -- one of Romney's top allies.
Asked about the risk of attacking a president who is touring the destruction, Romney adviser Kevin Madden said: "The plan is to strike a positive tone. Focus on the governor's vision for the country and what he hopes to achieve as president."
The presidential race is playing out in a few key states, so on Thursday, Romney will return to Virginia, where he scrapped three events on Sunday because of the hurricane.
Romney adviser Stuart Stevens said the campaign would stay out of areas where they could interfere with relief efforts, but otherwise the campaign must go on.
"The world doesn't stop for the campaign," he said.
Tuesday's event outside Dayton demonstrated how fine a line Romney is trying to walk in running an aggressive challenge to a sitting president and being respectful of the tragedy brought the storm.
The campaign initially canceled all events Monday night and Tuesday out of respect for the storm victims, but on Monday evening announced this event would take place with a different theme.
Two huge screens with messages to donate money to the Red Cross framed a stage draped with a huge American flag set for a concert by Randy Owens, the lead singer of Alabama, who performed after Romney's speech.
Romney avoided the stage and, standing instead on a platform in front of stacks of relief supplies, scrapped his usual speech, focusing his brief remarks on the relief effort.
"One of the things I've learned in life is you make the difference you can, and you can't always solve all the problems yourself, but you can make a difference in the life of one or two people as a result of one or two people taking an effort," Romney said.
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Washington Post Blogs
The Fix
October 31, 2012 Wednesday 10:53 PM EST
Obama leads Romney by eight in Wisconsin, poll shows
BYLINE: Sean Sullivan
LENGTH: 807 words
Make sure to sign up to receive "Afternoon Fix" every day in your e-mail inbox by 5(ish) p.m.!
EARLIER ON THE FIX:
President Obama, Gov. Chris Christie touring storm damage together in New Jersey
WaPo-ABC tracking poll: High marks for President Obama on Hurricane Sandy response
Democrats set to win early vote, but GOP outperforms 2008
The story of Congress has grown more partisan - in one amazing chart
Mitt Romney's late night problem
Why Mitt Romney can't, won't and shouldn't give up on Ohio
The 5 closest swing states
Why voter turnout in 2012 is likely to be down
Swing state polls show Obama up five in Ohio, four in Pennsylvania
Romney's expand-the-map strategy: Opportunity or necessity?
WHAT YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED:
* President Obama has opened up an eight-point lead over Mitt Romney in Wisconsin, according to a Marquette Law School poll of those likeliest to vote in the Badger State. Obama leads Romney 51 percent to 43 percent in the survey, which was conducted from Oct. 25-28. The same pollster found Obama leading Romney by just one point (49-48) two weeks ago. In the Wisconsin Senate race, the poll showed Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D) with a slight 47 percent to 43 percent advantage over former governor Tommy Thompson (R).
* Obama released a new radio ad touting the endorsement of former secretary of state Colin Powell, who crossed party lines to back the Democrat for a second time. Powell's endorsement prompted top Romney surrogate John Sununu to suggest the former Bush administration chief diplomat made the move because both men are African American, a claim he later backed away from.
* Rep. Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.) leads state Treasurer Richard Mourdock (R) 47 percent to 38 percent, according to a Global Strategy Group poll conducted from Oct. 28-30 for the Democrat's Senate campaign. When the Libertarian candidate is included, Donnelly's lead over Morudock shrinks to 43 percent to 36 percent. An internal poll conducted for the Democratic Governors Association and Indiana Democratic gubernatorial nominee John Gregg's campaign by Clarity Campaign Labs showed Donnelly leading Mourdock 49 percent to 42 percent (more on that survey below). As we noted this morning, a Mourdock internal poll released Wednesday showed a virtual tie between him and Donnelly.
* In the Democratic poll referenced above, Rep. Mike Pence (R) leads Gregg by a closer-than-expected 47 percent to 44 percent margin among those likeliest to vote. Pence has been regarded as a substantial favorite over Gregg in the race to replace outgoing Gov. Mitch Daniels (R).
WHAT YOU SHOULDN'T MISS:
* Rep. Todd Akin has placed a large ad buy for the final days of his campaign against Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.). The Akin campaign placed a $300,000 buy and a $386,000 coordinated buy with the state GOP. When asked by The Fix if the National Republican Senatorial Committee was pitching in for the coordinated buy, committee spokesman Brian Walsh declined to comment. The NRSC said it would not spend money on Akin when it was trying to force him out of the race after he stoked controversy when he remarked in August that "legitimate rape" rarely causes pregnancy, but has since opened the door to the possibility The Missouri state GOP had $230,000 cash on hand as of this week, so a coordinated buy would probably have used the lion's share of its money unless it got a big transfer.
* Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) rejected Elizabeth Warren's (D) proposal to debate on Thursday, following their mutual decision to skip Tuesday's debate because of Hurricane Sandy. "With only days remaining in the campaign, and with a long-planned bus tour kicking off Thursday through Election Day that will take Scott Brown to every corner of the Commonwealth, our calendar simply cannot accommodate a rescheduling of this fourth debate and the planning and preparation that would go into it," said Brown spokesman Colin Reed. Meanwhile, Warren released a new positive ad in which she says, "If you send me to the Senate, I'll work my heart out for you."
* Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) will campaign for Pennsylvania Republican Senate nominee Tom Smith on Thursday. Like Johnson in 2010, Smith is a wealthy businessman running against a Democratic incumbent.
* Senior Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod bet his mustache Obama will win Michigan, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania.
THE FIX MIX:
Tired of Bronco Bamma and Mitt Romney.
With Aaron Blake
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October 31, 2012 Wednesday 8:12 PM EST
The traveling hit woman of the Obama campaign
BYLINE: Amy Gardner
SECTION: Style; Pg. C01
LENGTH: 1432 words
ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE - Welcome to the "Jen and Jay Show," the latest iteration of the White House news briefing.
Known as "gaggles" when they take place on Air Force One, the daily briefings became a two-person road show over the summer when President Obama hit the campaign trail in earnest and petite, 33-year-old redhead Jennifer Psaki climbed aboard alongside Jay Carney to answer the growing volume of campaign-related questions coming from the press.
In the waning days of the campaign, the duo has given the briefings the feel of a vaudeville act: lighthearted and entertaining but also well rehearsed - and deadly for Republican Mitt Romney.
Straight man Carney, who is 47, a fluent Russian speaker and former Washington bureau chief for Time magazine, waxes serious about Syria or Libya - and then looks on with amusement while Psaki plays the double role of girl-next-door and tart-tongued attack dog.
Asked recently to comment on Romney's accusation that Obama would lie during the debates, Psaki said: "If Mitt Romney were Pinocchio, his nose would be reaching from Virginia to Ohio with the number of lies he's told."
A reporter even asked Carney if he was starting to feel like a bystander now that fewer questions were aimed at him. "Not at all," Carney offered cautiously. "I enjoy listening to my colleague field your questions. It's most comforting."
In some ways, the Jen and Jay Show reflects the small-bore tone of the 2012 election. Obama isn't so much promising hope or change this year; he's asking for more time - and relentlessly tearing down Romney so he doesn't look like a better choice. Alongside Carney's policy-oriented spiels about the European debt crisis or the unemployment rate, Psaki spends much of her time going after Romney: scoffing at him, needling him, mocking him. She is the traveling hit woman of the Obama campaign.
Commenting on Romney's summer trip abroad, during which he was jeered by the British press for criticizing security preparations for the Olympics, she offered: "The only person who has offended Europe more is probably Chevy Chase."
And about PBS's request that Obama take down an ad featuring Big Bird - in response to Romney's suggestion that he would cut federal funding for public broadcasting - she retorted: "It doesn't change the fact that there's only one candidate in this race who is going to continue to fight for Big Bird and Elmo, and he is riding on this plane."
Psaki's one-liners are sometimes downright weird, as when she channeled David Lynch about Romney's "lack of ideas," which reminded her of an empty pool with "dead leaves and trees in it." And there was Carney again, chuckling with the reporters and observing:
"I endorse language as creative and descriptive as that used by my friend and colleague."
Moving up?
If Psaki's style suggests a less consequential job than that of her traveling straight man, she is viewed widely as one of two top contenders to replace him, the other being Carney's deputy, Josh Earnest. By several accounts, Carney has no plans to leave, nor is anyone pressuring him to do so. But the job of White House press secretary has a high burnout rate - and a lucrative landing pad in the private sector.
Psaki, who grew up in Connecticut and attended the College of William and Mary, is on leave from a Washington consulting firm. She has been moving in and around national politics for a decade, including stints with the Iowa Democratic Party and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and as deputy press secretary for Sen. John F. Kerry's presidential bid in 2004. She began working for Obama in 2007, mastering the art of traveling press management and then spending two years in the weeds of domestic policy as deputy White House communications director.
Psaki sat in on daily economic briefings in the Oval Office, becoming close to the president as well as some of his innermost advisers: David Plouffe, Rahm Emanuel, Robert Gibbs, David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett. It's no accident that so many of those people are men: Psaki is comfortable palling around with the boys, and her ability to tell jokes and talk tough in the same breath is one of the reasons they like her.
"Jen is one of the smartest, nicest and most poised people in all of politics," said Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director. "She has the respect and trust of everyone she works with from the president to the press."
If Psaki does move on to the briefing room, she would become only the third woman to do so, after Dee Dee Myers of the Clinton years and Dana Perino, George W. Bush's third press secretary. (She'd be the fourth if you count the fictional C.J. Cregg from "The West Wing.")
She is among a growing army of women in prominent political roles this year, including Obama's deputy campaign manager, Stephanie Cutter, and three of the four principal spokeswomen for Romney: Gail Gitcho, Andrea Saul and Sarah Pompei. In other words, there is a very strong chance that a woman will stand at the lectern soon no matter who is elected president.
"Women are more than half of the country," said Nicolle Wallace, communications director for George W. Bush's White House and his 2004 reelection campaign. "I also think it sends a powerful signal about the man at the top. I give speeches all over, and I always talk about how George W. Bush's White House wasn't just a good place to work as a woman. It was a place ruled by women. Women in power use their power differently - more wisely and more judiciously."
The goals of the gaggle
While the West Wing's briefing room is staid and serious, with banks of cameras and high-octane stage lights illuminating an elevated lectern from which Carney looks down on the White House press, on Air Force One, the gaggle is little more than a klatch in the aisle of the press cabin. The reporters all stand shoulder to shoulder, and Carney and Psaki appear in the forward doorway, typically moments after takeoff. Reporters hop out of their seats, turn on their voice recorders and scrunch in close.
One reason for the intimacy is to overcome the noise of the Boeing 747's giant engines, but another is to help brace against the jostling of the flights, which feel remarkably bumpy at the back of the plane. During the gaggle, reporters clutch seat backs, the wall, even one another to stay upright. And more than a few gaggles have lasted all the way through landing.
"Hang on, guys," Carney exclaimed on a recent trip to Virginia Beach after noticing the runway through the window.
"Okay, no one has fallen," Psaki added as the airplane landed.
Perhaps that informality has emboldened Psaki to showcase her personality. But it hasn't always come out the way she'd hoped. During one gaggle - this one on the ground in Nevada, where Obama was preparing for his first debate - she was asked what else the president was doing with his time. Her answer landed with a thud:
"Well, I know this may surprise you. I'm not spending time with him in his room at 11 p.m."
The goal of the joint gaggle, spelled out by the White House as a legal precaution, is to show that the administration is focused on the business of governing - and that the campaign is a separate enterprise. It's not an unprecedented setup: Bill Clinton installed a campaign spokesman, Joe Lockhart, alongside his official press secretary, Mike McCurry, in 1996. George W. Bush did the same eight years ago, when campaign representatives Nicolle Wallace or Scott Stanzel shared the aisle with White House press secretary Scott McClellan.
Nonetheless, the "clear lines of distinction" seem less clear this time around. Wallace recalls holding her campaign press availabilities on the ground, not on Air Force One, for the sake of appearances. She can't recall McClellan ever commenting on a John Kerry ad - something Carney does occasionally "as a matter of policy." On one such occasion, Carney defended his remarks about an ad accusing Obama of rolling back welfare reform: "It is absolutely incumbent upon me, as the president's spokesman on matters of policy, to push back against blatant falsehoods like that."
There's no legal requirement to separate the functions of the campaign from the White House. Unlike independent committees, which are forbidden to coordinate with the candidate they support, advisers at campaign headquarters in Chicago talk daily to the White House brain trust to be sure that everyone is in sync.
Listen closely, and it's clear that Carney and Psaki are often saying the same thing.
gardnera@washpost.com
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October 31, 2012 Wednesday 8:12 PM EST
When Mitt met Sandy (and Chef Boyardee)
BYLINE: Al Kamen
SECTION: A section; Pg. A19
LENGTH: 874 words
It seems that Mitt Romney's campaign is adopting a new slogan: "Yes, we can." As in the canned goods the Republican presidential nominee is collecting to donate to victims of Hurricane Sandy.
But as Romney temporarily turned his campaign into a massive food drive, he's finding that, unlike franks and beans, charity and politics can be a tricky mix.
At a Romney campaign rally on Tuesday in Kettering, Ohio, hastily rebranded as a "storm relief" event, he asked attendees to bring food and goods to donate. "Long white tables to one side of the cavernous James S. Trent Arena were piled high with flashlights, batteries, diapers, toothbrushes, mini-deodorants, fleece blankets, cereal, toilet paper and canned goods," our colleague Felicia Sonmezreports.
The effort was complicated by the fact that security at such events is pretty tight, and attendees had to get all their bags containing donated goods checked out by the guys with the earpieces. It probably would have been far easier to just drop the stuff off at the nearest local food bank - or to text a donation to the Red Cross, as a sign at the event also suggested. (The Red Cross has said it prefers cash over cans.)
And in Virginia, the Romney campaign's call for donations went out at an awkward time. Just as public safety officials, along with every weatherman in the country, were warning people to stay off the roads and hunker down in advance of the damaging storm, Team Romney was urging them to hit the roads and come by campaign offices. "Bring donations to VA Victory offices," Curt Cashour, Romney's Virginia communications director, tweeted Sunday.
Of course, Romney wants to avoid looking overtly political while much of the East Coast is assessing the ravages of Sandy (and while President Obamais trading his role as a candidate for that of commander in chief). Still, the campaign's new can-do mode clearly isn't a perfect fit.
2-4-6-8, consolidate!
Texas Gov. Rick Perry's spectacular "oops" moment in a debate during the Republican presidential primaries - when he couldn't remember the third Cabinet agency he would abolish - doomed his chances.
But his loss doesn't mean some agencies won't be targeted for extinction or consolidation no matter who wins next week.
President Obama last week repeated a proposal he made earlier this year: to merge the Commerce Department, the Small Business Administration, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, the Export-Import Bank, the Overseas Private Investment Corp., and the U.S. Trade and Development Agency - and create a "secretary of business."
(Note to file: Consider a Loop contest to come up with a name less lame than that.)
The Wall Street Journal immediately blasted the notion, which has been kicking around for some time.
And Mitt Romney is expected to propose agency consolidation to streamline government - though he hasn't outlined specifics. He has talked about eliminating the Department of Housing and Urban Development (in fact, he mentioned that during the same fundraiser at which he dismissed 47 percent of Americans as moochers).
The president's Republican challenger has also said he that plans to cut the size of the federal workforce by 10 percent and bring federal pay more in line with the private sector. "More in line" is presumably a euphemism for freezing or cutting federal salaries.
Romney, who said in 1994 that he wanted to eliminate the Education Department, said during one of the primary debates that he favored sending the functions of the Federal Emergency Management Agency to the states, or "if you can go even further and send it back to the private sector, that's even better."
The D's, with Hurricane Sandy still wreaking havoc, are insisting this meant abolishing FEMA. But Romney's campaign has been in clarify mode, insisting that didn't mean eliminating FEMA, only giving the states a greater role. Romney, at his storm-relief event in Ohio, declined to answer reporters' shouted questions on the matter.
But don't hold your breath for a Cabinet restructuring no matter what the election outcome. Congressional fiefdoms make that extraordinarily difficult absent a cataclysmic event like 9/11, which prompted the creation of the Department of Homeland Security.
Even by Hill standards?
A prominent Tennessee conservative called Tuesday for the resignation of a Loop Favorite, Rep. Scott DesJarlais(R-Tenn.).
The antiabortion physician has been in a bit of hot water since it was revealed that he had pressured his patient and mistress to have an abortion. Even better, a second woman claimed last week that she had an affair with him back in 2000 and told the Chattanooga Times Free Press that she also smoked pot with him.
Apparently that was it for Tennessee Conservative Union Chairman Lloyd Daugherty, who said in a statement that DesJarlais had reached "a level of hypocrisy that is simply untenable."
Well, maybe for some people.
Daugherty added that DesJarlais had "accomplished something incredibly difficult. He has embarrassed the United States Congress."
Precisely. All the more reason for DesJarlais to stand his ground.
With Emily Heil
kamena@washpost.com
The blog: washingtonpost.com/intheloop. Twitter: @InTheLoopWP.
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October 31, 2012 Wednesday 8:12 PM EST
Takingthe truth off-road
BYLINE: Dana Milbank
SECTION: Editorial; Pg. A21
LENGTH: 760 words
Mitt Romney spoke to supporters in the Ohio town of Defiance last week, but his words came from the twin cities of Duplicity and Deception.
"I saw a story today that one of the great manufacturers in this state, Jeep, now owned by the Italians, is thinking of moving all production to China," the Republican presidential nominee proclaimed, referring to the automaker President Obama saved from dissolution with taxpayer funds. "I will fight for every good job in America."
The truth, however, was roughly 180 degrees opposite Romney's claim. Chrysler, which owns the Jeep label, has added about 7,000 jobs in North America since it emerged from bankruptcy proceedings in June 2009, and it continues to expand its U.S. workforce and to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in American plants.
Romney's fiction was apparently based on a misreading of a Bloomberg News report a few days earlier, which said that Chrysler would resume production in China for the first time since parent Fiat SpA bought the company - in addition to Chrysler's production in Michigan, Illinois and Ohio.
"Let's set the record straight: Jeep has no intention of shifting production of its Jeep models out of North America to China," Chrysler executive Gualberto Ranieri wrote in a statement, using italics for emphasis. "A careful and unbiased reading of the Bloomberg take would have saved unnecessary fantasies and extravagant comments." Ranieri said the conclusion that it was moving all production to China was "a leap that would be difficult even for professional circus acrobats."
But in the game of trickery, Romney is exceedingly dexterous. A couple of days later, his campaign came out with an ad in Ohio repeating the allegation in a way that tweaked the wording to make it technically true, while continuing to give the same false impression: "Obama took GM and Chrysler into bankruptcy and sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China. Mitt Romney will fight for every American job."
Romney's ongoing deception led Chrysler's CEO to send a letter Tuesday to the company's jittery employees, assuring them that "Jeep production will not be moved from the United States" and that "It is inaccurate to suggest anything different." The restored production in China was to avoid huge tariffs on vehicles imported into China.
The fast-and-loose with Jeep points to a troubling Romney instinct: When the stakes are high, as they are for him in must-win Ohio, the truth is often the first casualty.
It's difficult to quantify a candidate's relationship with the facts, but The Post's fact checker, Glenn Kessler, has calculated that, for much of the campaign, Romney and Obama were roughly even in their prevarications - until the past few months, when Romney has sharply ramped up his output of falsehoods.
Back in May, Romney's average "Pinocchio" rating from Kessler was 1.97 on a scale of 0 to 4. Obama was at 1.91. Now, Obama is at 2.11 and Romney is at 2.40 - putting him at the level of hogwash perpetrated during the primaries by Rick Perry (2.41) and Newt Gingrich (2.44).
This doesn't excuse Obama. The president's own truthfulness has been tortured - notably his claim that 90 percent of the deficit came from George W. Bush and his assertion that Congress "proposed" the budget sequester, not him. In a normal campaign, Obama's whoppers might be the story - but in this case, Romney is in a whole new category.
Recently, I wrote about Romney's continued claim that he has a plan to create 12 million jobs - even though the studies his campaign furnished to support the claim do not in fact do so. With the Jeep attack, even the Romney campaign seems to be abashed: It began airing the ad in Ohio over the weekend without following the usual procedure of announcing the ad's release. Apparently the campaign was hoping that people who knew better wouldn't notice. But this is the year of the fact checkers, and Romney's ad earned a quick challenge.
A Romney adviser said this summer that "we're not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers" - and on Tuesday, they proved it. The Post's Greg Sargent reported that the campaign had bought radio time for another ad in Toledo - just up the road from Defiance - where the Chrysler plant is located.
By making Jeeps in China, the ad alleged, Chrysler was breaking "the promises made to autoworkers in Toledo . . . the same hard-working men and women who were told that Obama's auto bailout would help them."
When it comes to the truth, Romney still lives in Defiance.
danamilbank@washpost.com
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October 31, 2012 Wednesday 6:04 PM EST
VP: 'I'm being a good Biden today'
BYLINE: Rachel Weiner
LENGTH: 166 words
"I'm being a good Biden today," says Biden, after holding his tongue over Romney Jeep ad
- Igor Bobic (@igorbobic) October 31, 2012
At a rally in Sarasota, Fla., Vice President Biden called Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney's misleading Jeep ad "scurrilous" as well as "flagrantly dishonest."
Saying the ad - which wrongly suggests Chrysler is sending American jobs to China - scared autoworkers into thinking they would lose their jobs, Biden added, "What a cynical, cynical thing to do." According to the New York Times, it was Romney's claim at a rally that Chrysler was considering moving all Jeep production to China that led autoworkers to call their union with concern.
"American taxpayers are on track to lose $25 billion as a result of President Obama's handling of the auto bailout, and GM and Chrysler are expanding their production overseas," Romney running mate Rep. Paul Ryan said in response to Biden's comments. These are facts that voters deserve to know."
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The Fix
October 31, 2012 Wednesday 5:30 PM EST
Romney's expand-the-map strategy: Opportunity or necessity?
BYLINE: Aaron Blake
LENGTH: 987 words
Mitt Romney's campaign and its allies have now launched ads in four blue-leaning states with less than a week to go in the 2012 election.
The pro-Romney super PAC Restore Our Future is the latest to join the expanding-the-map craze, launching a $1.8 million ad buy in Minnesota and New Mexico starting Wednesday, the PAC tells The Fix. Elsewhere, Republicans' spending has forced Democrats to match them dollar for dollar in Michigan and Pennsylvania.
The moves are at once borne of opportunity, but also of necessity.
Here's why.
Romney's campaign and its outside allies have money - lots of it. In fact, they just might have more than they need for the nine states that have been the focus of ad spending so far.
And as viewers in all these swing states can attest, there are only so many political ads you can air in one media market, and many markets are becoming saturated.
In addition, at some point, the law of diminishing returns takes effect. Rather than spend that extra $1 million in expensive areas like Northern Virginia or Columbus only to have it lost in a bevy of campaign ads, why not take a flyer in Minnesota, where polls suggest an upset is possible - if not likely?
The money also has the helpful side effect of making analysts like The Fix write about how Romney is expanding the map - a sure sign of momentum. That may be less the case than the Romney folks want us all to believe, though it's clear that Romney has made up ground over the past four weeks in some or all of these states.
But while it's nice to be able to try and expand the map, in Romney's case, the move may be as much about what Romney needs to do as what he can do.
As we've written many times on this blog, the Electoral College math for Romney is, quite simply, very difficult.
According to the current Fix projections, Obama has 255 electoral votes either solidly in his column or leaning towards him (including Ohio's 18), while Romney has just 206. So assuming Obama wins Ohio, he would need to win just 15 of the 77 electoral votes in the toss-up states.
Even if you consider Ohio a toss-up, Obama only has to win 33 of the 95 electoral votes in toss-up states.
But if you add any of the four blue-leaning states above to the list of competitive states, Romney's chances improve significantly. Adding Pennsylvania's 20 electoral votes would mean Obama needs to win 53 out of 115 electoral votes in toss-up states (including Ohio for the moment), adding Michigan's 16 votes would force Obama to win 49 out of 111, and adding Minnesota's 10 votes would force Obama to win 43 out of 105.
The Fix remains skeptical that any of these states will turn into toss-ups before Election Day, but if somehow they did, it would make the math much easier for Romney. And if he can't win Ohio, he needs to win in one or more of these states even more.
Romney doesn't absolutely need to add these states to the mix, but it's probably worth the effort at this point.
Romney super PAC going up in Minnesota, New Mexico: As noted above, Restore Our Future is taking its turn at expanding the map, launching a $1.8 million ad buy in Minnesota and New Mexico.
The ads will cycle between a positive spot on Romney helping find his business partner's missing teenage daughter and a negative spot hitting Obama's handling of the economy.
Minnesota has been looking more and more competitive in recent days, with one poll showing Romney within the margin of error. New Mexico has been basically ignored for the entire campaign, even though it went narrowly for President Bush in 2004.
Obama won New Mexico by 15 points in 2008 and figures to do well again, given the state's large Hispanic population. Most polling, including a recent Albuquerque Journal poll that had Obama up nine points, has shown Obama ahead by around double digits.
Mourdock poll shows virtual tie: Internal polling for Indiana GOP Senate candidate Richard Mourdock's campaign shows he remains in a virtual tie with Rep. Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.) a week after Mourdock's controversial comments about rape and pregnancy.
The new numbers, shared with The Fix, put Mourdock at 45 percent and Donnelly at 44 percent. The pollster, McLaughlin and Associates, surveyed 600 likely voters on Monday and Tuesday.
Last week, a Mourdock internal poll put both men at 44 percent, while a Democratic poll showed Donnelly ahead by seven points.
The new poll shows Romney carrying the state 57 percent to 39 percent.
Fixbits:
More expanding the map news: A Detroit News poll of Michigan shows Romney within the margin of error.
Romney ignores questions on his past position in favor of replacing FEMA with something from the private sector.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) keeps attacking Obama on Libya - this time at a storm relief event in Ohio.
"Brownie" attacks Obama too - on storm relief.
Obama's campaign says it is only making ad buys in states like Pennsylvania and Michigan because it wants to match any spending by Republicans.
Sandy's biggest electoral effect could be in the Philadelphia area.
New York may move some polling sites if existing locations can't be used on Nov. 6.
Early voting in Ohio proceeded apace before and after Sandy.
Fairfax County, a big Democratic area in Northern Virginia, re-opened in-person absentee voting on Tuesday afternoon.
Atlantic City Mayor Lorenzo Langford (D) hits back at New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) over Christie's Sandy-related criticism.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) records a robocall for his embattled friend, Rep. David Rivera (R-Fla.).
A new poll shows Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.) is again in a virtual tie with Republican Brendan Doherty.
Must-reads:
"Millions pouring into tight Senate races" - Paul Kane, Washington Post
"Why Romney's Inaccurate Auto Ad May Be Smart Politics" - Alex Altman, Time
"In San Diego, Gay Republican Finds He Can't Count on Gay and Lesbian Vote" - Ian Lovett, New York Times
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The Fix
October 31, 2012 Wednesday 5:12 PM EST
A status quo election? Could be.
BYLINE: Aaron Blake
LENGTH: 1140 words
What if, after all the hubbub over the 2012 election and the billions spent on it, Americans voted for basically no change whatsoever?
What if President Obama won reelection, Democrats were unable to put much of a dent in the GOP's big House majority, and Republicans failed to win back the Senate?
It's an increasingly real possibility.
We've known for a while that the presidency is very competitive, but more and more it's looking like the battles for the House and Senate majorities might not be.
On the Senate side, Republican candidates in Missouri and Indiana have jeopardized seats with their comments about rape and pregnancy, and in Massachusetts, Democrat Elizabeth Warren now appears to have the edge on Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.). All three states are integral for the GOP's majority chances.
Instead, with Brown's seat moving from "toss-up" to "lean Democratic" on The Fix's rankings on Thursday, Republicans would now need to win all six Senate races we currently rate as "toss-ups" just to gain a 50-50 split in the chamber.
And if they won just half of those toss-ups, the Senate would remain exactly as it is right now, with 53 seats held by Democrats and 47 held by Republicans.
On the House side, The Fix currently rates 226 seats as favoring Republicans and 182 as favoring Democrats. If the two sides split our 26 "toss-up" races down the middle, it would lead to a net gain of just three seats for Democrats.
In other words, at this point, if all "toss-up" races were split evenly, the Senate and the House would return with essentially the same majorities that we have in the current Congress.
It wasn't supposed to be this way; Senate Republicans appeared to have a great opportunity to win that chamber early this cycle, while House Democrats seemed destined to win back a good chunk of seats after Republicans won their biggest House majority in six decades in 2010.
But in both cases, the majority party has steadily built on its offensive opportunities and made the majority math much tougher for the other side. House Republicans added seven likely pickups thanks to redistricting changes and a series of Democratic retirements in conservative Southern districts. And Senate Democrats benefited from the retirement of Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), Sen. Richard Lugar's (R-Ind.) primary loss to Richard Mourdock, and the Democrats' ability to be more competitive than expected for Lugar's seat and for other open seats in Arizona and North Dakota.
None of this, we emphasize, is to say that Republicans won't win the Senate or Democrats can't win the House. In fact, for both chambers' minorities, there is lots of upside if things go well on Election Day.
Beyond the "toss-up" races, Senate Republicans have at least a shot at 10 other seats that "lean Democratic," including in swing states like Florida and Ohio and in a surprisingly competitive race against Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.). If they can somehow win a few of those 10 states, they would almost surely win the majority.
Similarly, beyond the House races rated as "toss-ups" are 19 seats rated as "lean Republican." If House Democrats can pick off half of them, they would win a majority too.
In both chambers, the minority party has the advantage of having lots of seats at stake, but the disadvantage of a good chunk of them being their own.
Which means that, after three straight "wave" elections, it's very possible that 2012 could be a status quo election.
Sununu suggests Powell backed Obama because of race: Former New Hampshire governor and White House chief of staff John Sununu, a top surrogate for Mitt Romney, suggested Thursday that Colin Powell is supporting President Obama's reelection because both men are black.
Asked on CNN about Powell's endorsement (he backed Obama in 2008 as well), Sununu suggested there was something else at work besides policy. Asked to clarify, he did so in his characteristically blunt manner.
"Well, I think when you have somebody of your own race that you're proud of being President of the United States, I applaud Colin for standing with him," Sununu said.
Romney outraises Obama in pre-election report: The last fundraising reports before the election were released Thursday, and Romney has regained his edge.
Romney's campaign announced it raised $111.8 million for itself and the Republican National Committee between Oct. 1 and Oct. 17, while Obama's campaign announced it raised $90.5 million for itself and the Democratic National Committee.
Obama had narrowly outraised Romney in August and September after Romney dominated in the middle part of the year.
So far this year, Romney has outraised the incumbent president $784 million to $764 million.
Mourdock says controversy helping him win: Richard Mourdock says he gained voters after his controversial comment about rape and pregnancy.
Asked whether he might have gained votes, the Indiana Senate hopeful said: "I know we did."
"It's an interesting thing that, up until the other night, this issue has not been discussed at all in the campaign trail," Mourdock said before an event Thursday. "That's why I'm absolutely confident that it's going to pass very, very quickly. We're going to win this race."
Meanwhile, former RNC chairman Haley Barbour said he thinks "what (Mourdock) said was kinda crazy" and that he doesn't agree with it.
Fixbits:
New NBC News/Marist College polls show Romney and Obama deadlocked in Colorado, while in Nevada, Obama is at 50 percent and Romney is at 47 percent.
Sheldon Adelson gave the top pro-Romney super PAC, Restore Our Future, another $10 million this month.
Obama suggests Paul Ryan's fondness for Ayn Rand is juvenile.
Gary Johnson's Libertarian campaign for president has significantly more debt than cash right now.
Now or Never PAC is spending $1 million to help Rep. Jeff Flake (R) in the Arizona Senate race. And it has also announced a $410,000 buy against Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.).
Flake's opponent, Richard Carmona (D) is running a new ad featuring kind words that Republican Sens. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) have said about him. Kyl and McCain, who have endorsed Flake, repudiated the ad.
The DCCC outraised the NRCC in the first 17 days of October.
Must-reads:
"Obama and the Road Ahead" - Douglas Brinkley, Rolling Stone
"4 years after Obama's breakthrough, few black pols on the ballot for major offices" - Mary C. Curtis, NBC News
"Judge to release Romney testimony from Staples founder's divorce trial" - Carol D. Leonnig, Washington Post
"Crucial Subset: Female Voters Still Deciding" - Katharine Q. Seelye, New York Times
"Political Newspaper Endorsements: History and Outcome" - Micah Cohen, New York Times
"Running for Gabrielle Giffords's House seat is not Martha McSally's first challenge" - Ann Gerhart, Washington Post
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October 31, 2012 Wednesday 4:48 PM EST
Ad watch: Pro-Obama group ties Romney to Medicare fraud
BYLINE: Rachel Weiner
LENGTH: 149 words
Priorities USA, "Connect the Dots"
What it says: "[Rick] Scott ran a company that paid a record fine for committing Medicare fraud. Then, as governor, Scott cut millions from health care. Romney was director of a company that stole millions from Medicare. Now, Romney's plan would end Medicare as we know it."
What it means: A new Kaiser Family Foundation poll finds that Romney is closing the gap with President Obama on who would better handle Medicare. This ad seeks to widen it by linking Medicare cuts to Medicare fraud. Florida's Gov. Scott did run a company involved in the biggest Medicare fraud case in history. Romney was on the board of Damon Corp. when fraud took place, but the activity began before Bain Capital's minority investment. Romney was not running the firm or charged with any wrongdoing.
Who will see it: Florida.
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The Fact Checker
October 31, 2012 Wednesday 3:29 PM EST
Mitt Romney's 'new math' for jobs plan doesn't add up;
The GOP presidential nominee explained why he thinks he can create 12 million jobs. But the calculations are fishy.
BYLINE: Glenn Kessler
LENGTH: 1027 words
"Let me tell you how I will create 12 million jobs when President Obama couldn't. First, my energy independence policy means more than 3 million new jobs, many of them in manufacturing. My tax reform plan to lower rates for the middle class and for small business creates 7 million more. And expanding trade, cracking down on China and improving job training takes us to over 12 million new jobs."
- Mitt Romney, "in his own words," in a campaign television ad
Romney's 12-million-jobs promise has garnered a lot of attention. We became interested in this ad after a reader asked whether the campaign had provided much detail on how he would reach this total. This television ad is also prominently featured on the Romney campaign's "Jobs Plan" Web page.
The math here appears pretty simple: 7 plus 3 plus 2 equals 12. But this is campaign math, which means it is mostly made of gossamer. Let's take a look.
The Facts
As we have noted before, the 12 million figure is not a bad bet by Romney. Moody's Analytics, in an August forecast, predicts 12 million jobs will be created by 2016, no matter who is president. And Macroeconomic Advisors in April also predicted a gain of 12.3 million jobs.
In any case, four of Romney's top economic advisers - R. Glenn Hubbard (Dean of Columbia Business School), N. Gregory Mankiw (Harvard professor), John B. Taylor (Stanford professor) and Kevin A. Hassett (American Enterprise Institute scholar) - co-wrote a white paper that lays out the case that Romney's spending, tax and regulatory policies would yield a more robust recovery - adding 250,000 jobs a month - that would result in 12 million jobs over four years. The analysis, which is prominently posted on the Romney campaign Web site, concludes:
"If we had a recovery that was just the average of past recoveries from deep recessions, like those of 1974-1975 or 1981-1982, the economy would be creating about 200,000 to 300,000 jobs per month. By changing course away from the policies of the current administration and ending economic uncertainty, as proposed by the Romney plan, we expect that the current recovery will align with the average gains of similar past recoveries. History shows that a recovery rooted in policies contained in the Romney plan will create about 12 million jobs in the first term of a Romney presidency."
But the specifics - 7 million plus 3 million plus 2 million - mentioned by Romney in the ad are not in the white paper. So where did that come from?
We asked the Romney campaign, and the answer turns out to be: totally different studies ... with completely different timelines.
For instance, the claim that 7 million jobs would be created from Romney's tax plan is a 10-year number, derived from a study written by John W. Diamond, a professor at Rice University.
This study at least assesses the claimed effect of specific Romney policies. The rest of the numbers are even more squishy.
For instance, the 3-million-jobs claim for Romney's energy policies appears largely based on a Citigroup Global Markets study that did not even evaluate Romney's policies. Instead, the report predicted 2.7 million to 3.6 million jobs would be created over the next eight years, largely because of trends and policies already adopted - including tougher fuel efficiency standards that Romney has criticized and suggested he would reverse.
The 2-million-jobs claim from cracking down on China is also very suspicious.
This figure comes from a 2011 International Trade Commission report, which estimated that there could be a gain of 2.1 million jobs if China stopped infringing on U.S. intellectual property rights. The estimate is highly conditional and pegged to the job market in 2011, when there was high unemployment. "It is unclear when China might implement the improvement in IPR protection envisioned in the analysis, and equally unclear whether the United States will face as much excess labor supply then as it does today," the report says.
The Romney campaign has already used this study, in a misleading way, to claim that Obama's China "policies cost us 2 million jobs." Now the campaign has just taken the same figure and credited the claimed job gain to itself, even though the report does not examine any of Romney's proposed policies.
"The big point is the 3+7+2 does not make up the 12 million jobs in the first four years (different source of growth and different time period)," Hubbard acknowledged in an e-mail.
The Pinocchio Test
This is a case of bait-and-switch. Romney, in his convention speech, spoke of his plan to create "12 million new jobs," which the campaign's white paper describes as a four-year goal.
But the candidate's personal accounting for this figure in this campaign ad is based on different figures and long-range timelines stretching as long as a decade - which in two cases are based on studies that did not even evaluate Romney's economic plan. The numbers may still add up to 12 million, but they aren't the same thing - not by a long shot.
In many ways, this episode offers readers a peek behind a campaign wizard's curtain - and a warning that job-creation claims by any campaign should not be accepted at face value. The white paper at least has the credibility of four well-known economists behind it, but the "new math" of this campaign ad does not add up.
As readers know, we tend to judge more harshly claims in prepared speeches or ads that were the result of considered discussion by political aides.
Clearly, some clever campaign staffer thought it would be nice to match up poll-tested themes such as "energy independence," "tax reform" and "cracking down on China" with actual job numbers. We just find it puzzling that Romney agreed to personally utter these words without asking more questions about the math behind them.
Four Pinocchios
(About our rating scale)
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Follow The Fact Checker on Twitter and friend us on Facebook .
Track each presidential candidate's campaign ads
Read our biggest Pinocchios
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October 31, 2012 Wednesday 12:49 PM EST
Ad watch: Mitt Romney targets welfare again;
The ad invokes a discredited claim from a previous Romney ad claiming that President Obama ended the work requirement for welfare.
BYLINE: Rachel Weiner
LENGTH: 131 words
Mitt Romney, "Can't Afford Another Term"
What it says: "If you want to know President Obama's second term agenda, look at his first: gutted the work requirement for welfare. Doubled the number of able-bodied adults without children on food stamps. Record unemployment."
What it means: The ad invokes a discredited claim from a previous Romney ad claiming that President Obama ended the work requirement for welfare. Here the language is a little more vague. But welfare is again used as a wedge issue in a play for middle-class voters.
Who will see it: The ad was not announced by the campaign. According to the Huffington Post it's running in Ohio, Colorado, Florida, Iowa, and Virginia, along with Rochester, N.Y. and Las Vegas.
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The Washington Post
October 31, 2012 Wednesday
Met 2 Edition
The traveling hit woman of the Obama campaign
BYLINE: Amy Gardner
SECTION: STYLE; Pg. C01
LENGTH: 1422 words
DATELINE: ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE
ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE - Welcome to the "Jen and Jay Show," the latest iteration of the White House news briefing.
Known as "gaggles" when they take place on Air Force One, the daily briefings became a two-person road show over the summer when President Obama hit the campaign trail in earnest and petite, 33-year-old redhead Jennifer Psaki climbed aboard alongside Jay Carney to answer the growing volume of campaign-related questions coming from the press.
In the waning days of the campaign, the duo has given the briefings the feel of a vaudeville act: lighthearted and entertaining but also well rehearsed - and deadly for Republican Mitt Romney.
Straight man Carney, who is 47, a fluent Russian speaker and former Washington bureau chief for Time magazine, waxes serious about Syria or Libya - and then looks on with amusement while Psaki plays the double role of girl-next-door and tart-tongued attack dog.
Asked recently to comment on Romney's accusation that Obama would lie during the debates, Psaki said: "If Mitt Romney were Pinocchio, his nose would be reaching from Virginia to Ohio with the number of lies he's told."
A reporter even asked Carney if he was starting to feel like a bystander now that fewer questions were aimed at him. "Not at all," Carney offered cautiously. "I enjoy listening to my colleague field your questions. It's most comforting."
In some ways, the Jen and Jay Show reflects the small-bore tone of the 2012 election. Obama isn't so much promising hope or change this year; he's asking for more time - and relentlessly tearing down Romney so he doesn't look like a better choice. Alongside Carney's policy-oriented spiels about the European debt crisis or the unemployment rate, Psaki spends much of her time going after Romney: scoffing at him, needling him, mocking him. She is the traveling hit woman of the Obama campaign.
Commenting on Romney's summer trip abroad, during which he was jeered by the British press for criticizing security preparations for the Olympics, she offered: "The only person who has offended Europe more is probably Chevy Chase."
And about PBS's request that Obama take down an ad featuring Big Bird - in response to Romney's suggestion that he would cut federal funding for public broadcasting - she retorted: "It doesn't change the fact that there's only one candidate in this race who is going to continue to fight for Big Bird and Elmo, and he is riding on this plane."
Psaki's one-liners are sometimes downright weird, as when she channeled David Lynch about Romney's "lack of ideas," which reminded her of an empty pool with "dead leaves and trees in it." And there was Carney again, chuckling with the reporters and observing:
"I endorse language as creative and descriptive as that used by my friend and colleague."
Moving up?
If Psaki's style suggests a less consequential job than that of her traveling straight man, she is viewed widely as one of two top contenders to replace him, the other being Carney's deputy, Josh Earnest. By several accounts, Carney has no plans to leave, nor is anyone pressuring him to do so. But the job of White House press secretary has a high burnout rate - and a lucrative landing pad in the private sector.
Psaki, who grew up in Connecticut and attended the College of William and Mary, is on leave from a Washington consulting firm. She has been moving in and around national politics for a decade, including stints with the Iowa Democratic Party and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and as deputy press secretary for Sen. John F. Kerry's presidential bid in 2004. She began working for Obama in 2007, mastering the art of traveling press management and then spending two years in the weeds of domestic policy as deputy White House communications director.
Psaki sat in on daily economic briefings in the Oval Office, becoming close to the president as well as some of his innermost advisers: David Plouffe, Rahm Emanuel, Robert Gibbs, David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett. It's no accident that so many of those people are men: Psaki is comfortable palling around with the boys, and her ability to tell jokes and talk tough in the same breath is one of the reasons they like her.
"Jen is one of the smartest, nicest and most poised people in all of politics," said Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director. "She has the respect and trust of everyone she works with from the president to the press."
If Psaki does move on to the briefing room, she would become only the third woman to do so, after Dee Dee Myers of the Clinton years and Dana Perino, George W. Bush's third press secretary. (She'd be the fourth if you count the fictional C.J. Cregg from "The West Wing.")
She is among a growing army of women in prominent political roles this year, including Obama's deputy campaign manager, Stephanie Cutter, and three of the four principal spokeswomen for Romney: Gail Gitcho, Andrea Saul and Sarah Pompei. In other words, there is a very strong chance that a woman will stand at the lectern soon no matter who is elected president.
"Women are more than half of the country," said Nicolle Wallace, communications director for George W. Bush's White House and his 2004 reelection campaign. "I also think it sends a powerful signal about the man at the top. I give speeches all over, and I always talk about how George W. Bush's White House wasn't just a good place to work as a woman. It was a place ruled by women. Women in power use their power differently - more wisely and more judiciously."
The goals of the gaggle
While the West Wing's briefing room is staid and serious, with banks of cameras and high-octane stage lights illuminating an elevated lectern from which Carney looks down on the White House press, on Air Force One, the gaggle is little more than a klatch in the aisle of the press cabin. The reporters all stand shoulder to shoulder, and Carney and Psaki appear in the forward doorway, typically moments after takeoff. Reporters hop out of their seats, turn on their voice recorders and scrunch in close.
One reason for the intimacy is to overcome the noise of the Boeing 747's giant engines, but another is to help brace against the jostling of the flights, which feel remarkably bumpy at the back of the plane. During the gaggle, reporters clutch seat backs, the wall, even one another to stay upright. And more than a few gaggles have lasted all the way through landing.
"Hang on, guys," Carney exclaimed on a recent trip to Virginia Beach after noticing the runway through the window.
"Okay, no one has fallen," Psaki added as the airplane landed.
Perhaps that informality has emboldened Psaki to showcase her personality. But it hasn't always come out the way she'd hoped. During one gaggle - this one on the ground in Nevada, where Obama was preparing for his first debate - she was asked what else the president was doing with his time. Her answer landed with a thud:
"Well, I know this may surprise you. I'm not spending time with him in his room at 11 p.m."
The goal of the joint gaggle, spelled out by the White House as a legal precaution, is to show that the administration is focused on the business of governing - and that the campaign is a separate enterprise. It's not an unprecedented setup: Bill Clinton installed a campaign spokesman, Joe Lockhart, alongside his official press secretary, Mike McCurry, in 1996. George W. Bush did the same eight years ago, when campaign representatives Nicolle Wallace or Scott Stanzel shared the aisle with White House press secretary Scott McClellan.
Nonetheless, the "clear lines of distinction" seem less clear this time around. Wallace recalls holding her campaign press availabilities on the ground, not on Air Force One, for the sake of appearances. She can't recall McClellan ever commenting on a John Kerry ad - something Carney does occasionally "as a matter of policy." On one such occasion, Carney defended his remarks about an ad accusing Obama of rolling back welfare reform: "It is absolutely incumbent upon me, as the president's spokesman on matters of policy, to push back against blatant falsehoods like that."
There's no legal requirement to separate the functions of the campaign from the White House. Unlike independent committees, which are forbidden to coordinate with the candidate they support, advisers at campaign headquarters in Chicago talk daily to the White House brain trust to be sure that everyone is in sync.
Listen closely, and it's clear that Carney and Psaki are often saying the same thing.
gardnera@washpost.com
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The Washington Post
October 31, 2012 Wednesday
Regional Edition
Takingthe truth off-road
BYLINE: Dana Milbank
SECTION: EDITORIAL COPY; Pg. A21
LENGTH: 760 words
Mitt Romney spoke to supporters in the Ohio town of Defiance last week, but his words came from the twin cities of Duplicity and Deception.
"I saw a story today that one of the great manufacturers in this state, Jeep, now owned by the Italians, is thinking of moving all production to China," the Republican presidential nominee proclaimed, referring to the automaker President Obama saved from dissolution with taxpayer funds. "I will fight for every good job in America."
The truth, however, was roughly 180 degrees opposite Romney's claim. Chrysler, which owns the Jeep label, has added about 7,000 jobs in North America since it emerged from bankruptcy proceedings in June 2009, and it continues to expand its U.S. workforce and to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in American plants.
Romney's fiction was apparently based on a misreading of a Bloomberg News report a few days earlier, which said that Chrysler would resume production in China for the first time since parent Fiat SpA bought the company - in addition to Chrysler's production in Michigan, Illinois and Ohio.
"Let's set the record straight: Jeep has no intention of shifting productionof its Jeep models out of North America to China," Chrysler executive Gualberto Ranieri wrote in a statement, using italics for emphasis. "A careful and unbiased reading of the Bloomberg take would have saved unnecessary fantasies and extravagant comments." Ranieri said the conclusion that it was moving all production to China was "a leap that would be difficult even for professional circus acrobats."
But in the game of trickery, Romney is exceedingly dexterous. A couple of days later, his campaign came out with an ad in Ohio repeating the allegation in a way that tweaked the wording to make it technically true, while continuing to give the same false impression: "Obama took GM and Chrysler into bankruptcy and sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China. Mitt Romney will fight for every American job."
Romney's ongoing deception led Chrysler's CEO to send a letter Tuesday to the company's jittery employees, assuring them that "Jeep production will not be moved from the United States" and that "It is inaccurate to suggest anything different." The restored production in China was to avoid huge tariffs on vehicles imported into China.
The fast-and-loose with Jeep points to a troubling Romney instinct: When the stakes are high, as they are for him in must-win Ohio, the truth is often the first casualty.
It's difficult to quantify a candidate's relationship with the facts, but The Post's fact checker, Glenn Kessler, has calculated that, for much of the campaign, Romney and Obama were roughly even in their prevarications - until the past few months, when Romney has sharply ramped up his output of falsehoods.
Back in May, Romney's average "Pinocchio" rating from Kessler was 1.97 on a scale of 0 to 4. Obama was at 1.91. Now, Obama is at 2.11 and Romney is at 2.40 - putting him at the level of hogwash perpetrated during the primaries by Rick Perry (2.41) and Newt Gingrich (2.44).
This doesn't excuse Obama. The president's own truthfulness has been tortured - notably his claim that 90 percent of the deficit came from George W. Bush and his assertion that Congress "proposed" the budget sequester, not him. In a normal campaign, Obama's whoppers might be the story - but in this case, Romney is in a whole new category.
Recently, I wrote about Romney's continued claim that he has a plan to create 12 million jobs - even though the studies his campaign furnished to support the claim do not in fact do so. With the Jeep attack, even the Romney campaign seems to be abashed: It began airing the ad in Ohio over the weekend without following the usual procedure of announcing the ad's release. Apparently the campaign was hoping that people who knew better wouldn't notice. But this is the year of the fact checkers, and Romney's ad earned a quick challenge.
A Romney adviser said this summer that "we're not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers" - and on Tuesday, they proved it. The Post's Greg Sargent reported that the campaign had bought radio time for another ad in Toledo - just up the road from Defiance - where the Chrysler plant is located.
By making Jeeps in China, the ad alleged, Chrysler was breaking "the promises made to autoworkers in Toledo . . . the same hard-working men and women who were told that Obama's auto bailout would help them."
When it comes to the truth, Romney still lives in Defiance.
danamilbank@washpost.com
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October 31, 2012 Wednesday
Suburban Edition
When Mitt met Sandy (and Chef Boyardee)
BYLINE: Al Kamen
SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A19
LENGTH: 865 words
It seems that Mitt Romney's campaign is adopting a new slogan: "Yes, we can." As in the canned goods the Republican presidential nominee is collecting to donate to victims of Hurricane Sandy.
But as Romney temporarily turned his campaign into a massive food drive, he's finding that, unlike franks and beans, charity and politics can be a tricky mix.
At a Romney campaign rally on Tuesday in Kettering, Ohio, hastily rebranded as a "storm relief" event, he asked attendees to bring food and goods to donate. "Long white tables to one side of the cavernous James S. Trent Arena were piled high with flashlights, batteries, diapers, toothbrushes, mini-deodorants, fleece blankets, cereal, toilet paper and canned goods," our colleagueFelicia Sonmez reports.
The effort was complicated by the fact that security at such events is pretty tight, and attendees had to get all their bags containing donated goods checked out by the guys with the earpieces. It probably would have been far easier to just drop the stuff off at the nearest local food bank - or to text a donation to the Red Cross, as a sign at the event also suggested. (The Red Cross has said it prefers cash over cans.)
And in Virginia, the Romney campaign's call for donations went out at an awkward time. Just as public safety officials, along with every weatherman in the country, were warning people to stay off the roads and hunker down in advance of the damaging storm, Team Romney was urging them to hit the roads and come by campaign offices. "Bring donations to VA Victory offices," Curt Cashour, Romney's Virginia communications director, tweeted Sunday.
Of course, Romney wants to avoid looking overtly political while much of the East Coast is assessing the ravages of Sandy (and while President Obama is trading his role as a candidate for that of commander in chief). Still, the campaign's new can-do mode clearly isn't a perfect fit.
2-4-6-8, consolidate!
Texas Gov. Rick Perry's spectacular "oops" moment in a debate during the Republican presidential primaries - when he couldn't remember the third Cabinet agency he would abolish - doomed his chances.
But his loss doesn't mean some agencies won't be targeted for extinction or consolidation no matter who wins next week.
President Obama last week repeated a proposal he made earlier this year: to merge the Commerce Department, the Small Business Administration, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, the Export-Import Bank, the Overseas Private Investment Corp., and the U.S. Trade and Development Agency - and create a "secretary of business."
(Note to file: Consider a Loop contest to come up with a name less lame than that.)
The Wall Street Journal immediately blasted the notion, which has been kicking around for some time.
And Mitt Romney is expected to propose agency consolidation to streamline government - though he hasn't outlined specifics. He has talked about eliminating the Department of Housing and Urban Development (in fact, he mentioned that during the same fundraiser at which he dismissed 47 percent of Americans as moochers).
The president's Republican challenger has also said he that plans to cut the size of the federal workforce by 10 percent and bring federal pay more in line with the private sector. "More in line" is presumably a euphemism for freezing or cutting federal salaries.
Romney, who said in 1994 that he wanted to eliminate the Education Department, said during one of the primary debates that he favored sending the functions of the Federal Emergency Management Agency to the states, or "if you can go even further and send it back to the private sector, that's even better."
The D's, with Hurricane Sandy still wreaking havoc, are insisting this meant abolishing FEMA. But Romney's campaign has been in clarify mode, insisting that didn't mean eliminating FEMA, only giving the states a greater role. Romney, at his storm-relief event in Ohio, declined to answer reporters' shouted questions on the matter.
But don't hold your breath for a Cabinet restructuring no matter what the election outcome. Congressional fiefdoms make that extraordinarily difficult absent a cataclysmic event like 9/11, which prompted the creation of the Department of Homeland Security.
Even by Hill standards?
A prominent Tennessee conservative called Tuesday for the resignation of a Loop Favorite, Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-Tenn.).
The antiabortion physician has been in a bit of hot water since it was revealed that he had pressured his patient and mistress to have an abortion. Even better, a second woman claimed last week that she had an affair with him back in 2000 and told the Chattanooga Times Free Press that she also smoked pot with him.
Apparently that was it for Tennessee Conservative Union Chairman Lloyd Daugherty, who said in a statement that DesJarlais had reached "a level of hypocrisy that is simply untenable."
Well, maybe for some people.
Daugherty added that DesJarlais had "accomplished something incredibly difficult. He has embarrassed the United States Congress."
Precisely. All the more reason for DesJarlais to stand his ground.
With Emily Heil
kamena@washpost.com
The blog: washingtonpost.com/intheloop. Twitter: @InTheLoopWP.
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October 30, 2012 Tuesday
Late Edition - Final
In Political Sign Battle, Thievery, Acid and Jelly
BYLINE: By LIZETTE ALVAREZ
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; Pg. 11
LENGTH: 927 words
SOUTH MIAMI, Fla. -- Two weeks ago, Hillary Wiseheart plunged an Obama-Biden campaign sign into her front lawn, a defiant stance amid the riot of Romney-Ryan signs in her well-kept neighborhood. The next day, it was gone.
Ms. Wiseheart donated $5 to President Obama's campaign for a new sign and planted it. Gone. By the fifth sign, her daughter, Josephine Wiseheart, 31, who almost nabbed the sign-snatcher one late afternoon, put up a second, homemade sign standing sentry next to the new Obama sign.
''Every time you STEAL our sign, you help DONATE to Obama's campaign. Thanks for the SUPPORT.'' The next morning, Obama was gone. Left untouched was Josephine's hand-scrawled sign of gratitude.
''In 2008, we had one sign, and it stayed up the whole time,'' said Mrs. Wiseheart, a psychologist and Miami native. For the first time, she feels ill at ease in her own neighborhood, she said. ''It has made me very upset. I'm 67. I've never had this experience. It feels like hatred.''
Along tidy, landscaped yards in these parts, political signs are as common as sprinklers (although Romney-Ryan outpaces Obama-Biden), and partisans from both parties are guilty of high jinks. Signs for Mr. Obama and Mitt Romney are being swiped, mangled, shredded, spray-painted and urinated on all around Miami and in places farther afield. They serve as proxies, easy targets, for all the fury, disappointment and disgust the presidential race has stirred, at least among some voters.
Sometimes, irate voters go on the record with their outrage; they call the police, file a report. Most often, though, they reserve their complaints for friends, neighbors and the campaign offices that sell the signs and offer up escalating tales of vandalism.
One man found his Obama signs (and grass) despoiled by acid. A series of Fire Obama signs that stretched down a road last week were sliced in half, with precision, so only Obama remained. Passers-by called the police when they spotted a bunch of Obama signs floating in a canal. A house with an Obama-Biden sign was pelted with eggs (and Halloween isn't even here yet). One set of dueling neighbors, eager to outdo each other, affixed more and more signs to their yards; one morning the Romney lawn sat nearly barren.
Then there was the man in a neighborhood shaded by gumbo-limbo trees who watched, with a grin, as his dog urinated on a sign (the name on it will go unmentioned). He later told friends that his dog had participated in early voting.
''It's a personal statement when your home has a political sign up front,'' said Bob Goldstein, the president of the Democrats of South Dade Club, which has helped staff an Obama volunteer office that dispenses signs. ''So when someone steals it from you, it's more than a personal affront.''
Headed back to her Cutler Bay home with a new stash of Romney-Ryan and Fire Obama placards in the back of her car, Michelle Raghunandan, 48, said her determination has only hardened with each vanishing sign.
On Sunday night, after three weeks of theft, she found her signs still there on her lawn, only they had been mangled and tossed aside. She hopped back in her car and picked up more signs.
''I feel it's an invasion of privacy, though my husband says I'm overreacting,'' said Ms. Raghunandan, exasperated. ''I'm beside myself. We all have our opinions, our freedom of speech. I can get my point across without violence.''
Bumper stickers are not immune, either. Josephine Wiseheart said she was at a gas station last week when her boyfriend pointed to her bumper: A Romney sticker had been plastered atop her Obama sticker. Worse still, one woman reported to the campaign office that somebody had shredded her bumper Obama sticker and then, oddly, coated her car with grape jelly.
Trying to trap thieves, or at least deter them, has become the newest front-yard game. In Orlando, Fla., a Romney supporter finally nailed her sign to a tree, but not well enough; it disappeared soon after. Rodrigo Zuñiga, 23, a student and banker, has switched on his outdoor security cameras in Miami, a security-conscious city, in the hopes of snaring the culprits (at one point he got so angry he tempted vandals with six Romney-Ryan signs, using Fire Obama as the exclamation point). And Carol Nagengast threaded fishing wire through an Obama sign and tethered it to a tree, hoping to flummox the thieves (so far it has worked). Vaseline is also a much-used used counteroffensive tactic.
With Romney signs far outnumbering Obama signs around here, the most aggrieved voters appear to be those who support Mr. Obama. Some voters, they say, simply won't put up Obama signs for fear of vandalism.
''People don't want to get egged,'' said Barry White, 74, who saw his sign defaced by acid. He left it on his lawn for several days, bearing witness to the level of enmity in Miami, he said. Tuesday night it was stolen.
''We are judged by our actions,'' Mr. White said. ''The sign will be replaced.''
Neighborly overtures, which are relatively uncommon to begin with in Miami, have suffered, too, depending on the names the lawns advertise.
Ms. Wiseheart said she is simply demoralized, and worried about Mr. Obama's prospects here. For a time she wore her Obama-Biden T-shirt when she walked her dog in the neighborhood. But the other day, someone ''flipped me the flying creature,'' she said, and hurled an obscenity at her and her dog. Not long after, she saw a car driving down the street. It appeared to swerve suspiciously in her direction. She froze, then chalked it up to paranoia.
''It doesn't feel good,'' she said.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/30/us/politics/thievery-acid-and-jelly-used-in-lawn-sign-battle.html
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The New York Times
October 30, 2012 Tuesday
Late Edition - Final
G.O.P. Turns Fire On Obama Pillar, The Auto Bailout
BYLINE: By JIM RUTENBERG and JEREMY W. PETERS; Jim Rutenberg reported from Toledo, and Jeremy W. Peters from New York. Richard A. Oppel Jr. contributed reporting from Sabina, Ohio.
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1128 words
TOLEDO, Ohio -- The ad from Mitt Romney showed up on televisions here early Saturday morning without the usual public announcement that both campaigns typically use to herald their latest commercials: Chrysler, a bailout recipient, is going to begin producing Jeeps in China, an announcer says, leaving the misleading impression that the move would come at the expense of jobs here.
And so began the latest, and perhaps most important, attempt by Mitt Romney to wrest Ohio into his column. His effort to do so is now intently focused, at times including statements that stretch or ignore the facts, on knocking down what is perhaps the most important component of President Obama's appeal to blue-collar voters in Ohio and across the industrial Midwest: the success of the president's 2009 auto bailout.
Mr. Obama's relatively strong standing in most polls in Ohio so far has been attributed by members of both parties to the recovery of the auto industry, which has helped the economy here outperform the national economy. At the same time, the industry's performance and the president's claim to credit for it appear to have helped Mr. Obama among the white working-class voters Mr. Romney needs.
With the race under most expected circumstances coming down to Ohio, and Ohio potentially coming down to perceptions of how the candidates view the auto industry, Mr. Romney has spent the last few days aggressively trying to undercut Mr. Obama's auto bailout narrative.
In the past few days his running mate, Representative Paul D. Ryan, has accused Mr. Obama of allowing the bailout to bypass nonunion workers at Delphi, a big auto parts maker with operations in Ohio; Mr. Romney has characterized Mr. Obama's bailout plan as based on his approach; and Mr. Romney incorrectly told a rally in Defiance, Ohio, late last week outright that Jeep was considering moving its production to China. (Jeep is discussing increasing production in China for sales within China; it is not moving jobs out of Ohio or the United States, or building cars in China for export to the United States.)
It is a high-risk strategy: Jeep's corporate parent, Chrysler, had already released a scathing statement calling suggestions that Jeep was moving American jobs to China ''fantasies'' and ''extravagant''; news media outlets here and nationally have called the Romney campaign's statements -- initially based on a poorly worded quotation from Chrysler in a news article that was misinterpreted by blogs -- misleading.
Mr. Obama's campaign, seeking to maintain what it sees as its advantage in Ohio, responded on Monday by releasing a commercial calling Mr. Romney's ad false and reiterating that Mr. Romney had opposed the bailout on the terms supported by Mr. Obama. And on Sunday it dispatched the investment banker who helped develop the bailout, Steven Rattner, here to discuss Jeep's plans and the auto rescue with local news organizations.
Democrats are hoping that Mr. Romney's latest move will draw a backlash in a city so dependent on Jeep, which has announced plans to add 1,100 jobs to an assembly plant here that is currently being refitted for the next iteration of what is now called the Jeep Liberty.
Bruce Baumhower, the president of the United Auto Workers local that oversees the major Jeep plant here, said Mr. Romney's initial comments on moving production to China drew a rash of calls from members concerned about their jobs. When he informed them Chrysler was, in fact, is expanding its Jeep operation here, he said in an interview, ''The response has been, 'That's pretty pitiful.' ''
The fight over the auto bailout shows the enduring power of the issue but also its complexities in a campaign that is about both the strength of the economy and the size and role of government.
The auto bailout was one of the first major moves of Mr. Obama's presidency, and gave Mr. Romney an early chance in opposing it to prove his conservative credentials.
Mr. Romney has portrayed himself as an automobile maven. As he frequently says in his stump speeches, his father was credited with keeping American Motors in business during the 1950s and early 1960s. (The company, it happens, owned Jeep from 1970 to 1987.)
Just as the incoming Obama administration was beginning to contemplate a bailout, Mr. Romney wrote an Op-Ed article in the The New York Times -- given the title by the newspaper ''Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.'' In the piece Mr. Romney wrote that in the event of a bailout, ''You can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye.''
The plan the administration settled on first helped Fiat buy Chrysler and then put both Chrysler and General Motors into managed bankruptcies as part of a program that brought total government assistance for Detroit to almost $80 billion between the Obama and Bush administrations. Coming as the Tea Party was beginning to form, it seemed like risky politics for Democrats being accused of taking big government to an extreme.
At the third and last debate last week in Boca Raton, Fla., Mr. Romney emphasized his position that ''these companies need to go through a managed bankruptcy, and in that process they can get government help and government guarantees.''
Mr. Romney has stepped up his offense on the issue since.
So it was that he told those at the exuberant rally on Thursday in Defiance, ''I saw a story today that one of the great manufacturers in this state, Jeep, now owned by the Italians, is thinking of moving all production to China.''
Mr. Romney was apparently referring to a Bloomberg News article that said Jeep would return to manufacturing in China that had been misinterpreted by several conservative blogs to mean Jeep was shifting its production to China; the company made clear in a statement that Chrysler was only resuming production in China for Chinese consumers, which it had done for years before halting in 2009 before its sale to Fiat.
Mr. Romney's ad treads carefully, with an announcer saying Mr. Obama ''sold Jeep to the Italians, who are going to build Jeeps in China'' and the screen flashing, ''Plans to return Jeep output to China.''
Calling it ''blatant attempt to create a false impression,'' former Gov. Ted Strickland of Ohio, a Democrat, demanded Mr. Romney take it down on Monday. Stuart Stevens, a senior Romney adviser, disputed that the ad is misleading.
''Right now every Jeep built is built in America by an American and sold to the world,'' he said. ''Now instead of adding jobs in Toledo, they will be making Jeeps in China by the Chinese and selling them in China.''
Jeep began a joint manufacturing venture in China in 1984 and today makes some vehicles in Egypt and Venezuela. While it does produce cars for Chinese export here now, it has discussed returning some production to China since last year.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/30/us/politics/gop-turns-fire-on-obama-pillar-auto-bailout.html
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GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: Public opinion about the candidates and issues including gas prices and abortion was registered along a roadside in Celina, Ohio. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY STEPHEN CROWLEY/THE NEW YORK TIMES) (A12)
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The New York Times
October 30, 2012 Tuesday
Late Edition - Final
G.O.P. 'Super PAC' Makes Late Push in Pennsylvania
BYLINE: By JEREMY W. PETERS
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; THE CAUCUS; Pg. 12
LENGTH: 439 words
12:02 p.m. | Updated The "super-PAC" aiding Mitt Romney, Restore Our Future, is making a push into Pennsylvania, a state that has been considered strong for President Obama.
On Monday the group put down about $2 million for a slate of television commercials through next Monday, the day before the presidential election.
The move prompted the Obama campaign to shift advertising resources there for the first time since July. It announced on Monday that it too would being airing commercials in the state.
The Restore Our Future purchase includes about $1.2 million in the voter-rich Philadelphia media market where Republicans believe they can make inroads with a number of different demographics, including Jewish voters who may be open the arguments put forward by the Romney campaign that Mr. Obama has not been supportive enough of Israel. Republicans have sought to drive distance between Mr. Obama and his Jewish constituency because of the recent tension between the United States and Israel over Iran.
Another group that has been advertising there is the Republican Jewish Coalition, which is airing an ad that features the founder of Home Depot, Bernie Marcus, criticizing Mr. Obama's economic leadership. And Americans for Job Security, another conservative super-PAC, is also going up with a new Pennsylvania ad campaign.
To be sure, Restore Our Future has been making some of the more long-shot bets in recent weeks. It continues to have a strong presence on the air in Michigan, which has been strongly leaning toward Mr. Obama in many recent polls. But the group also placed what ended up being a smart -- and seemingly long-shot -- bet on Wisconsin earlier this fall when few others were willing to devote resources there.
Now many polls show Wisconsin, home of the Republican vice-presidential nominee Paul D. Ryan, to be competitive.
The latest poll from The Philadelphia Inquirer, which was published over the weekend, showed that the president's lead in Pennsylvania had narrowed to 6 points from 8 points since the beginning of October.
Jim Messina, the president's campaign manager, said Monday that Mr. Obama's team will also start advertising in Pennsylvania, but insisted Democrats are in no danger of losing the state.
"We are going to go up as well," Mr. Messina said, responding to news that the Romney super-PAC would be advertising there. "We have the resources to match them and we are going to do that."
Mr. Messina said that the Romney campaign was "not close in Pennsylvania," but added that "we aren't taking anything for granted."
This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.
URL: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/29/pro-romney-group-makes-advertising-buy-in-pennsylvania/
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October 30, 2012 Tuesday
Chrysler CEO: Jeep Production Isn't Moving to China
BYLINE: JEREMY W. PETERS AND JIM RUTENBERG
SECTION: US; politics
LENGTH: 915 words
HIGHLIGHT: The CEO of Chrysler responds to a misleading suggestion in a Romney ad that jobs are moving to China.
Chrysler's chief executive on Tuesday strongly refuted claims that production of Jeeps would shift to China, an insistence that cast further doubt on the Romney campaign's recent efforts to undercut President Obama's support for the auto industry as it fights for Ohio's 18 electoral votes.
In an e-mail to employees, the chief executive, Sergio Marchionne, said that Jeep's commitment to the United States was unequivocal. "I feel obliged to unambiguously restate our position: Jeep production will not be moved from the United States to China," he wrote. "It is inaccurate to suggest anything different."
Mr. Marchionne's response - an unusually forceful gesture from the chief executive of a major American corporation a week before Election Day - came as the politics of the auto bailout took center stage in the presidential campaign.
The Romney campaign has come under considerable criticism in recent days for taking liberties with the facts in a new television commercial that suggests Jeep, a recipient of federal bailout money, will soon outsource American jobs to China. Chrysler, Jeep's parent company, does not in fact have plans to cut its American work force but is considering opening a facility in China where it would produce Jeeps for sale locally.
Mr. Marchionne said that those efforts would only bolster the strength of Chrysler in the United States, not undermine it.
"Jeep is one of our truly global brands with uniquely American roots. This will never change," he said.
The politics of the auto bailout have become a vexing problem for Mr. Romney as he competes fiercely with President Obama for Ohio. Mr. Obama carried the state in 2008 with just 51.2 percent of the vote and has remained ahead of Mr. Romney in many recent polls, a strength that is due in some measure to the rebound of the auto industry.
Mr. Romney opposed the bailout, most famously in a New York Times op-ed that carried the headline "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt." Mr. Romney did not write the headline; the newspaper did. But even his supporters in the Midwest have questioned his logic in arguing that Chrysler and General Motors should have been denied federal assistance, which he deemed at the time "a handout."
The Romney campaign has insisted that its most recent ad - which is carefully worded enough that it is not factually inaccurate - merely states the truth: that Jeeps are not currently made in China but will be soon. But the ad makes no mention of the point Mr. Marchionne and others have made, which is that no American jobs will be lost.
The Romney campaign has shown no signs of backing away from the ad. In fact, it is now repeating the same claims in a new radio commercial.
The memo from Mr. Marchionne is below:
Chrysler Group's production plans for the Jeep® brand have become the focus of public debate.
I feel obliged to unambiguously restate our position: Jeep production will not be moved from the United States to China.
North American production is critical to achieving our goal of selling 800,000 Jeep vehicles by 2014. In fact, U.S. production of our Jeep models has nearly tripled (it is expected to be up 185%) since 2009 in order to keep up with global demand.
We also are investing to improve and expand our entire U.S. operations, including our Jeep facilities. The numbers tell the story:
We will invest more than $1.7 billion to develop and produce the next generation Jeep SUV, the successor of the Jeep Liberty -- including $500 million directly to tool and expand our Toledo Assembly Complex and will be adding about 1,100 jobs on a second shift by 2013.
At our Jefferson North Assembly Plant, where we build the Jeep Grand Cherokee, we have created 2,000 jobs since June 2009 and have invested more than $1.8 billion.
In Belvidere, where we build two Jeep models, we have added two shifts since 2009 resulting in an additional 2,600 jobs.
With the increase in demand for our vehicles, especially Jeep branded vehicles, we have added more than 11,200 U.S. jobs since 2009. Plants producing Jeep branded vehicles alone have seen the number of people invested in the success of the Jeep brand grow to more than 9,300 hourly jobs from 4,700. This will increase by an additional 1,100 as the Liberty successor, which will be produced in Toledo, is introduced for global distribution in the second quarter of 2013.
Together, we are working to establish a global enterprise and previously announced our intent to return Jeep production to China, the world's largest auto market, in order to satisfy local market demand, which would not otherwise be accessible. Chrysler Group is interested in expanding the customer base for our award-winning Jeep vehicles, which can only be done by establishing local production. This will ultimately help bolster the Jeep brand, and solidify the resilience of U.S. jobs.
Jeep is one of our truly global brands with uniquely American roots. This will never change. So much so that we committed that the iconic Wrangler nameplate, currently produced in our Toledo, Ohio plant, will never see full production outside the United States.
Jeep assembly lines will remain in operation in the United States and will constitute the backbone of the brand.
It is inaccurate to suggest anything different.
Sergio Marchionne
Rocking the Vote, Meat Loaf Endorses Romney
Mourdock's Comments Pose Dilemma for Romney
Romney Plans Economic Speech in Iowa
How Bill Clinton May Have Hurt the Obama Campaign
Coming Later Today: Coverage of the Second Presidential Debate
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(The Caucus)
October 30, 2012 Tuesday
Romney Campaign Doubles Down on Auto Bailout Attacks
BYLINE: JEREMY W. PETERS
SECTION: US; politics
LENGTH: 266 words
HIGHLIGHT: The Romney campaign continues to attack President Obama's effort to rescue the auto industry, arguing in a new radio commercial that the federal government's $80 billion assistance plan helped China more than it did the United States.
The Romney campaign is continuing to attack President Obama's effort to rescue the auto industry, arguing in a new radio commercial that the federal government's $80 billion assistance plan actually helped China more than it did the United States.
The commercial, which is running in Ohio, asserts that the bailout allowed General Motors and Chrysler to boost their production in China, where both companies plan to build more vehicles.
"Barack Obama says he saved the auto industry. But for who? Ohio or China?" the commercial asks. "What happened to the promises made to auto workers in Toledo and throughout Ohio? The same hard-working men and women who were told that Obama's auto bailout would help them?"
What the ad leaves unsaid is that the auto industry bailout has also enabled General Motors and Chrysler to add thousands of new jobs in the United States, including in Ohio.
Chrysler hit back on Tuesday against the suggestion by the Romney campaign that it was adding jobs in China at the expense of American workers. A television ad running in Ohio implied that Chrysler was doing just that, drawing a response from Sergio Marchionne, the company's chief executive, that those claims were inaccurate.
"I feel obliged to unambiguously restate our position: Jeep production will not be moved from the United States to China," Mr. Marchionne wrote in an e-mail to employees.
Jeep Production Isn't Moving to China, Chrysler Chief Says
Obama Ad Criticizes Romney Campaign Over Bailout Ad
On Fox, Romney Says He Is Misunderstood
Revisiting the Daisy Ad Revolution
Ron Paul Rolls Out New Campaign Ad
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(The Caucus)
October 30, 2012 Tuesday
Another Republican Group Buys Pennsylvania Air Time
BYLINE: JEREMY W. PETERS
SECTION: US; politics
LENGTH: 308 words
HIGHLIGHT: Americans for Prosperity, the conservative advocacy group that is backed by the Koch brothers, will spend $1.5 million to run commercials criticizing President Obama there.
Another major Republican player is making a big bet that Mitt Romney has a chance at winning Pennsylvania.
Americans for Prosperity, the conservative advocacy group that is backed by the Koch brothers, will spend $1.5 million to run commercials criticizing President Obama there.
Pennsylvania has suddenly become a hotbed of action in the presidential race, after appearing largely out of play for the last few months.
But with polls showing Mr. Romney closing in on the president's lead there, Republican groups have rushed to get on the air and forced the Obama campaign to spend more it they had hoped to defend its position.
Restore Our Future and Americans for Job Security, two super PACs backing Mr. Romney, and the Republican Jewish Coalition are all spending large sums of money to advertise there.
Their moves prompted the Obama campaign to announce on Monday that it would shift resources to the state. As of Tuesday afternoon, the campaign had reserved about $1.1 million in commercial time.
The new Americans for Prosperity campaign will add even more pressure on the president.
"The president likes to say, 'Look at the math,'" said Tim Phillips, the group's president. "Well, when you look at the math in Pennsylvania, it's dangerous for the president."
Mr. Phillips said Republicans believe the president's standing among women is particularly vulnerable now, and that much of his group's advertising effort will be aimed at reaching undecided women in the Philadelphia suburbs.
The group will run two ads. One features former supporters of the president's who explain why they have since changed their minds. The other features a Canadian woman who says that her country's government-run health care system prevented her from receiving valuable treatment.
Americans for Prosperity will also spend another $1.5 million advertising in Michigan.
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USA TODAY
October 30, 2012 Tuesday
FINAL EDITION
Will this election be a replay of 2000?;
A split decision, recounts and voting problems could reopen old wounds
BYLINE: Susan Page, @susanpage, USA TODAY
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 1A
LENGTH: 1655 words
The final chapter of the 2000 presidential campaign is hard to forget: One winner in the Electoral College, another in the popular vote. Disputes over butterfly ballots and hanging chads. A crucial Florida recount that was settled by a 5-4 Supreme Court decision.
Ready for a reprise?
Some of the soap-opera elements that fueled the electoral drama 12 years ago don't apply this time (for instance, one candidate's brother isn't governor of the most critical battleground). And Florida and other states have tried to redress the ballot mishaps that plagued that election.
But the ingredients are clearly present in 2012 for another difficult Election Day and long election night -- with potentially catastrophic repercussions for the budget and tax negotiations slated to follow in hopes of preventing the federal government from falling off the "fiscal cliff" at the end of the year.
If the election were held today, national and statewide polls indicate there might well be a split decision: President Obama winning the Electoral College and Republican Mitt Romney carrying the popular vote. Activists on both sides are braced for Election Day problems over new voter procedures in such key states as Virginia and Ohio. And a razor-close finish automatically would prompt recounts in Colorado, Florida, Ohio and elsewhere.
"In this close an election, anything could happen," cautions political scientist John Aldrich of Duke University.
Statewide surveys in the battlegrounds give Obama has a slightly stronger standing than his rival. According to polls aggregated by RealClearPolitics.com (and posted online on USA TODAY's Presidential Poll Tracker), the president is ahead by a tick in Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio and Wisconsin. Romney leads in Florida and North Carolina.
That gives the president a wider path to the 270 votes in the Electoral College needed to win the White House.
Meanwhile, Romney holds a very narrow edge nationwide in the aggregated surveys; he leads by 51%-46% among likely voters in Gallup's daily poll. Romney fares better nationally than in the swing states because Republicans generally are more enthusiastic about the election than Democrats -- that makes them more likely to vote without a campaign apparatus to push them -- and because he racks up big margins across the South, where antipathy to Obama is the strongest.
The Romney camp dismisses speculation about the prospect of winning the popular vote only to lose the Electoral College. "We are confident we will win the election decisively on Nov. 6," press secretary Andrea Saul says.
In an interview just before the Democratic National Convention last month, USA TODAY asked Obama if he had thought about the possibility of a split decision. "I won't speculate on how the election is going to turn out," he replied. "This is going to be a close election."
He did offer an explanation for why he was doing better in the battlegrounds while Romney fared better across the country. "I think the fact that we're doing well in swing states has to do with the fact that people in swing states have more information," he said. "And so they know what I'm proposing a little bit more than others do, and they know what Gov. Romney is proposing, because we've spent an awful lot of time in those states."
That is an understatement.
Just in the past 30 days, Obama has visited Ohio six times, Romney 13 times, according to a tally maintained by The Washington Post. More than $118 million has been spent on TV ads in Ohio either selling one candidate or, more often, attacking the other one. In addition to Ohio, both campaigns at this point are tightly focused on just seven other swing states: Colorado and Nevada in the West; Florida and Virginia in the South; Iowa and Wisconsin in the Midwest.
And in a sign of how close the race is, tiny New Hampshire is the eighth battleground. The Granite State is accustomed to its first-in-the-nation primary holding sway in nomination contests. This year, it could do the same in the general election with just four electoral votes.
A slow count, a late night
After the 2000 election, Florida moved to use all paper ballots, eliminating the possibility of the hanging chads on punch cards that complicated the recount then. Ohio now has a paper record for all ballots.
But this fall, new voting procedures in some hotly contested states could create disputes that could make it impossible to call a winner on Election Night or even for weeks afterward. New voter ID laws that might have caused problems have been curtailed in Ohio, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. But Virginia for the first time will require voters to show proof of identification. If they can't, they can cast a provisional ballot that would be counted only later, after they have provided an ID.
"In some places, we have taken steps forward" since 2000, says Eric Marshall, manager of legal mobilization for the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights, which works on voter issues. More states now allow voters to register online or on Election Day and have increased the options for voting early or by mail. But he adds, "There hasn't been enough and we've seen steps in the wrong direction, which does cause concern."
Ohio and Florida have reduced times for early voting, he notes, which could exacerbate previous problems with long voting lines on Election Day in those key states. And there's another potential complication in Ohio, the most important single battleground in the nation.
For the first time, the Ohio secretary of State sent applications for absentee ballots to each of the state's 7million registered voters; 1.43 million requested a ballot. By Friday, however, only about 619,000 absentee ballots had been returned. Voters who requested an absentee ballot but then show up at the polls to vote on Election Day will be required to cast provisional ballots, which by law can't be counted for another 10 days.
"It's going to be really close," Ohio Gov. John Kasich said Sunday on NBC's Meet the Press. Still, he said, "I do think we will know (the results) before the end of the night."
One more looming issue: Recounts. Swing states including Colorado, Florida and Ohio now automatically require recounts if the margin is very close -- within 0.5% of the winner's total in the first two states and 0.25% of the total votes cast in the third.
By law, a recount in Ohio couldn't begin until after each county certifies its election results. The counties have until Nov. 27 to do that, which means a recount in the Buckeye State might not even get going until December.
Falling off the cliff?
In 2000, the election wasn't settled until the Supreme Court issued its decision on Bush v. Gore on Dec. 12, more than a month after Election Day. Bush ended up carrying Florida by 537 votes out of almost 6 million cast, enough to tip the Electoral College and make him president.
The Obama campaign began airing a new ad last week reminding supporters in eight swing states of that history: "537," the narrator begins. "The number of votes that changed the course of American history. The difference between what was and what could have been."
Donna Brazile, the veteran Democratic strategist who ran Gore's campaign, says the experience is still difficult to discuss. "For starters, it is not easy to win only to come in second," she says. "It was Gore who led by example to accept defeat even when it's apparent you came in first but were declared the loser."
Sara Taylor Fagen was on the other side, a field organizer in Bush's 2000 campaign who became White House political director in his second term.
"There were some Democrats who never accepted George W. Bush as the victor," she says, a situation she says that faded but never fully disappeared. The potential repercussions of a similar split decision in 2012 would be even more serious, she says, given the negotiations slated in the post-election session of Congress on avoiding automatic spending cuts and tax increases scheduled to begin Jan. 1 -- the "fiscal cliff."
A split decision between the Electoral College and popular vote would be "very problematic" for a president-elect, as would continuing recounts in key states, Fagen says. "It would be very, very difficult to deal with any of the issues facing the lame-duck Congress. Politics would still be front and center." She called that "a frightening prospect."
Both Obama and congressional Republicans would be able to claim to be speaking for the American people: Obama because he won a second term, the GOP because its standard-bearer carried a majority of the nation's votes.
Aldrich, who studied the aftermath of the 2000 election, says that once the Supreme Court ruled, the overwhelming majority of Americans accepted Bush as the legitimate president -- a sign of a "surprising resiliency" in the U.S. system.
"There is an odd possibility that it (a split decision) may be helpful" in the congressional negotiations this year, he says. With both sides able to argue they hold an electoral mandate, he suggests, everyone involved might try to come up with solutions rather than simply waiting for the new president to lead.
Then he adds, "Of course, my nickname is Pollyanna."
List
Four elected despite losing popular vote
Of the 43 men who have served as president, four took office after failing to win a majority of the popular vote. None were incumbents seeking second terms.
1824
John Quincy Adams
Elected by the House over William Crawford and Andrew Jackson, who had won pluralities of the Electoral College and popular vote. Jackson won the White House four years later.
1876
Rutherford
B. Hayes
Hayes won the Electoral College; Samuel Tilden the popular vote.
1888
Benjamin
Harrison
Harrison won the Electoral College; incumbent Grover Cleveland the popular vote. Cleveland regained the White House four years later.
2000
George
W. Bush
Bush won the Electoral College; Al Gore the popular vote. Bush won a second term in 2004.
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GRAPHIC: photo CHRIS GARDNER, ap Supporters of both George W. Bush and Al Gore demonstrate Dec. 11, 2000, outside the Supreme Court in Washington. The next day, the court issued its decision on Bush v. Gore, settling the disputed 2000 election and ushering Bush into the White House.
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The Fix
October 30, 2012 Tuesday 10:07 PM EST
Obama hitting the airwaves in Michigan
BYLINE: Sean Sullivan
LENGTH: 715 words
Make sure to sign up to receive "Afternoon Fix" every day in your e-mail inbox by 5(ish) p.m.!
EARLIER ON THE FIX:
WaPo-ABC tracking poll: Popular vote > electoral college
How elected officials in Sandy's path have responded to the storm
What Republicans in Pennsylvania have in common with Charlie Brown
Why do people believe Florida and Virginia are sure things for Mitt Romney?
The incredibly polarized American electorate
Why Sandy poses a major test for Chris Christie (and how he's passing it so far)
3 things you need to know about Nevada (VIDEO)
The Fix moves Nebraska Senate from 'solid Republican' to 'lean Republican'
Seven takeaways from the Pew poll
WHAT YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED:
* Mitt Romney launched an ad buy in Pennsylvania for a 30-second contrast spot that portrays President Obama as unfriendly to the coal industry. Romney's campaign argues that Pennsylvania is in play, while the Obama team called the play a desperation move.
* Obama is going on the air in Michigan, where the pro-Romney super PAC Restore Our Future recently placed a $1.6 million buy. "We're matching states where they go up," an Obama aide said.
* Elizabeth Warren (D) leads Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) 53 percent to 46 percent in a new Suffolk University survey of those likeliest to to vote in Massachusetts. Warren is now seen as more popular than Brown in the poll. Meanwhile, the Democrat wants to reschedule the debate both she and Brown agreed should not be be held Tuesday because of storm concerns. Warren wants to debate on Thursday, but Brown wouldn't immediately say whether he'd participate.
* The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is up with a rough new TV ad against Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) featuring a woman who says she's been fighting breast cancer for 14 years. "I've had a double mastectomy and I'm on my fourth round of chemotherapy. [Flake] voted to let insurance companies kick women like me out of the hospital on the same day we had our breasts removed," the woman says. The reference is to Flake's vote against the Breast Cancer Patient Protection Act of 2007. Meanwhile, Mark Kelly, the husband of former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, sent his first fundraising email for Democratic nominee Richard Carmona on Tuesday.
* In addition to Nebraska, the conservative super PAC American Crossroads is going up with new TV ads in three other Senate races: Indiana, Montana and Wisconsin. The Montana spot hits Sen. Jon Tester (D), the Wisconsin commercial contrasts former governor Tommy Thompson (R) with Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D), and the Indiana ad was not immediately released.
WHAT YOU SHOULDN'T MISS:
* Obama will travel to New Jersey on Wednesday to survey the impact of Hurricane Sandy with Gov. Chris Christie (R).
* Obama leads Romney by just six points in Oregon, according to a new Oregonian newspaper poll of those likeliest to vote in the state conducted by Elway Research last Thursday through Sunday. The president's 47 percent to 41 percent advantage is modest, considering the tilt of the reliably blue state.
* Romney repeatedly ignored questions about eliminating FEMA at an event for storm victims on Tuesday. During a primary debate, he supported the idea of curtailing federal disaster response and letting states and the private sector take on a larger role. Campaign aides said Monday he would not abolish FEMA if elected.
* At a stop in Ohio billed as a "storm relief and volunteer appreciation" event, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) ripped Obama's handling of a the Sept. 11 attack on a U.S. consulate in Libya that claimed the lives of four Americans. "This president is either engaged in a massive cover-up deceiving the American people or he is so grossly incompetent that he is not qualified to be the commander in chief of our armed forces. It's either one of them," McCain told Romney volunteers.
THE FIX MIX:
Exercise time.
With Aaron Blake
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Election 2012
October 30, 2012 Tuesday 10:01 PM EST
Shorthand
BYLINE: Rachel Weiner
LENGTH: 44 words
* Romney put his inaccurate "Jeep" ad on the radio.
* Chris Christie praised Obama's storm response.
* Elizabeth Warren wants the final debate; Scott Brown isn't interested.
* In spite of the storm, Ohio early voting is going fine.
* And Obama is on the air in Michigan.
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Washingtonpost.com
October 30, 2012 Tuesday 8:12 PM EST
BYLINE: Rosalind S. Helderman
SECTION: A section; Pg. A04
LENGTH: 347 words
Obama campaign counters Romney's Jeep claim in Ohio
The Obama campaign has responded with an ad of its own to a controversial new spot by Mitt Romney that says Chrysler is contemplating building Jeeps in China.
The Romney ad has been widely criticized for leaving the impression that Chrysler is moving jobs from its Jeep plant in Toledo overseas. In fact, Chrysler has indicated it is considering opening a new Chinese plant to build trucks for the Chinese market but has no plans to move Ohio jobs to China.
The ad appeared to be an effort to blunt Obama's advantage on the auto-bailout issue in Ohio, where one in eight jobs is connected with the car industry.
But the Obama campaign has sensed an opening in the blowback to the ad, a chance to argue that Romney is willing to stretch the truth to win votes.
In an especially tough campaign conference call Monday, 14-year Jeep worker James Fayson said he was offended that Romney had implied his job could be shipped overseas.
"The fact that you would fabricate a story about our jobs moving to China makes you the worst kind of politician," he said of Romney.
The Obama ad, which is running in Ohio, repeats the campaign's argument that Romney did not support the bailout of the auto industry. An announcer states: "Mitt Romney on Ohio jobs? Wrong then . . . Dishonest now."
The Romney campaign has not indicated where its ad will run, but viewers spotted it on television in the Toledo market on Sunday, and a Romney spokesman confirmed that the spot has not been taken off the air.
The ad was carefully worded - it said that Obama "took GM and Chrysler into bankruptcy, and sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China."
That phrasing is technically accurate, since the company is looking at adding new Jeep production in China. But it comes after Romney told a crowd in Defiance, Ohio, last week that "one of the great manufacturers in this state, Jeep, now owned by the Italians, is thinking of moving all production to China."
- Rosalind S. Helderman
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The Fix
October 30, 2012 Tuesday 8:06 PM EST
What Republicans in Pennsylvania have in common with Charlie Brown
BYLINE: Chris Cillizza
LENGTH: 765 words
Two weeks ago today, we wrote a piece about the chatter that Pennsylvania might be a swing state and explained why the Keystone State is a very tough place for Republicans to get over 50 percent. Given that both parties are spending money on ads in the state, we thought it was worth re-posting the story. It's below.
The Fix grew up as a big Peanuts fan - and specifically a Charlie Brown lover. (His nerdy cynicism appealed to the boyish Fix.)
And so, when we see two new independent polls in Pennsylvania - one conducted by Quinnipiac University, the other by Muhlenberg College - that show former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney well within striking distance of President Obama - we think of Charlie Brown. And specifically his failed attempts to kick a football held by Lucy.
Forgot that moment? Thanks to the glory of You Tube we can all relive it together:
So what does Charlie Brown constantly being fooled by Lucy have to do with the tightening presidential race in Pennsylvania you ask?
Simple. Like Charlie Brown, Republicans convince themselves every four years that the math in Pennsylvania can add up to a majority for their candidate. And, every four years, Democrats pull the ball away at the last minute and carry the Keystone State.
Let's take a quick stroll through the recent electoral history of Pennsylvania. The last time a Republican won it at the presidential level was in 1988 when then Vice President George H.W. Bush took 51 percent of the vote. In the five elections since then the Republican nominee has won 36 percent, 40 percent, 46 percent, 48 percent and 44 percent in the state - for an average over those five elections of just under 43 percent of the vote. (Worth noting: That average is artificially low due to the fact that in 1992 and 1996 Ross Perot's independent candidacy siphoned off a considerable percentage of the major party vote in Pennsylvania and elsewhere.)
The closest Republicans came during those five elections was in 2004 when George W. Bush lost the state by 144,000 votes (out of almost 5.8 million cast) to Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry.
It's worth digging deeper into those 2004 results to understand why Republicans find the football, er, Pennsylvania so alluring but always wind up flat on their backs electorally speaking when all is said and done.
In that 2004 race, Bush won a majority of the counties in Pennsylvania - basically everything in between Philadelphia in the east and Pittsburgh in the west. And yet, those two anchor cities on opposite sides of the state were more than enough to deliver the state to Kerry.
Here's a look at the four major counties in those two regions and how the 2004 vote broke out.
* Allegheny (Pittsburgh): Kerry 363,674 (57%), Bush 268,387 (42%)
* Philadelphia (Philly): Kerry 517,054 (80%), Bush 124,710 (19%)
* Delaware (inner Philly suburbs): Kerry 157,531 (57%), Bush 116,728 (42%)
* Montgomery (inner Philly suburbs): Kerry 217,342 (56%), Bush 172,206 (44%)
Roughly 43 percent of all Kerry's vote in the state of Pennsylvania came from those four counties. His margin over Bush in those four counties was 573,570 votes - or roughly four times his overall statewide margin.
And that's Republicans' problem in Pennsylvania in a nutshell (This is Austin Powers in a nutshell). They win lots and lots of sparsely populated counties in the vast middle of the state but lose the big population counties in the east and west by such vast margins that the math just doesn't add up.
Could 2012 be different? Of course. History is the best guide until it isn't anymore - and states are always shifting due to demographic changes and the broader national political atmosphere.
But, for all the chatter of late about the competitiveness of Pennsylvania, there's very little evidence that Republicans are putting their money where their mouth is.
According to ad buy information provided to the Fix, Romney's campaign has yet to spend a dime in Pennsylvania on television and the panoply of conservative outside groups dumping cash into key states have combined to spend just $10 million. By way of comparison, Romney and outside GOP groups have already spent more than $68 million on ads in Ohio.
Is it possible that Romney's performance in the first debate coupled with ongoing economic unrest in Pennsylvania has turned the state into an emerging Republican opportunity? Sure.
But the weight of history and the lessons that Charlie Brown can teach us provide a strong counter-argument to the idea that Pennsylvania belongs in the narrow group of swing states this fall.
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Election 2012
October 30, 2012 Tuesday 7:28 PM EST
Four Pinocchios for Romney's Jeep ad
BYLINE: Rachel Weiner
LENGTH: 99 words
The Fact Checker weighs in on Mitt Romney's controversial new ad in Ohio:
This ad shows that we have entered the final, desperate week of the campaign.
The series of statements in the ad individually may be technically correct, but the overall message of the ad is clearly misleading - especially since it appears to have been designed to piggyback off of Romney's gross misstatement that Chrysler was moving Ohio factory jobs to China
President Obama has put out a response ad calling Romney "dishonest." The Romney campaign appears undeterred; a version of the ad is now on the radio in Toledo.
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Washington Post Blogs
Election 2012
October 30, 2012 Tuesday 7:01 PM EST
Ad watch: Mitt Romney's Pennsylvania ad;
Ohio Democratic Party Chairman Chris Redfern accused Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney of politicizing Hurricane Sandy with Romney's Dayton event Tuesday that was billed as storm relief but also had characteristics of a campaign rally.
BYLINE: Rosalind S. Helderman
LENGTH: 116 words
Mitt Romney, "Crushed By Your Policies"
What it says: President Obama says, "So, if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can - it's just that it will bankrupt them." The narrator adds, "Obama's kept that promise and Pennsylvania coal paid the price."
What it means: Romney's campaign is arguing that Pennsylvania is in play, in part due to the coal mining industry. The ad uses a quote from a 2008 interview in which Obama discussed a proposal that did not become law. However, the Obama administration has pursued policies that have made it harder to mine and burn coal in the United States.
Who will see it: Pennsylvania.
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The Fact Checker
October 30, 2012 Tuesday 5:54 PM EST
4 Pinocchios for Mitt Romney's misleading ad on Chrysler and China;
The GOP nominee doubles down on a wrong-headed claim that the automaker is moving American jobs to China.
BYLINE: Glenn Kessler
LENGTH: 1382 words
"Who will do more for the auto industry? Not Barack Obama. Fact checkers confirm that his attacks on Mitt Romney are false. The truth? Mitt Romney has a plan to help the auto industry. He is supported by Lee Iacocca and the Detroit News. Obama took GM and Chrysler into bankruptcy and sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China. Mitt Romney will fight for every American job."
- voiceover in unannounced Mitt Romney television ad running in Ohio
When a campaign does not announce a television ad, it's a good sign that it knows it is playing fast and loose with the truth. Indeed, this is an excellent example of an ad that has a series of statements that individually might be factually defensible, but the overall impression is misleading.
The ad also comes on the heels of Mitt Romney's mistaken claim in a speech last week that Chrysler was moving Jeep production to China - a statement immediately denied by the auto manufacturer. Yet the story apparently was too good for Romney to give up, because the ad repeats the claim, tweaked slightly to make it more accurate.
The Facts
Here's what Romney said last Thursday in Ohio: "I saw a story today that one of the great manufacturers in this state, Jeep, now owned by the Italians, is thinking of moving all production to China. I will fight for every good job in America, I'm going to fight to make sure trade is fair."
This was completely wrong. Bloomberg News had reported that Fiat, the majority owner of Chrysler, was planning to once again start building Jeeps in China, after production had been on hold since 2009.
The article made clear that Chrysler was was "adding Jeep production sites rather than shifting output from North America to China," but some blogs, such as the Washington Examiner's Washington Secrets, misinterpreted the article and reported: "Jeep, the rugged brand President Obama once said symbolized American freedom, is considering giving up on the United States and shifting production to China."
After Romney made his comments, Chrysler issued a statement firmly denying that any North American production was being moved to China:
"Jeep has no intention of shifting production of its Jeep models out of North America to China. It's simply reviewing the opportunities to return Jeep output to China for the world's largest auto market. U.S. Jeep assembly lines will continue to stay in operation. A careful and unbiased reading of the Bloomberg take would have saved unnecessary fantasies and extravagant comments."
In response, a Romney spokesman explained: "The larger point that the governor made is that rather than creating jobs here, the foreign owner, handpicked by President Obama, is planning to add jobs overseas."
This is a strange bit of spin, given that all international automakers build cars in other overseas markets. In this case, one could argue it is a sign of the company's growing strength that it is returning to a major overseas market that it had abandoned. (Moreover, Chrysler is planning to add to its Jeep workforce in the United States in 2013.)
Now back to the television ad. Clearly this is an attempt to rebut Obama's frequent criticism that Romney's plan to deny the automakers a federal bailout and take them through managed bankruptcy would have destroyed the industry. No one can say for certain what would or would not have happened, but we have taken both men to task for the way they have spoken about the issue - Obama for suggesting Romney wanted to give up on the auto industry and Romney for claiming that Obama simply took his idea for using the bankruptcy process.
Our bottom line was that Obama had the edge in the argument: "By most accounts, Romney's approach would not have been viable in the depths of the economic crisis. And certainly Romney's prediction that a bailout would lead to the auto industry's certain demise was wildly incorrect."
The ad cites a PolitiFact column that focused on a narrow point made by Obama in the last presidential debate, saying Romney would not have provided any government assistance to the automakers. PolitiFact actually concluded that Romney was so vague and unclear at the time that it difficult to figure out what he would have done. Thus it concluded Obama could not be so categorical. From this slender reed, the Romney campaign incorrectly claims that all fact checkers dispute Obama on auto bailout claims. No so.
Yes, Obama ultimately took the automakers through bankruptcy, but that was only after the predicate had been established for their survival, including extending government loans (a process originally started by the George W. Bush administration over Romney's objections).
Indeed, while the ad cites the conservative Detroit News in supporting Romney for president, the editorial largely comes to same conclusion as this column regarding the viability of Romney's plan for the auto industry in the midst of the Great Recession. The newspaper said Obama's response to the auto industry crisis was "extraordinary" and an example of his "leadership on this issue:"
Don't assume that it was a no-brainer for a conservative newspaper to endorse a conservative presidential candidate. We recognize and are grateful for the extraordinary contribution President Obama made to Michigan in leading the rescue of General Motors and Chrysler. Had either of those companies been allowed to go under, Michigan's economic maladies would have become fatal.
The president stepped up with the support the two automakers needed to keep themselves and their suppliers in business. We have said in past editorials that while Romney rightly advocated for structured bankruptcies in his infamous "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt" New York Times op-ed, he was wrong in suggesting the automakers could have found operating capital in the private markets. In that article, Romney suggested government-backed loans to keep the companies afloat post bankruptcy. But what GM and Chrysler needed were bridge loans to get them through the process, and the private credit markets were unwilling to provide them. Obama put a rescue team to work and they were true to the task.
We have criticized Obama in past editorials for rewriting bankruptcy law on the fly to hold harmless his supporters in the United Auto Workers union. Still, Michigan is better off today because of Obama's leadership on this issue.
Finally, the ad's reference to Jeep production in China is technically correct but misleading, particularly in light of Romney's comments on the campaign trail. The ad says that Obama "sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China," but then adds: "Mitt Romney will fight for every American job."
The unspoken message is that American jobs are being sent to China, even though the ad carefully tiptoes around that claim. (The ad, in fact, includes brief text quoting Bloomberg as saying Jeep production was returning to China.)
The Pinocchio Test
This ad shows that we have entered the final, desperate week of the campaign.
The series of statements in the ad individually may be technically correct, but the overall message of the ad is clearly misleading - especially since it appears to have been designed to piggyback off of Romney's gross misstatement that Chrysler was moving Ohio factory jobs to China.
It is also especially strange that the ad touts Romney's endorsement by the Detroit News, when the editorial actually backs up Obama's criticism of Romney's response to the auto industry crisis.
Four Pinocchios
(About our rating scale)
UPDATE: A senior Romney campaign official faulted this analysis for conflating what Romney said in a campaign speech with the messages in the ad. "He did not repeat it on the stump and it did not get much coverage," he said, noting most of the coverage (including in The Washington Post) focused on the endorsement by Meat Loaf. "I just don't think you can say the campaign is creating a falsehood," he said. "We are not saying they are cutting jobs here. We are saying they are adding jobs to China."
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Track each presidential candidate's campaign ads
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Election 2012
October 30, 2012 Tuesday 5:38 PM EST
Mitt Romney campaign buys ad time in Pennsylvania;
Mitt Romney's campaign has bought air time in Pennsylvania, saying in a memo that the Democratic-leaning state now represents an opportunity for the Republican campaign.
BYLINE: Rachel Weiner
LENGTH: 215 words
Mitt Romney's campaign has bought air time in Pennsylvania, saying in a memo that the Democratic-leaning state now represents an opportunity for the Republican campaign.
"Pennsylvania presents a unique opportunity for the Romney campaign," political director Rich Beeson wrote. "Mitt Romney is more competitive in the voter-rich Philadelphia suburbs than any Republican nominee since 1988."
President Obama's campaign cast the move as desperation rather than momentum.
"[T]he Romney campaign has found itself with a tremendously narrow and improbable path to 270 electoral votes," Obama campaign manager Jim Messina said in a statement. "Now, like Republicans did in 2008, they are throwing money at states where they never built an organization and have been losing for two years."
Obama's lead in Pennsylvania is narrow but consistent; Romney hasn't led a poll in the state since February.
Romney's campaign did not disclose the size of ad buys, but according to NBC News the buy so far is at least $120,000. Restore Our Future, a pro-Romney super PAC, recently placed a $2.1 million buy in Pennsylvania.
Obama has spent about $5 million in Pennsylvania, mostly over the summer. The campaign is countering the Restore Our Future ads with a buy of at least $650,000, concentrated in Philadelphia.
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The Fix
October 30, 2012 Tuesday 2:42 PM EST
Seven takeaways from the Pew poll
BYLINE: Chris Cillizza;Sean Sullivan
LENGTH: 1328 words
The new Pew poll shows the race between President Obama and Mitt Romney a dead heat among likely voters - what else is new - but also provides plenty of other fascinating glimpses into the relative strengths and weaknesses of each man as well as the mindset of the electorate with election day just a week off.
We combed through the poll - while sequestered in official Fix headquarters to wait out Hurricane Sandy - and came up with seven takeaways. They are below.
1. A Republican intensity gap: More than three-quarters (76 percent) of Republican and lean Republican voters said they are likely to vote on Nov. 6 as compared with 62 percent of Democrats and lean Democratic voters. That double-digit intensity gap should be concerning for Democrats as, typically, the side whose base is more energized usually winds up winning.
2. Obama's huge "connection" edge: As has been the case in previous Pew data (as well as virtually every other polling conducted in the race) the new Pew survey shows a huge edge to Obama when voters are asked which of the two candidates better connects with "ordinary" Americans. Fifty nine percent of Pew's sample said Obama connects better while 31 percent say Romney does. (Worth noting: That 28-point gap was significantly smaller than the 43-point bulge Obama enjoyed over Romney on the question in mid-September.) If the election comes down to voters asking themselves which of the two men "gets" them better, President Obama will be re-elected.
3. Romney as the "ideas" candidate: Despite Democratic attacks that allege that Romney has offered nothing in the way of new (or specific) ideas on what he would do differently or better than Obama, voters - at least in the Pew poll - don't see things that way. Forty six percent say Romney has "new ideas" while 41 percent say the same of Obama. That gap grows to 16 points in Romney's favor when only swing voters are sampled in the Pew data. Romney's lead on the question is exhibit No. 1 on how difficult it is to run as the new/change/fresh face when you are the incumbent president of the United States.
4. First debate mattered more: When we tweeted that Romney's clear win in the first debate probably mattered more than Obama's narrow win in the second debate and less-narrow win in the final debate, liberals blanched. But, the Pew data suggest the first debate simply did matter more. Thirty six percent of people said that the three debates gave them a better opinion of Romney while just 18 percent said the same of Obama. Some of those numbers are explained by the fact that Romney was less well known than Obama going into the first debate and in his solid performance he effectively beat back the caricature the Obama team had crafted of him in their television ad onslaught. Regardless of the reasons though, the debates - especially the first one - are the reason Romney is as close as he is in the race today.
5. An overblown gender gap focus?: In the Pew data Romney is losing women by six points. If he keeps that margin on election day, Romney would lose the female vote by less than half the margin that John McCain lost them in 2008. (McCain lost women by 13 points.) In fact, if Romney fell short to Obama among women voters by just six points, it would be the narrowest loss for a Republican presidential candidate among females in more than 20 years. It's worth noting that many other national surveys suggest a wider gender gap than Pew but as we have noted before, the idea that Romney is headed toward anything like a historically large loss among women voters simply isn't born out by the data.
6. Romney overperforming McCain among the young and the old: In 2008, McCain lost 18-29 year olds by 34 points to Obama. In the new Pew poll, Romney is trailing Obama by 21 points among that youngest demographic. On the other end of the age spectrum, McCain beat Obama by 8 points among voters 65 and older in 2008 but Romney is ahead by 19 points in the latest Pew data. Among 30-44 year olds, Obama is running six points ahead of Romney - exactly where he was in 2008 against McCain; same goes for voters age 45-64 among whom the two candidate are currently tied just as Obama and McCain wound up in 2008.
7. People still think Obama wins - but less than a majority: We've long been fascinated with the disconnect between the horse race in national polls, which has tended to show the race extremely close, and the way that people respond to the question of regardless of who they support who they expect to win. In a March Pew poll, nearly six in 10 respondents (59 percent) said they thought Obama would win as opposed to just 32 percent. That gap has shrunk somewhat in recent months with 49 percent of people now saying Obama will win and 31 percent saying Romney will win. (It's amazing that roughly the same amount of people thought Romney would win in March as do today.) As Pew notes in a memo on their poll, approximately two thirds (64 percent) of Romney supporters actually think he will win while more than eight in 10 (82 percent) of Obama backers believe their guy will be the victor. That gap may be the reason why Romney has started to say things like "when I am president" at his campaign rallies - in hopes of finally convincing his supporters who still doubt he will win.
Romney in Ohio, Obama in Washington, as storm seizes attention: Both presidential candidates canceled campaign rallies previously scheduled for Tuesday due to the impact of Hurricane Sandy on the East Coast. Obama is monitoring the storm from Washington, while Romney will attend a storm relief event in Kettering, Ohio - where he had previously been slated to hold a campaign rally - on Tuesday morning.
The Romney campaign is dispatching Ann Romney and GOP vice presidential nominee Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.) to participate in storm relief collection efforts in Wisconsin and Iowa. Ann Romney will also attend a campaign rally in Des Moines on Tuesday evening. Meanwhile, Obama will turn to Bill Clinton to help him campaign in Minnesota.
American Crossroads hitting the airwaves in Nebraska: The conservative super PAC will launch a new ad buy during the final week of the Nebraska Senate campaign, The Hotline reports. The move suggests state Sen. Deb Fischer's (R) lead over former senator Bob Kerrey (D) may be less secure than it once was. Further evidence: an Omaha World-Herald poll released over the weekend showed Fischer leading Kerrey by only three points.
Fixbits:
Sandy has closed the federal government once again on Tuesday.
Gallup suspended polling for its daily tracking Monday night because of Sandy.
Romney spoke with FEMA officials about the storm.
Obama and Romney are running about even in Florida, according to a CNN/ORC International poll.
Vice President Biden said in Ohio that Romney's claim that Jeep was was considering moving all production to China was an "absolutely, patently false assertion."
Sen. Claire McCaskill's (D-Mo.) mother passed away on Monday at the age of 84.
Former Wisconsin governor Tommy Thompson's (R) new TV ad says Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D) "hasn't been for Wisconsin, ever."
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) said the mayor of Atlantic City has "been impossible to work with."
House Majority PAC is closing its campaign against Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) with spots hitting him over Medicare and jobs.
Must-reads:
"Storm throws a wrench into the works of Va. campaigns, voting efforts" - Amy Gardner, Washington Post
"Sandy Unlikely to Prompt Change in Date of Election" - Naftali Bendavid, Wall Street Journal
"Obama, Romney Focus on Sandy: Election? What Election?" - Beth Reinhard, National Journal
"G.O.P. Tries to Chip Away at Democrats' Edge in Early Voting" - Michael Cooper and Jeff Zeleny, New York Times
"Election lawyers ready to challenge alleged illegal voting activity" - Bill Turque, Washington Post
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The Washington Post
October 30, 2012 Tuesday
Suburban Edition
BYLINE: - Rosalind S. Helderman
SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A04
LENGTH: 336 words
Obama campaign counters Romney's Jeep claim in Ohio
The Obama campaign has responded with an ad of its own to a controversial new spot by Mitt Romney that says Chrysler is contemplating building Jeeps in China.
The Romney ad has been widely criticized for leaving the impression that Chrysler is moving jobs from its Jeep plant in Toledo overseas. In fact, Chrysler has indicated it is considering opening a new Chinese plant to build trucks for the Chinese market but has no plans to move Ohio jobs to China.
The ad appeared to be an effort to blunt Obama's advantage on the auto-bailout issue in Ohio, where one in eight jobs is connected with the car industry.
But the Obama campaign has sensed an opening in the blowback to the ad, a chance to argue that Romney is willing to stretch the truth to win votes.
In an especially tough campaign conference call Monday, 14-year Jeep worker James Fayson said he was offended that Romney had implied his job could be shipped overseas.
"The fact that you would fabricate a story about our jobs moving to China makes you the worst kind of politician," he said of Romney.
The Obama ad, which is running in Ohio, repeats the campaign's argument that Romney did not support the bailout of the auto industry. An announcer states: "Mitt Romney on Ohio jobs? Wrong then . . . Dishonest now."
The Romney campaign has not indicated where its ad will run, but viewers spotted it on television in the Toledo market on Sunday, and a Romney spokesman confirmed that the spot has not been taken off the air.
The ad was carefully worded - it said that Obama "took GM and Chrysler into bankruptcy, and sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China."
That phrasing is technically accurate, since the company is looking at adding new Jeep production in China. But it comes after Romney told a crowd in Defiance, Ohio, last week that "one of the great manufacturers in this state, Jeep, now owned by the Italians, is thinking of moving all production to China."
- Rosalind S. Helderman
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The New York Times
October 29, 2012 Monday
Late Edition - Final
Obama Is Even In TV Ad Race Despite PACs
BYLINE: By JEREMY W. PETERS, NICHOLAS CONFESSORE and SARAH COHEN
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1141 words
Maybe the ''super PACs'' were not so super after all.
Despite repeated warnings from President Obama and his party that a flood of unrestricted donations from conservatives to outside groups would swamp them, the White House and its allies are at least holding their own. Over the last month, the pro-Obama forces have run more ads and, more critically, have reached audiences in roughly the same numbers as Mitt Romney and the group of well-financed conservative super PACs working to elect him.
A review of data from the last 30 days from Kantar Media/CMAG, which tracks political ad placements, shows that 160,000 commercials supporting the president have run, compared with 140,000 for Mr. Romney. And the Obama campaign and its supporters have broadcast more ads during the morning news and prime-time periods when television viewership is highest.
Though the disparity has started to narrow somewhat over the last week, with Republicans gaining a decisive advantage in places like Cleveland and Des Moines, the story in battleground states has been the same for much of the last month: even at their most effective, the super PACs have helped Mr. Romney fight only to a draw.
The lack of a discernible Republican advantage is all the more surprising because Mr. Romney and conservatives have been spending more money. Over all, total Republican ad spending for the presidential campaign is about $500 million. Democrats have put in close to $400 million.
Yet unpublished estimates of how many people are seeing the ads, based on Nielsen ratings, show that over all, neither side has been getting into significantly more homes.
In Ohio, Iowa and Wisconsin, for example, Republicans have put down considerably higher amounts in local television markets -- sometimes by a 3-to-2 margin. But that spending did not translate into a commensurate advantage with viewers, audience data available to the presidential campaigns showed.
In Florida and New Hampshire, in fact, pro-Obama ads have been reaching considerably more people, the data showed.
But Mr. Romney and his supporters have started to buy more advertising time. And with eight days until the election, there is still plenty of time for them to increase their engagement.
But Mr. Obama has been helped by a structural advantage, stemming from differences in the ways he, Mr. Romney and their allies have built their war chests. Both men are on track to raise $1 billion along with their parties this election cycle, with much of the money budgeted for advertising. And when the super PACs are included, the final tally will include hundreds of millions of dollars more, most of that benefiting Republicans. Mr. Romney has raised a much larger proportion of his money to date for the Republican National Committee.
But Mr. Obama and the Democrats, buoyed by millions of small donors, have raised a vast majority of his cash directly for his campaign committee, which under federal law is entitled to preferential ad rates over political parties and super PACs.
On the Republican side, super PAC spending has been a far greater necessity because of the Romney campaign's cash shortages over the summer. More than half of pro-Romney advertising spending to date has come from super PACs, which sometimes pay double and triple what candidates pay for TV time.
For example, in Florida over the last month, both sides reserved roughly the same amount of time -- at $25 million each. But the audience reach of the pro-Obama ads was far greater, sometimes by 20 percent, audience data showed.
The Obama campaign believes that the differences between its advertising strategy and the Republicans' efforts, which are more disjointed, are helpful in other ways. First, it can control almost all of the advertising placement and timing itself. Second, though it has benefited greatly from more than $100 million in advertising from its super PAC, the Obama campaign has not had to rely nearly as heavily on outside groups, which campaigns are prohibited by law from coordinating with.
''It's nice to control your own destiny,'' said Larry Grisolano, the director of paid media for the Obama campaign.
That is not to say that the Obama strategy is not without inefficiencies or unexpected expense. In fact, the campaign said it had spent more in the last three weeks than it initially budgeted.
Even the best-laid plans are at the mercy of this year's erratic market, in which an ad during the ''Today'' show in Norfolk, Va., an important region with a population of 242,000 in a battleground state, can cost nearly three and a half times as much as an ad in the same time slot in New York City, where there is little demand for political advertising time.
The lowest rate federal candidates are entitled to is breaking records this year because of surging demand. ''A rising tide floats all boats higher,'' said Will Feltus, senior vice president of National Media, which buys advertising time. ''But this year it's like a tidal wave.''
Mr. Romney's media buying is less susceptible to the wild swings of the market because it waits until the last minute before reserving its commercial time. This means it pays higher rates, but it is also not running into what has become a significant problem for political advertisers this year: getting bumped by someone offering to pay a higher price.
The New York Times examined files of the Cleveland NBC station, WKYC, in one of the most saturated media markets this year, and sometimes found price increases of three- or fourfold. For the week of Oct. 8, the Obama campaign put down an advance purchase order on the ''Today'' show for $400 per 30-second spot.
But super PACs like the conservative group American Crossroads, which paid $2,500 for the same spot on ''Today,'' had bid the price up so much that the Obama campaign ultimately ended up paying $1,400 for each ad. The Romney campaign, which had reserved its time only the week before, also paid $1,400.
The Obama campaign has expressed alarm about scenarios like this, warning that its resources could fall short in the final days of the race. In an e-mail to supporters on Friday, Jim Messina, the campaign manager, wrote that Republicans ''can outspend us by $4 million per day, every day, for the final 11 days.''
Some advocates of campaign finance reform are concerned that because an onslaught of ads has failed to bury the president as expected, their own efforts might be stymied.
''There's a worry that if there's parity in terms of spending on ads, that it will diminish the appetite for reform,'' said Ellen Miller, the executive director of the Sunlight Foundation, which monitors outside spending.
''But this is not about whether the candidates can game the system,'' she added. ''It's about whether Americans can be fairly represented in a democracy that depends on big money, much of it spent in secret.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/29/us/politics/obama-is-even-in-tv-ad-race-despite-pacs.html
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GRAPHIC: CHARTS: Democrats Running More Ads, But Spending Less: Despite being outspent, President Obama and Democratic groups supporting him have aired more advertisements than Mitt Romney and the Republicans over the course of the campaign. One explanation is that candidates pay lower rates for ad spots, and the bulk of the Democratic spending has been by the campaign, not outside groups. (Source: Campaign Media Analysis Group at Kantar Media) (A12)
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The New York Times
October 29, 2012 Monday
Late Edition - Final
Science Is The Key To Growth
BYLINE: By NEAL F. LANE.
Neal F. Lane, a professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University, was director of the National Science Foundation and the chief science and technology adviser to , President Bill Clinton.
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Editorial Desk; OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR; Pg. 27
LENGTH: 690 words
Houston
MITT ROMNEY said in all three presidential debates that we need to expand the economy. But he left out a critical ingredient: investments in science and technology.
Scientific knowledge and new technologies are the building blocks for long-term economic growth -- ''the key to a 21st-century economy,'' as President Obama said in the final debate.
So it is astonishing that Mr. Romney talks about economic growth while planning deep cuts in investment in science, technology and education. They are among the discretionary items for which spending could be cut 22 percent or more under the Republican budget plan, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
According to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the plan, which Mr. Romney has endorsed, could cut overall nondefense science, engineering, biomedical and technology research by a quarter over the next decade, and energy research by two-thirds.
Mr. Romney seems to have lost sight of the critical role of research investments not only in developing new medicines and cleaner energy sources but also in creating higher-skilled jobs.
The private sector can't do it alone. We rely on companies to translate scientific discoveries into products. But federal investment in research and development, especially basic research, is critical to their success. Just look at Google, which was started by two graduate students working on a project supported by the National Science Foundation and today employs 54,000 people.
Richard K. Templeton, chief executive of Texas Instruments, put it this way in 2009: ''Research conducted at universities and national labs underpins the new innovations that drive economic growth.''
President Bill Clinton, for whom I served as science adviser from 1998 to 2001, understood that. In those years, we balanced the federal budget and achieved strong growth, creating about two million jobs a year. A main reason was the longstanding bipartisan consensus on investing in science. With support from Congress, Mr. Clinton put research funding on a growth path, including a doubling over five years (completed under President George W. Bush) of the budget for the National Institutes of Health.
In 2010, the federal government invested about $26.6 billion in N.I.H. research; those investments led to $69 billion in economic activity and supported 485,000 jobs across the country, according to United for Medical Research, a nonpartisan group.
Moreover, the $3.8 billion taxpayers invested in the Human Genome Project between 1988 and 2003 helped create and drive $796 billion in economic activity by industries that now depend on the advances achieved in genetics, according to the Battelle Memorial Institute, a nonprofit group that supports research for the industry.
So science investments not only created jobs in new industries of the time, like the Internet and nanotechnology, but also the rising tax revenues that made budget surpluses possible.
American science has not been faring so well in recent budgets. President Obama has repeatedly requested steady increases for scientific research, aimed at putting the budgets of three key science agencies -- the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy's Office of Science, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology -- on a path to double, by 2016, the combined $10 billion they received in 2006. But a polarized Congress has not delivered at that rate, and the goal could be nullified if next year sees the beginning of draconian cuts.
Meanwhile, the frontiers of science continue to expand. President Obama is proposing that the United States boost its overall national research and development investments -- including private enterprise and academia as well as government -- to 3 percent of gross domestic product -- a number that would still lag behind Israel, Sweden, Japan and South Korea, in that order.
In an increasingly complex world, that should be only a start. If our country is to remain strong and prosperous and a land of rewarding jobs, we need to understand this basic investment principle in America's future: no science, no growth.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/29/opinion/want-to-boost-the-economy-invest-in-science.html
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The New York Times
October 29, 2012 Monday
Late Edition - Final
What Works in a Campaign Commercial? Ad Executives Offer Their Take
BYLINE: By JEREMY W. PETERS
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; Pg. 12
LENGTH: 997 words
Madison Avenue and Pennsylvania Avenue do not intersect. And often the kind of advertising that sells presidential candidates has almost nothing in common with the kind that makes consumers crave breakfast cereal or a certain kind of beer.
Campaigns do not rely on professional advertising executives as often as they used to, at least not in the same way they did when Doyle Dane Bernbach created the famous ''Daisy'' ad for Lyndon B. Johnson or Hal Rainey helped write Ronald Reagan's ''Morning in America'' campaign.
So in that spirit, The New York Times asked three leaders in advertising to rate their favorite commercials of this campaign. They were asked to make two picks: one pro-Obama ad and one pro-Romney ad.
Daryl Lee, McCann, chief strategy officer
Pro-Obama pick: ''My Job'' by the Obama campaign, which juxtaposes Mitt Romney's ''47 percent'' remarks about people on government assistance against pictures of veterans, families and blue-collar workers.
''Unlike the typical negative ad, peppered with newspaper headlines and pictures of the opponent grimacing or looking sinister, this ad creates a documentary approach, with a number of strong storytelling tactics,'' Mr. Lee said. ''After showing Barack Obama in rich colors at the White House, the screen turns dark with white script starkly stating, 'Mitt Romney's Own Words.' Everything that follows is black and white, stripped of color, reinforcing the bleak worldview that Romney's words suggest. The National Geographic-quality pictures evoke the perspective of the neutral observer, without an agenda, merely recording the world as it is. The shots of earnest, hardworking Americans in everyday pose contrast with Romney's words dismissing a group of Americans as 'victims.'
''The Obama team showed considerable restraint and discipline in this ad. They let the words speak for themselves.''
Pro-Romney pick: ''Olympics'' by the Restore Our Future ''super PAC,'' which features athletes like Kristi Yamaguchi praising Mr. Romney's leadership in saving the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.
''The ad team took a news story approach to a candidate testimonial and executed it with great craft,'' Mr. Lee said. ''The ad works so well because the story line is simple and uplifting. It reads like a human-interest piece in the morning news shows. It is a story of crisis averted and hope rekindled.
''The authenticity of the story is communicated simply through real-life accounts from real athletes recounting the challenges the Olympics faced, and the actions from Romney that helped save the day. The background is plain and uncluttered. The ribbon effects that stream across the screen mimic the Olympic coverage TV visuals. Each of Romney's testimonial witnesses speaks from a different camera angle giving the appearance of diverse viewpoints that agree. And it clearly helps Mitt Romney to have respected, successful women like Kristi Yamaguchi endorsing him in an ad, considering the importance of the women vote in these elections.''
Mark Simon, Campbell Ewald, chief creative officer
Pro-Obama pick: ''Table'' by the Obama campaign, in which President Obama states his four-point case for re-election.
''In consumer advertising, 'competitive advertising' is generally viewed as an approach that may help a challenger brand -- but not a leadership brand,'' Mr. Simon said. ''In this context, it is very surprising that incumbent candidates have turned to this approach so forcefully.
''I'd rather see campaigns that focus on what the candidate stands for. Tell me what you're going to do for America and how you're going to do it. Don't tell me about your opponent. 'Table' does this while promoting 'economic patriotism,' an interesting concept.''
Pro-Romney pick: ''Too Many Americans,'' in which Mr. Romney makes his case directly to voters.
''Both sides focus most of their attention on attacking the other candidate rather than building their own case,'' Mr. Simon said. ''It seems as if 'comparative' -- that is, negative -- advertising has become the dominant political advertising approach of our times.
''This is something we've rarely heard in this campaign: agreement between the candidates. 'President Obama and I both care about middle-class families.' And it works well for the undecided without alienating those who might be leaning towards Obama. The choice of wardrobe and set design makes Mitt more accessible to middle-class America.''
Carl Johnson, Anomaly, founding partner
Pro-Obama pick: ''My Job''
''Mr. Obama's brand is authentic, clearly understood and has been built with set-piece speeches and interviews,'' Mr. Johnson said. ''However, his larger-than-life ability to inspire does not sit well with point-by-point attacks. Attacks are, by their very nature, uninspiring, as they tear down rather than build up.
''So as a brand, Obama has an issue with attacking directly as it undermines what gives his brand strength. However, Romney does his work for him with the most self-destructive quote of the entire campaign -- the infamous 47 percent -- allowing Obama a full-fronted attack without uttering a word. 'Listen to Romney,' it suggests. 'Need we say more?' ''
Pro-Romney pick: ''Give Me a Break,'' a Romney campaign ad that repurposes an attack on Mr. Obama by former President Bill Clinton from the 2008 Democratic primary.
''As an executive with a businesslike persona,'' Mr. Johnson said of Mr. Romney, ''he is much more comfortable being on the attack. His competitiveness comes through more naturally than any vision for the future. His past debate performance bears this out even further.
''However, his smartest ad, I think, avoids reinforcing the sometimes negative, uncaring side of Romney by once again turning the opposition back on themselves -- in this instance, undermining Obama with the words of one of his strongest advocates, Bill Clinton.
''Making it even more effective, it works with the accepted inspirational Brand Obama, but suggests it's just 'a fairy tale.' ''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/29/us/politics/what-works-in-a-campaign-commercial-ad-executives-offer-their-take.html
LOAD-DATE: October 30, 2012
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: The Obama campaign's ''My Job'' commercial juxtaposes Mitt Romney's ''47 percent'' comments with pictures of veterans.
In the ''Too Many Americans'' commercial, Mr. Romney makes his case to voters without directly attacking President Obama.
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The New York Times Blogs
(Media Decoder)
October 29, 2012 Monday
The Breakfast Meeting: Random House-Penguin Merger, and Romney's Straight Face
BYLINE: NOAM COHEN
SECTION: BUSINESS; media
LENGTH: 795 words
HIGHLIGHT: Also, the expanding sexual abuse scandal involving the BBC, Univision begins its first digital network, validation for Lance Armstrong's doubters, and Hollywood faces existential questions
The publishers Random House and Penguin plan to merge, their respective owners, Bertelsmann and Pearson, confirmed on Monday, Eric Pfanner reported. Under the merger the parent companies would share executive control, with Markus Dohle of Random House serving as chief executive and John Makinson of Penguin becoming the chairman. Still, Bertelsmann would control 53 percent of the merged publishers, in an attempt to avoid the complications of an even split. The combined company would have around 25 percent of the consumer publishing business in markets like the United States; as a result lawyers for both companies are already strategizing how to navigate regulatory approval.
The move came after it was reported that News Corporation was considering making a bid for Penguin.
The pop star Paul Gadd - better known as Garry Glitter - was arrested over the weekend as part of the expanding investigation into sexual-abuse scandal surrounding the late BBC TV host Jimmy Savile, Nicholas Kulish reported. As many as 300 people have come forward to describe sexual abuse at the hands of Mr. Savile; they also have described a depraved environment in Mr. Savile's dressing room at the BBC studios where teenage girls were molested by Mr. Savile and others, including Mr. Gadd, a convicted pedophile.
The BBC on Monday said it had begun an inquiry into the "culture and practices" at the corporation behind the sexual abuse scandal that will be led by a former senior court judge.
As the presidential election winds down, both candidates are shaking the trees for votes, but there is one clear strategic difference: President Obama is agreeing to sit on the couch with late-night hosts, and Mitt Romney is not. Lately, Mr. Obama has been on "The Daily Show" with Jon Stewart, the "Tonight" show with Jay Leno, as well as MTV and NBC News, which was given two days of access to the president during his campaign tour last week, Bill Carter writes. Mr. Romney's campaign didn't explain its reasoning, but producers of shows like David Letterman's or Jon Stewart's said Mr. Romney has a standing invitation to appear. And Lorne Michaels of "Saturday Night Live" says he holds out hope that in a close election, Mr. Romney will make a cameo appearance.
For all the money raised by "super PACs" supporting Mr. Romney, President Obama has managed to maintain an edge in the number of political ads airing, Jeremy W. Peters, Nicholas Confessore and Sarah Cohen reported. The explanations can be technical, related to how different kinds of donations can be spent, but the lack of a Romney advantage in political advertising is still surprising, they write, "because Mr. Romney and conservatives have been spending more money." (Total Republican ad spending for the presidential campaign is about $500 million, versus $400 million for the Democrats.)
The Spanish-language Univision is beginning its first digital network, UVideos, Tanzina Vega reports, offering 1,500 hours of long-form programming and about 200 short clips a day free to users. Notably, Univision is going to make the content and the user interface for its digital network available in English, with subtitles on many of its shows.
Lance Armstrong's long-time-in-coming fall from grace - from cancer-surviving cycling legend to disgraced former champion accused of doping his way to victory - is an example of how hard it can be to dislodge a compelling narrative, David Carr writes. Even cynical-by-nature journalists get swept up in the tale, he writes, and it was a few journalists who promoted a counter-narrative, aided by a fringe of doubters who used blogs and social media to keep raising questions about Mr. Amstrong. One important blog was NYVelocity, he writes, which acted a clearinghouse for information implicating Mr. Armstrong.
Hollywood's recent concerns may have their roots in practical commercial questions (why did box office returns shrink last year to their lowest level since 1995?) but they also have an existential dimension, Michael Cieply writes. In a video-clip, small-screen age, do movies still matter? And if they matter less to the younger public, what can be done about it? Several industry groups, including Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which awards the Oscars, and the nonprofit American Film Institute, which supports cinema, are brainstorming about starting public campaigns to promote the idea of movies, he writes.
Random House and Penguin Are Negotiating a Merger
The Breakfast Meeting: BBC Scandal Deepens, and Obama Explains Trump Feud
The Breakfast Meeting: Obama the Aggressor at Debate, and Clark Kent Quits Daily Planet
The Breakfast Meeting: Dunham Book Deal and Girls Who Like Steak
The Breakfast Meeting: The Nook as 'iPad Lite,' and Lessons From the Olympics
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October 29, 2012 Monday
Pro-Romney Group Makes Big Ad Buy in Pennsylvania; Obama Campaign Follows
BYLINE: JEREMY W. PETERS
SECTION: US; politics
LENGTH: 426 words
HIGHLIGHT: Restore Our Future, a pro-Romney "super-PAC," has put down about $2 million for a slate of television commercials in Pennsylvania, especially in the Philadelphia area, through next Monday.
12:02 p.m. | Updated The "super-PAC" aiding Mitt Romney, Restore Our Future, is making a push into Pennsylvania, a state that has been considered strong for President Obama.
On Monday the group put down about $2 million for a slate of television commercials through next Monday, the day before the presidential election.
The move prompted the Obama campaign to shift advertising resources there for the first time since July. It announced on Monday that it too would being airing commercials in the state.
The Restore Our Future purchase includes about $1.2 million in the voter-rich Philadelphia media market where Republicans believe they can make inroads with a number of different demographics, including Jewish voters who may be open the arguments put forward by the Romney campaign that Mr. Obama has not been supportive enough of Israel. Republicans have sought to drive distance between Mr. Obama and his Jewish constituency because of the recent tension between the United States and Israel over Iran.
Another group that has been advertising there is the Republican Jewish Coalition, which is airing an ad that features the founder of Home Depot, Bernie Marcus, criticizing Mr. Obama's economic leadership. And Americans for Job Security, another conservative super-PAC, is also going up with a new Pennsylvania ad campaign.
To be sure, Restore Our Future has been making some of the more long-shot bets in recent weeks. It continues to have a strong presence on the air in Michigan, which has been strongly leaning toward Mr. Obama in many recent polls. But the group also placed what ended up being a smart -- and seemingly long-shot -- bet on Wisconsin earlier this fall when few others were willing to devote resources there.
Now many polls show Wisconsin, home of the Republican vice-presidential nominee Paul D. Ryan, to be competitive.
The latest poll from The Philadelphia Inquirer, which was published over the weekend, showed that the president's lead in Pennsylvania had narrowed to 6 points from 8 points since the beginning of October.
Jim Messina, the president's campaign manager, said Monday that Mr. Obama's team will also start advertising in Pennsylvania, but insisted Democrats are in no danger of losing the state.
"We are going to go up as well," Mr. Messina said, responding to news that the Romney super-PAC would be advertising there. "We have the resources to match them and we are going to do that."
Mr. Messina said that the Romney campaign was "not close in Pennsylvania," but added that "we aren't taking anything for granted."
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(FiveThirtyEight)
October 29, 2012 Monday
In Pennsylvania, the Democratic Lean Is Slight, but Durable
BYLINE: MICAH COHEN
SECTION: US; politics
LENGTH: 1559 words
HIGHLIGHT: Pennsylvania is the only state that has been unfailingly Democratic-leaning relative to the national popular vote in every presidential election since 1950.
We continue our Presidential Geography series, a one-by-one examination of each state's political landscape and how it is changing. Here is Pennsylvania, the Keystone State. FiveThirtyEight spoke with Terry Madonna, a professor of public affairs and director of the Franklin & Marshall College Poll; and Marc Meredith, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania.
New reports indicate that the 2012 presidential campaign is coming to Pennsylvania. After a spate of advertising during the summer, Pennsylvania -- in a break from tradition -- has largely avoided the volume of campaign commercials that states like Ohio and Virginia have seen.
But beginning Tuesday, Restore Our Future, a "super-PAC" supporting Mitt Romney, will blanket Pennsylvania with about $2 million worth of advertisements. President Obama's advisers greeted that news on Monday by saying that the Obama campaign would also spend advertising money in the Keystone State between now and Election Day.
Pennsylvania has been a swing state in presidential elections since the 1950s. In the last 60 years, the candidate who carried the state has also won the national popular vote in every election but two. Over that time, Republicans have carried Pennsylvania in six elections, and Democrats have carried it in nine.
But while Pennsylvania has swung between the two parties, its relative partisan bent has remained remarkably consistent: slightly Democratic.
In fact, Pennsylvania is the only state in the nation that has been unfailingly Democratic-leaning relative to the national popular vote in every presidential election since 1950. With the exceptions of the landslide elections in 1964 and 1984, however, Pennsylvania's leftward lean has been fairly narrow, between one and five percentage points.
The fact that Pennsylvania is just slightly left-leaning and worth 20 electoral votes, tied for the fifth largest haul with Illinois, makes the state an attractive target for Republicans. Pennsylvania is not necessary for Mitt Romney to reach 270 electoral votes, but it would provide him with more flexibility, allowing him to lose two of the three smallest battleground states -- New Hampshire, Nevada and Iowa -- if he carried North Carolina, Florida and Virginia.
In addition, Pennsylvania has a lot of white, working-class voters who have never been especially enamored with President Obama (Hillary Clinton bested him by 10 percentage points in Pennsylvania's 2008 Democratic primary). Pennsylvania is also relatively old, with the fourth largest share of residents 65 years and older. The Republicans took the state's governor's mansion and a United States Senate seat in 2010.
But Pennsylvania may be fool's gold for the Romney campaign. The state is relatively inelastic; it has few true swing voters, and turnout tends to be the final deciding factor. In other words, the state's Democratic-lean isn't severe, but it is hard to reverse. Yes, Republicans have carried the state six times in the last 15 presidential contests. But in each of those wins the Republican won nationally by at least seven percentage points, a margin that is unlikely this year no matter who wins.
It has also become slightly harder for Republican presidential candidates to put together a winning map in Pennsylvania. The last time a Republican carried the state was in 1988, when President George H. W. Bush defeated Michael Dukakis. Mr. Bush carried the Philadelphia suburbs -- Bucks, Chester, Delaware and Montgomery Counties -- which have often been the pivotal swing vote.
"The Republicans won elections here in the 1980s because they were winning the Philadelphia suburbs," Mr. Madonna said.
In contrast, the last time Pennsylvania was carried by a candidate who failed to win the national popular vote in 2004. President George W. Bush won re-election by 2.5 percentage points but lost the Keystone State by 2.5 percentage points. Mr. Bush lost the all-important Philadelphia suburbs.
Those suburbs have become less-hospitable to Republican presidential candidates. Bucks and Chester Counties are still competitive, but Delaware and Montgomery Counties are reliably left-leaning in presidential elections.
Much of the eastern wing of the state has become more Democratic-leaning, but this has been counterbalanced somewhat by a trend toward the Republicans in western Pennsylvania.
In 1992, the campaign strategist for Bill Clinton, James Carville, described Pennsylvania as Philadelphia in the east, Pittsburgh in the west and Alabama between the two cities (that's not the exact quote, but it conveys the sentiment),
There was an element of truth to Mr. Carville's assessment at the time; the state was bookended by two urban pockets and the rest of Pennsylvania was more rural. But in the 20 years since Mr. Carville made the statement, the state's political landscape has shifted considerably.
Now, a better breakdown of the state is between east and west. Most of central Pennsylvania is still rural, but the eastern third of the state has become Democratic-leaning and culturally and politically Northeastern. Western Pennsylvania has a more Midwest feel and has trended toward the Republican Party.
The regional difference is evident in the state's two biggest cities. Philadelphia is heavily African-American and overwhelmingly Democratic. Pittsburgh is less diverse, more blue-collar and less overwhelmingly Democratic. The Republican candidate for governor, Tom Corbett, carried Pittsburgh's Allegheny County in 2010.
The difference is also apparent in the suburbs and smaller cities. The Northeast corridor -- stretching from Philadelphia's suburbs in the south up through the Lehigh Valley and into Scranton's Lackawanna County -- has become more left-leaning over the past two decades. Part of the shift toward the Democratic Party, particularly in the Philadelphia suburbs, has been driven by women, as the Republican Party became increasingly associated with social issues like opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage. The realignment occurred throughout the Northeast and New England.
The northern part of the Northeast Corridor, in Lehigh Valley and Scranton, is more blue-collar and less left-leaning than the Philadelphia suburbs. But white college graduates and minorities -- groups that skew Democratic -- have increased as a share of eligible voters in the Philadelphia suburbs, the Lehigh Valley and the Harrisburg-York-Lancaster region in south-central Pennsylvania.
The south-central region, specifically York and Lancaster Counties, is the beginning of Republican territory. There's a large Amish vote in Lancaster County, and the region tends to be more socially conservative, Mr. Meredith said.
Western Pennsylvania is culturally Midwestern, more socially conservative, and has moved towardthe Republican Party. Politically, it looks like Ohio, with a solidly but not overwhelmingly Democratic city, Pittsburgh, surrounded by heavily Republican suburbs in Westmoreland and Butler Counties.
Over all, the state's leftward lean has increased just barely because as parts of the Philadelphia suburbs moved left, the old mining and mill towns in southwestern Pennsylvania moved right. The southwest corner of the state was historically Reagan Democrat territory, Mr. Madonna said, and has become more Republican-leaning in recent years.
The Bellwether: Bucks County
Bucks County is very likely to provide an early clue as to how Pennsylvania will vote. It has been an almost perfect bellwether, just one percentage point more Democratic-leaning than the state in 2008 and exactly matching the statewide vote in 2004 and 2000.
Southern Bucks County, around Levittown and Bensalem, is solidly Democratic. To the northwest, Bucks County becomes more politically competitive in suburban communities like Yardley (where this intrepid FiveThirtyEight writer happened to grow up) and Newtown. Northern Bucks County, around Quakertown, is more Republican-leaning.
The Bottom Line
Mr. Obama is a 94 percent favorite in Pennsylvania, according to the current FiveThirtyEight forecast. The state is hard to move independent of a shift in the national political environment and is unlikely to vote Republican in an election that is so close nationally.
The new Restore Our Future ad buy notwithstanding, the Romney campaign has not seriously contested Pennsylvania, a state that is hard to move without an all-out effort. In the last 30 days, Ann Romney, Mr. Romney's wife, campaigned once in Pittsburgh, and Mr. Romney visited Philadelphia for a fund-raiser.
The state's partisan makeup has changed just slightly since 2008. The Democratic voter registration advantage in Pennsylvania doubled to a little over a million in the run-up to the 2008 election, Mr. Madonna said.
"Since 2008," Mr. Madonna added, "the voter registration numbers have remained remarkably consistent."
If Mr. Romney wins nationally by three or more percentage points, Pennsylvania could come along also. But in a closer contest, the Keystone State is likely to remain blue for Mr. Obama.
'New' Vermont Is Liberal, but 'Old' Vermont Is Still There
Auto Rescue and Low Home-State Bonus Keep Michigan Out of Play
Why Arizona Isn't a Battleground State (and Why It May Be Soon)
After Brief Role as Battleground, Indiana Exits, Stage Right
An Extra Ingredient in North Dakota Politics: Oil
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October 29, 2012 Monday
Romney's New Auto Ad
BYLINE: ANDREW ROSENTHAL
SECTION: OPINION
LENGTH: 333 words
HIGHLIGHT: The Romney campaign, which announced over the summer that it "wouldn't be dictated by fact checkers," is staying true to that promise.
The Romney campaign, which announced over the summer that it "wouldn't be dictated by fact checkers," is staying true to that promise with a misleading new ad on the auto industry.
"Fact checkers confirm" that President Obama's "attacks on Mitt Romney are false," the ad states. "Obama took GM and Chrysler into bankruptcy, and sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China," it continues. "Mitt Romney will fight for every American job."
There's rich irony here. The campaign that doesn't care about fact checkers invokes fact checkers, and then disregards the facts.
It's odd for Mr. Romney to complain that Mr. Obama "took" the automakers into bankruptcy, since he advocated a managed bankruptcy for those companies four years ago. It's also odd for Mr. Romney to claim that he'll fight for every American job, since he got rich, in part, by investing in companies that specialized in relocating jobs done by American workers to low-wage countries. And it's preposterous for him to suggest that Chrysler is moving American jobs to China. As Gualberto Ranieri of Chrysler explained in a blog post, "Jeep has no intention of shifting production of its Jeep models out of North America to China. It's simply reviewing the opportunities to return Jeep output to China for the world's largest auto market." The company is keeping its domestic workforce even as it expands overseas.
Beyond the basic false narrative--papering over the reality that Mr. Obama's policies saved the American auto industry--the ad stirs up xenophobia. It's intended to make viewers resent foreigners (the Chinese and the Italians who are taking our jobs), associate the president with that feeling and then go vote for Mitt Romney because he's more American. The worst thing about it is that it's not really all that shocking anymore in a political system that thrives on negative energy, half truths and outright lies.
Obama's Stamina
Bilingual Lies
The Wisconsin Ad War
Last Night's Best Romneyism
'Obama Phone'
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October 29, 2012 Monday
New Ad Attacks the Romney Campaign's Claims on Auto Bailout
BYLINE: JIM RUTENBERG
SECTION: US; politics
LENGTH: 157 words
HIGHLIGHT: As the fight over the auto bailout intensifies, the Obama campaign fact-checks an ad by the Romney campaign.
As the presidential campaigns intensify their fight over the auto bailout, the Obama campaign released a new ad on Monday that criticizes Mitt Romney for running an ad that misleadingly implies that Chrysler, a bailout recipient, is moving jobs to China from Toledo.
"Who will do more for the auto industry? Not Barack Obama," the Romney ad begins. "Fact checkers confirm his attacks on Mitt Romney are false."
The Romney ad goes on to state: "Obama took G.M. and Chrysler into bankruptcy, and sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China. Mitt Romney will fight for every American job."
The auto bailout has become almost a singular focus in the critical battleground of Ohio, where the president says it was vital to saving jobs.
The President Could Use a Good Lozenge
About Those Horses and Bayonets ...
The Early Word: Final Round
Romney Dials Back Acceptance of Obama Immigration Program
The Scene Before Obama's First Debate
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October 29, 2012 Monday
FINAL EDITION
Independent spending on races tops $1B
BYLINE: Fredreka Schouten, @fschouten, USA TODAY
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 4A
LENGTH: 651 words
Independent spending to influence who wins the White House and congressional races now has surged past the $1 billion mark, an amount unprecedented in American politics.
Outside groups and the political parties have spent just shy of $1.1 billion as of midday Sunday, nearly double the amount those organizations pumped into federal elections in 2008, to fund attack ads, automated calls and mailers, according to a tally by the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks campaign money.
Super PAC spending is driving the increase. Nearly half the money, $507.6 million, comes from super PACs, the new political committees created after the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision and a follow-up appeals court ruling in 2010. While individuals are barred from donating more than $2,500 directly to a federal candidate for a primary or general elections, super PACs can raise and spend unlimited amounts to boost favorite politicians.
More money is on the way: Outside groups and parties have spent at the rate of more than $100 million a week since the beginning of October in a final, frenzied attempt to persuade voters. Last week alone, independent spending hit $168 million, according to the non-partisan Sunlight Foundation, up from $41.5million during the second week of September, when the general-election campaign began in earnest after the political conventions.
"This is the Wild West," said Shelia Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics. "It's time for the showdown and people are going to raise and spend as much as they can right up to Election Day."
Three Republican organizations lead the way: American Crossroads and its non-profit arm, Crossroads GPS, groups backed by Republican strategist Karl Rove, have spent a combined $134million through noon Sunday, followed by Restore Our Future, a super PAC run by former aides to Mitt Romney at $118.5million. Priorities USA Action, a super PAC aiding President Obama, is in third place at $56.8 million.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has called for public financing for congressional elections to stem the outside money, a notion that has failed to gain much traction. "If we don't change the role of money in campaigns, we might as well all find a new line of work," Pelosi told a group of reporters recently.
Paul Sherman, of the Institute for Justice, which helped represent the winning side in a key federal case allowing super PACs, says lawmakers should do away with contribution limits to put themselves on equal footing with independent groups.
"The new normal is that people can get together to pool their money to spend as much as they want on political speech," Sherman says. "That's a good thing for American politics."
No states have seen more independent activity than Florida and Ohio, where outside groups and parties have spent more than $49 million in each to sway the White House contests and competitive races for the U.S. Senate, Sunlight's data show.
The presidential candidates and their allies are waging an all-out fight for Ohio's 18 Electoral College votes, and the airwaves in Cleveland have been bombarded with 7,961 TV ads in the first three weeks of October -- more than any other city in the state, according to the Wesleyan Media Project, which tracks political ads.
Cleveland resident Leah Branstetter has had enough. "Every commercial break has at least one, if not two or three ads, and it's the same kind of music used in low-budget horror films -- designed to make you feel a little bit anxious," said Branstetter, 29, who is studying for a doctorate in musicology. "It gets exhausting."
The ads are "coming from all sides by all groups," said Michael Franz, a Bowdoin College political scientist who serves as co-director of the Wesleyan group. "If you live in a battleground state, you are going to be seeing ads in your sleep."
Contributing: Susan Davis
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October 29, 2012 Monday 10:28 PM EST
Bill Clinton to stump for Obama in Minnesota on Tuesday
BYLINE: Sean Sullivan
LENGTH: 916 words
Make sure to sign up to receive "Afternoon Fix" every day in your e-mail inbox by 5(ish) p.m.!
EARLIER ON THE FIX:
WaPo-ABC track: All tied up at 49 percent
The 2008 election - in one amazing map
Five places where Hurricane Sandy could affect the election
Brown ties Warren in new Boston Globe poll
Preschoolers reenact the 2012 presidential campaign (Video)
Minnesota moves from 'solid Obama' to 'lean Obama'
3 things you need to know about Ohio (VIDEO)
New Claire McCaskill ad shows clip of Todd Akin's 'legitimate rape' remark
Hurricane Sandy freezes 2012 race in place
WaPo-ABC track: 49 Romney, 48 Obama, three days running
WHAT YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED:
* President Obama and Mitt Romney each canceled campaign events due to Hurricane Sandy's impact on the East Coast. Obama canceled a Tuesday campaign trip to Wisconsin so he could stay in Washington to keep an eye on the storm, while Romney canceled his Monday night and Tuesday events (he kept up his schedule during the day on Monday). Vice President Biden canceled campaign events in Ohio and Pennsylvania slated for Tuesday and Thursday while Republican vice presidential nominee Rep. Paul Ryan's (Wis.) Monday night and Tuesday events have also been scrapped.
* Obama said he is not worried about the storm's impact on the election, and that the "number one priority is to make sure we are saving lives." When asked on Air Force One whether Obama had the authority to delay the election if power is still out next Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said "I don't know." Meanwhile, FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate said he is anticipating that some of the storm''s impact may be felt next week, meaning FEMA may be called upon to help with the cleanup process so that voters can get to the polls next Tuesday.
* The Romney campaign is considering whether to send the Republican presidential nominee to New Jersey this week to survey storm damage with Gov. Chris Christie (R).
* Obama's campaign released a new TV ad in Ohio that pushes back against a controversial spot from Romney that implied Chrysler is moving Jeep production from Ohio to China. "Mitt Romney on Ohio jobs? Wrong then .. dishonest now," says the narrator of the Obama ad. Bill Clinton said at a campaign stop in Ohio Monday that Jeep "put out a statement today saying that it was the biggest load of bull in the world that they would consider shutting down their American operation."
* The pro-Romney super PAC Restore Our Future is spending $2.1 million on a new ad buy in Pennsylvania. This doesn't necessarily suggest the group thinks the Keystone State - where polls have shown Obama leading - is very much in play. The group has money to spend, and with the airwaves packed in just about every major battleground, can afford to make buys on the periphery of competitive states.
* Rep. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) leads former congresswoman Heather Wilson 50 percent to 42 percent, an Albuquerque Journal poll of likely New Mexico voters conducted Oct. 23-25 shows. Wilson's campaign released an internal poll showing her at 44 percent and Heinrich at 43 percent. That poll - conducted by Public Opinion Strategies Oct. 21-22 -stands in contrast to the Albuquerque Journal poll and most other recent surveys, which have consistently shown Heinrich up comfortably.
WHAT YOU SHOULDN'T MISS:
* Clinton will campaign for Obama in seven states this week, including a Tuesday stop in Minnesota, which is looking more competitive for Romney. Clinton will also campaign in Iowa, Colorado, Ohio, Virginia, New Hampshire, and Wisconsin. Down the ballot, the former president cut a radio ad for North Dakota Democratic Senate candidate Heidi Heitkamp (D), and will campaign for her Monday night.
* Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) and Elizabeth Warren (D) agree that Tuesday's debate should not go forward due to concerns about Hurricane Sandy. "It is simply not appropriate to go forward with a political debate when a disaster strikes," said Brown spokesman Colin Reed in a statement. Warren campaign manager Mindy Myers said: "Elizabeth believes the focus now must be on public safety and ensuring people get the help they need during the storm and in its aftermath. With the concern for public safety and cleanup paramount, Elizabeth believes the debate should not be held tomorrow."
* The Labor Department hasn't ruled out delaying the release of the September jobs report because of Hurricane Sandy, though it says it currently intends to stay on schedule. "The employees at the Bureau of Labor Statistics are working hard to ensure the timely release of employment data on Friday, November 2," the BLS said in a statement. "It is our intention that Friday will be business as usual regarding the October Employment Situation Report."
* Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) released a new TV ad featuring Republicans Sens. John McCain and Jon Kyl. In the ad, the two push back against a spot from Democratic Senate nominee Richard Carmona which shows them praising him 10 years ago during his confirmation as surgeon general.
THE FIX MIX:
Costume? Check.
With Aaron Blake
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October 29, 2012 Monday 8:25 PM EST
Minnesota moves from 'solid Obama' to 'lean Obama'
BYLINE: Aaron Blake
LENGTH: 388 words
The Fix today is moving Minnesota, the state that hasn't voted Republican since 1972, from "solid Obama" to "lean Obama." The move comes in response to two major developments:
1) A new Star Tribune poll conducted by Mason-Dixon and released Sunday showed Mitt Romney within the margin of error against Obama, with Obama at 47 percent and Romney at 44 percent. That's closer than any other poll has shown.
2) Both sides are now spending money in Minnesota, with Romney's campaign launching a very small ad buy and Obama's launching a $500,000 buy in the Twin Cities media market.
Now, both of these come with caveats.
In the latter case, we should clarify that Obama's team says the Twin Cities buy is intended for western Wisconsin, which is in that media market. That may very well be.
Romney's campaign, we should also note, hasn't really spent much of anything in Minnesota - only about $30,000. And Republican-leaning outside groups haven't spent much either. If this is a three-point race, it's news to the GOP. So we'll see if they start investing real resources.
Also, the Star Tribune poll isn't yet backed up by other polling. A St. Cloud State University poll from last week showed Obama leading by eight points, and an automated SurveyUSA poll in mid-October for KSTP-TV showed Obama up 10.
In other words, it's not clear this is primed to be a battleground state. But it's still worthy of inclusion in our list of "lean Obama" states, which also includes places like New Mexico and Pennsylvania, since a Romney victory is within the realm of possibility if not at all likely.
Remember, Minnesota went 54 percent for Obama in 2008. That's less than he took in Wisconsin, Nevada, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania and about the same share of the vote he took in Iowa.
With the change, we now have five states, totaling 69 electoral votes, in the "lean Obama" category - Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Mexico and Michigan. If Romney could somehow add one or two of them to the mix, it would greatly improve his chances on what is a difficult map.
At this point, Obama gets 255 electoral votes from the states that are either solidly in his favor or leaning his way (this includes Ohio, which we continue to rate as "lean Obama"), while Romney gets 206 electoral votes from the states that are either "solid Romney" or "lean Romney."
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October 29, 2012 Monday 8:12 PM EST
The Fix's week in politics The Fix's week in politics
SECTION: A section; Pg. A02
LENGTH: 500 words
QUOTE OF THE WEEK "Well, I think when you have somebody of your own race that you're proud of being president of the United States, I applaud Colin for standing with him."
- Top Romney adviser John Sununu,asked about former secretary of state Colin Powell's endorsement of President Obama. Sununu later backed off his assertion that the endorsement was based on race.
BY THE NUMBERS
$170 million The amount of money Mitt Romney and the Republican National Committee had on hand through the middle of October. Romney outpaced President Obama during the first half of the month by about $21 million and ended the period with about $45 million more in the bank. Romney's cash-on-hand figure is impressive, but neither side will be short on money down the stretch. With the airwaves already packed with ads in the most crucial swing states, Romney's cash advantage may look more imposing than it actually is.
18 The number of electoral votes up for grabs in Ohio. No other state is being contested as hotly during the stretch run of the campaign as Ohio, without which no Republican has ever won the White House. For Romney in particular, Ohio is crucial, because the Republican's potential path to victory is narrower than Obama's. It's not impossible for Romney to win without carrying Ohio, but his task would be much more difficult under that scenario.
4 The number of days until the next monthly jobs report comes out. Friday's report will be the final snapshot of monthly unemployment before the Nov.6 election. Even if most voters have made up their minds about which candidate is better on the issue of jobs, an unexpectedly good or bad report could factor into the decision-making process of those who are still undecided.
BEST THING THATHAPPENED TO REPUBLICANS
Mitt Romney kept his momentum. Despite a debate that polls show he lost, some unhelpful comments from GOP Senate candidate Richard Mourdock and some Democratic suggestions that his momentum wasn't real, Romney showed that it is, in fact, real. The latest Washington Post-ABC News tracking polls all show Romney at 49 percent or 50 percent, while President Obama is at 47 percent or 48 percent. Swing-state polls also show a very close race, even as they appear slightly better for Obama. Romney has a good shot at winning, though the map is a tough one for his party.
BEST THING THATHAPPENED TO DEMOCRATS
Mourdock. Throughout this presidential campaign, a series of momentary distractions and sideshows have seemed to help Democrats change the subject from the economy to other things. And that was again the case again when Mourdock, the GOP nominee in Indiana's U.S. Senate race, argued that pregnancies that result from rape are part of God's plan. Democrats instantly attacked Mourdock and attached him to Mitt Romney, noting that Romney appeared in a Mourdock campaign ad.
- Aaron Blake and Sean Sullivan
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October 29, 2012 Monday 8:12 PM EST
National ocean policy faces rising partisan tide
BYLINE: Juliet Eilperin
SECTION: A section; Pg. A16
LENGTH: 1198 words
Partisan battles are engulfing the nation's ocean policy, showing that polarization over environmental issues doesn't stop at the water's edge.
For years, ocean policy was the preserve of wonks. But President Obama created the first national ocean policy, with a tiny White House staff, and with that set off some fierce election-year fights.
Conservative Republicans warn that the administration is determined to expand its regulatory reach and curb the extraction of valuable energy resources, while many Democrats, and their environmentalist allies, argue that the policy will keep the ocean healthy and reduce conflicts over its use.
The wrangling threatens to overshadow a fundamental issue - the country's patchwork approach to managing offshore waters. Twenty-seven federal agencies, representing interests as diverse as farmers and shippers, have some role in governing the oceans. Obama's July 2010 executive order set up a National Ocean Council, based at the White House, that is designed to reconcile the competing interests of different agencies and ocean users.
The policy is already having an impact. The council, for example, is trying to broker a compromise among six federal agencies over the fate of defunct offshore oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. Recreational fishermen want the rigs, which attract fish, to stay, but some operators of commercial fishing trawlers consider them a hazard and want them removed.
Still, activists invoking the ocean policy to press for federal limits on traditional maritime interests are having little success. The Center for Biological Diversity cited the policy as a reason to slow the speed of vessels traveling through national marine sanctuaries off the California coast. Federal officials denied the petition.
During a House Natural Resources Committee hearing on ocean policy last year, the panel's top Democrat, Rep. Edward J. Markey (Mass.), said that "opposing ocean planning is like opposing air traffic control: You can do it, but it will cause a mess or lead to dire consequences."
Rep. Steve Southerland II (R-Fla.), who is in a tight reelection race, retorted that the policy was "like air traffic control helping coordinate an air invasion on our freedoms." An environmental group called Ocean Champions is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to unseat him.
The sharp rhetoric puzzles academics such as Boston University biologist Les Kaufman. He contributed to a recent study that showed that using ocean zoning to help design wind farms in Massachusetts Bay could prevent more than $1 million in losses to local fishery and whale-watching operators while allowing wind producers to reap $10 billion in added profits by placing the turbines in the best locations. Massachusetts adopted its own ocean policy, which was introduced by Mitt Romney, the Republican governor at the time, and later embraced by his Democratic successor, Deval L. Patrick.
"The whole concept of national ocean policy is to maximize the benefit and minimize the damage. What's not to love?" Kaufman said, adding that federal officials make decisions about offshore energy production, fisheries and shipping without proper coordination.
Nearly a decade ago, two bipartisan commissions called upon the government to coordinate its decisions regarding federal waters, which extend from the roughly three-mile mark where state waters end to 200 miles from shore.
When Romney moved to establish ocean zoning in 2005 in Massachusetts, he warned that without it there could be "a Wild West shootout, where projects were permitted on a 'first come, first served' basis."
In Washington, however, legislation to create an ocean zoning process failed. The policy set by Obama in 2010 calls for five regions of the country - the Mid-Atlantic, New England, the Caribbean, the West Coast and the Pacific - to set up regional bodies to offer input.
White House Council for Environmental Quality spokeswoman Taryn Tuss said the policy does not give the federal government new authority or change congressional mandates. "It simply streamlines implementation of the more than 100 laws and regulations that already affect our oceans."
House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) said he is not opposed to a national ocean policy in theory. But he said he is concerned that the administration's broad definition of what affects the ocean - including runoff from land - could open the door to regulating all inland activities, because "all water going downhill goes into the ocean. . . . That potential could be there."
The House voted in May to block the federal government from spending money on implementing the policy, though the amendment has not passed the Senate.
Two influential groups - anglers and energy firms - have joined Republicans in questioning the administration's approach.
In March, ESPN Outdoors published a piece arguing that the policy "could prohibit U.S. citizens from fishing some of the nation's oceans, coastal areas, Great Lakes, and even inland waters." The article, which convinced many recreational fishermen that their fishing rights were in jeopardy, should have been labeled an opinion piece, the editor said later.
"Fishermen saw this as just another area where fishing was going to be racheted down," said Michael Leonard, director of ocean resource policy for the American Sportfishing Association, whose 700 members include the nation's major boat manufacturers, as well as fish and tackle retailers. Leonard added that the White House has solicited some input from anglers since launching the policy and that they will judge the policy once its final implementation plan is released, after the election.
The National Ocean Policy Coalition - a group based in Houston that includes oil and gas firms as well as mining, farming and chemical interests - has galvanized industry opposition to the policy. Its vice president works as an energy lobbyist at the law firm Arent Fox; its president and executive director work for the firm HBW Resources, which lobbies for energy and shipping interests.
Brent Greenfield, the group's executive director, said that the public has not had enough input into the development of the policy and that his group worries about "the potential economic impacts of the policy on commercial or recreational activity."
Sarah Cooksey, who is Delaware's coastal-programs administrator and is slated to co-chair the Mid-Atlantic's regional planning body, said the policy will streamline application of laws already on the books. "No government wants another layer of bureaucracy," she said.
In Southerland's reelection race, Ocean Champions has labeled the congressman "Ocean Enemy #1" and sponsored TV ads against him. Jim Clements, a commercial fisherman in the Florida Panhandle district, has mounted billboards against Southerland on the grounds his stance hurts local businesses.
Southerland declined to comment for this article.
Ocean Champions President David Wilmot said that while most ocean policy fights are regional, this is "the first issue I've seen that's become partisan. I do not think it will be the last."
eilperinj@washpost.com
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October 29, 2012 Monday 7:26 PM EST
Ad watch: Obama camp responds to 'Jeep' ad
BYLINE: Rachel Weiner
LENGTH: 135 words
Obama for America, "Collapse"
What it says: "Mitt Romney on Ohio jobs? Wrong then ... dishonest now."
What it means: The ad pushes back on a recent, controversial Romney spot that implies that Chrysler is moving Jeep production from Ohio to China. (The company is looking into expanding production there, but for the Chinese market.) While Romney's ad is technically accurate, the candidate himself has wrongly claimed that all Jeep production might move to China. Obama's ad focuses on that false statement to paint Romney as a liar, while once again arguing that he, Romney, would have let Detroit go bankrupt. (Romney did not want to liquidate the industry, although experts say his approach would not have worked at the time.)
Who will see it: Ohio.
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October 29, 2012 Monday 7:21 PM EST
Obama will air response to Romney's controversial Jeep ad
BYLINE: Rosalind S. Helderman
LENGTH: 409 words
COLUMBUS - Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt told reporters the campaign will soon have an ad on the air in Ohio responding to a new controversial spot by Mitt Romney that highlights Chrysler contemplating building Jeeps in China.
(Update: The response ad is now live.)
The Romney ad has been widely criticized for leaving the impression that Chrysler is moving jobs from its Toledo, Ohio Jeep plant overseas. In fact, Chrysler has indicated it is considering opening a new Chinese plant to build trucks for the Chinese market but has no plans to move Ohio jobs to China.
The ad appeared to be an effort to blunt Obama's advantage on the auto bailout issue in Ohio, where 1 in 8 jobs is connected with the car industry.
But the Obama campaign has sensed an opening in the blowback to the ad, a chance to argue that Romney is willing to stretch the truth to win votes.
In an especially tough campaign conference call Monday, 14-year Jeep worker James Fayson said he was offended that Romney had implied his job could be shipped overseas.
"The fact that you would fabricate a story about our jobs moving to China makes you the worst kind of politician," he said of Romney.
Ken Lortz, director of the UAW for Ohio and Indiana, called the ad the "lowest form of political tactic."
He said Romney had only "angered Ohioans who know better."
"We knew he wasn't on our side when the economy and the industry was on the brink, but the fact that he would lie to our faces and try to deceive us is just too much," he said.
The Romney campaign has not indicated where their ad will run, but viewers spotted it on television in the Toledo market on Sunday, and a Romney spokesman confirmed the ad has not been taken off the air. The ad was carefully worded - it said that Obama "took GM and Chrysler into bankruptcy, and sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China."
That phrasing is technically accurate, since the company is looking at adding new Jeep production in China. But it comes after Romney told a crowd in Defiance, Ohio last week that "one of the great manufacturers in this state, Jeep, now owned by the Italians, is thinking of moving all production to China."
The company has said that is not true.
In response to criticism of the ad, a Romney spokesman released clips confirming that Chrysler has indicated it is considering building Jeeps in China and that Obama did, indeed, as part of the bailout, require GM and Chrysler to go through bankruptcy.
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October 29, 2012 Monday 5:09 PM EST
As storm rages, Obama camp claims victory inevitable
BYLINE: Karen Tumulty
LENGTH: 281 words
ORLANDO - A monster storm has paralyzed half the country, but campaign spin continues uninterrupted.
President Obama's campaign schedule this week has been obliterated by Hurricane Sandy, but his top strategists on Monday pressed forward with a storyline that victory over Mitt Romney remains in reach - and in fact, is inevitable.
The president's team has "data and facts on our side, versus spin and wishful thinking on theirs," Obama campaign manager Jim Messina boasted on a conference call with reporters. "What the facts and numbers clearly show is that the president is going to win this elecition."
Despite many indicators that the race has tightened in recent weeks, Messina insisted that the tangible measures of voter enthusiasm - voter registration, early voting, public polling - show that "what we have been building for the past 18 months is working, and it's paying off."
He and campaign strategist David Axelrod insisted that a pro-Romney super PAC's announcement of a $2.1 million ad buy in Pennsylvania is a bluff, not a sign that an opportunity is opening up for the GOP candidate in that Democratic-leaning state.
Axelrod said the Romney effort is "trying to figure out how to put this thing together ... This isn't a sign on strength on their part. This is a sign of weakness."
Romney's campaign is also continuing to spin, sending out a memo highlighting a recent poll showing a tied race in Ohio.
"Every day, Barack Obama's so-called Ohio firewall crumbles a little bit more because of Mitt Romney's electric appearances, our campaign's robust ground game, and Romney's forward-looking message that lays out a serious and specific agenda for the future," the memo reads.
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October 29, 2012 Monday 3:50 PM EST
Pro-Romney super PAC puts $2.1 million in Pennsylvania
BYLINE: Rachel Weiner
LENGTH: 197 words
Restore Our Future, a super PAC supporting Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, is launching a $2.1 million ad campaign in Democratic-leaning Pennsylvania.
Of that buy, $1 million is being devoted to the expensive Philadelphia market. Americans for Job Security, another anti-Obama group, bought $1 million over the weekend.
Does this buy mean Republicans think Pennsylvania is in play? Not necessarily.
Restore Our Future has already spent nearly $4 million on ads in Pennsylvania, mostly over the summer. But there hasn't been a poll showing Romney ahead in the state since February. According to Real Clear Politics, the president's polling average lead in Pennsylvania is 4.7 points.
As of mid-October, Restore Our Future had $24 million in cash on hand. With only a week left before the election and swing state markets saturated, the group likely can afford to spend money around.
"They understand that they're not going to win Ohio, and now they're getting desperate," Obama campaign manager Jim Messina told reporters on a conference call Monday. But, he added, the Obama campaign will compete on the airwaves in Pennsylvania: "We're not taking any state for granted."
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October 29, 2012 Monday 2:21 PM EST
Hurricane Sandy freezes 2012 race in place
BYLINE: Chris Cillizza;Aaron Blake
LENGTH: 1022 words
For the last four days - and for at least the next four days - there is only one story in the country: Hurricane Sandy.
Hurricanes dominating the news is nothing new, but the timing of Sandy - it will make landfall just eight days before a presidential election - presents a unique set of challenges for both President Obama and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.
Theories abound as to how Sandy could impact this contest. Some argue it could aid Obama as he will be front and center over the next few days fulfilling his duties as president rather than looking like a candidate. Others note that Democrats rely on early voting far more than do Republicans, and widespread power outages and damage left in the wake of the storm could keep some voters at home in the runup to the election - a possibility that top Obama advisor David Axelrod expressed concern about Sunday.
Speculation aside, there's one thing that Hurricane Sandy has already done - and will continue to do for at least the early part of this week: freeze the race in place.
There will be nothing - repeat: nothing - on cable television over the next several days other than images of Sandy churning it's way up the East Coast. (Yes, residents of everywhere not in the path of the storm, we know that it's not a big story for you. But the storm is headed toward Washington and New York City, two of the country's biggest media centers. It's just a fact.)
What that wall-to-wall coverage of the storm will bump off the air, of course, is the wall-to-wall coverage of the campaign that would have been there if not for Sandy. (All of the reporters who were being added for the final week of the election will now be diverted to cover the path of Sandy.) And it will force the two candidates and their campaigns to be far less aggressive in their scheduling and messaging than they normally would be in the race's last days. Can you imagine if you are seeing footage of homes destroyed and then commercials air that savage either Obama or Romney? Not exactly what you want to see at that moment.
The cumulative effect will be to preserve the race as it was towards the end of last week - a dead heat nationally with President Obama clinging to a swing state edge. What remains to be seen is when/if things return to normal before Nov. 6, and if they do, what the two campaigns do in what will be a very short window before voters' vote.
Newspaper endorsement update: Romney got one of the biggest newspaper endorsements of the year when the Des Moines Register backed him on Saturday night. The paper had support Obama in 2008.
Other big endorsements followed Sunday, with Obama getting the Miami Herald, the Detroit Free Press, the New York Times, the Toledo Blade and the Youngstown Vindicator in Ohio and the Raleigh News and Observer.
As for Romney, he basically swept the big papers in Iowa, getting the Quad City Times, the Cedar Rapids Gazette and the Sioux City Journal. He also got the Cincinnati Enquirer, the Green Bay Press-Gazette and the Florida Times-Union.
Here's a good rundown of which swing state newspapers are backing Romney and Obama. (Hint: Romney has more.)
Fixbits:
A new Romney ad in Ohio hits Obama for taking General Motors and Chrysler into bankruptcy.
Maryland has canceled early voting on Monday, at the direction of Gov. Martin O'Malley (D).
New Jersey shuts down mass transit, and Gov. Chris Christie (R) says the state will take the "brunt" of Hurricane Sandy.
The federal government is also closed on Monday.
Democrats beat Republicans by 39,000 votes Saturday on the first day of in-person early voting in Florida, cutting the GOP's 66,000-vote lead on absentee ballots by more than half in just one day. Republicans note that Democrats performed better on day one four years ago.
A new Washington Post poll in Virginia shows Obama up four.
A new poll in Minnesota shows Romney within three.
Newt Gingrich hits Obama on his vote against a late-term abortion ban.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) says the Obama Administration's handling of Libya is either the biggest coverup he has ever seen or the greatest incompetence he has ever seen.
Carly Fiorina, the vice chairwoman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, calls Indiana GOP Senate candidate Richard Mourdock "more extreme" on abortion and likens Romney's abortion stance to Democratic nominee Rep. Joe Donnelly.
A second woman comes forward and says (anonymously) that Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-Tenn.) formed a romantic relationship with her when she was his patient. She also says DesJarlais smoked marijuana and prescribed her medication from her home.
Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.) offers the following in an interview with the Washington Post: "This isn't the politically correct thing to say, but when we drove the mother out of the home into the workplace and replaced her with the television set, that was not a good thing." Bartlett is likely to lose his seat thanks to changes created by redistricting.
The conservative outside group Independent Women's Voice is launching a $7.4 million online ad campaign featuring a pair of ads with women talking about the candidates as though they were their boyfriends. One woman makes excuses for Obama ("I miss the way he used to make me feel") while another talks about Romney as "Mr. Dependable."
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D), who has been a bit stingy with his endorsements, backs Rep. Bill Owens (D-N.Y.).
Must-reads:
"Why redistricting could doom House Democrats" - Dylan Matthews, Washington Post
"Advantage Obama in hunt for 270 electoral votes" - Thomas Beaumont, AP
"Mourdock's words poised to defeat him" - Brian Howey, Northwest Indiana Times
"How Hurricane Sandy Could Matter on Election Day" - John Sides, Campaigns and Elections
"Famous for Gaffes, a Candidate in Missouri Learns to Watch His Words" - John Eligon, New York Times
"At the end of the trail with Plouffe on Obama's '48-hour fly-around campaign marathon extravaganza'" - Jason Horowitz, Washington Post
"Obama Is Even in TV Ad Race Despite PACs" - Jeremy W. Peters, Nicholas Confessore and Sarah Cohen, New York Times
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October 29, 2012 Monday 2:10 PM EST
Ad watch: Romney takes on auto bailout, Obama camp cries foul;
Obama's campaign has argued that the ad is a sign of desperation in Ohio.
BYLINE: Rachel Weiner
LENGTH: 156 words
Mitt Romney, "Who Will Do More?"
What it says: "Mitt Romney has a plan to help the auto industry. ... Obama took GM and Chrysler into bankruptcy, and sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China."
What it means: Fiat (which owns Chrysler) is in talks to expand production in China for Chinese Jeep consumers, but the company is not moving jobs out of the United States - as Romney wrongly claimed at a rally last week. The ad also illustrates the auto bailout with pictures of cars being crushed, although Romney supported a managed bankruptcy for car companies. Obama's campaign has argued that the ad is a sign of desperation over the Ohio race. Clearly, Romney's campaign wanted a new response to Obama's auto bailout attacks.
Who will see it: Ohio; the ad has not been officially released by the Romney campaign, although it is now on YouTube.
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October 29, 2012 Monday 1:59 AM EST
Minnesota poll shows Romney within margin of error;
The poll is the first nonpartisan survey to show Romney within the margin of error in Minnesota, where both sides are now on the air.
BYLINE: Aaron Blake
LENGTH: 269 words
Mitt Romney is knocking on the door of adding another state to the mix in the 2012 election, with a new poll in Minnesota showing him within the margin of error.
The new Minneapolis Star Tribune poll, conducted by pollster Mason-Dixon, shows Obama at 47 percent and Romney at 44 percent. The same pollster showed Obama leading in the Land of 10,000 Lakes by eight points last month.
This is the first nonpartisan poll to show Romney within the margin of error in Minnesota.
Both sides are now on the air in the state, with Romney's campaign launching a small ad buy and Obama's campaign going up with a half-million dollar buy. Obama's campaign insists, though, that the buy is intended for western Wisconsin, which is in the Twin Cities media market.
A senior Obama adviser, granted anonymity to discuss strategy, said Friday that there is no concern about Minnesota being a problem for the president.
As the Cook Political Report's David Wasserman notes, though, Obama performed worse in Minnesota in 2008 than he did in states generally considered swing states this year.
@fixaaron Few people realize Obama won a smaller % in MN in '08 (54.06%) than WI (56.22%), PA (54.47%), NV (55.15%), or NH (54.13%)
- Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) October 28, 2012
Minnesota, of course, is the state with the longest streak of voting for Democratic presidential candidates, having been the only one to vote for Walter Mondale in 1984 (along with the District of Columbia). But that was in large part because Mondale was from the state; Minnesotans have elected Republican governors and senators in the intervening years.
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The Washington Post
October 29, 2012 Monday
Suburban Edition
The Fix's week in politics The Fix's week in politics
SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A02
LENGTH: 477 words
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
"Well, I think when you have somebody of your own race that you're proud of being president of the United States, I applaud Colin for standing with him."
- Top Romney adviser John Sununu, asked about former secretary of state Colin Powell's endorsement of President Obama. Sununu later backed off his assertion that the endorsement was based on race.
BY THE NUMBERS
$170 million The amount of money Mitt Romney and the Republican National Committee had on hand through the middle of October. Romney outpaced President Obama during the first half of the month by about $21 million and ended the period with about $45 million more in the bank. Romney's cash-on-hand figure is impressive, but neither side will be short on money down the stretch. With the airwaves already packed with ads in the most crucial swing states, Romney's cash advantage may look more imposing than it actually is.
18 The number of electoral votes up for grabs in Ohio. No other state is being contested as hotly during the stretch run of the campaign as Ohio, without which no Republican has ever won the White House. For Romney in particular, Ohio is crucial, because the Republican's potential path to victory is narrower than Obama's. It's not impossible for Romney to win without carrying Ohio, but his task would be much more difficult under that scenario.
4 The number of days until the next monthly jobs report comes out. Friday's report will be the final snapshot of monthly unemployment before the Nov.6 election. Even if most voters have made up their minds about which candidate is better on the issue of jobs, an unexpectedly good or bad report could factor into the decision-making process of those who are still undecided.
BEST THING THATHAPPENED TO REPUBLICANS
Mitt Romney kept his momentum. Despite a debate that polls show he lost, some unhelpful comments from GOP Senate candidate Richard Mourdock and some Democratic suggestions that his momentum wasn't real, Romney showed that it is, in fact, real. The latest Washington Post-ABC News tracking polls all show Romney at 49 percent or 50 percent, while President Obama is at 47 percent or 48 percent. Swing-state polls also show a very close race, even as they appear slightly better for Obama. Romney has a good shot at winning, though the map is a tough one for his party.
BEST THING THATHAPPENED TO DEMOCRATS
Mourdock. Throughout this presidential campaign, a series of momentary distractions and sideshows have seemed to help Democrats change the subject from the economy to other things. And that was again the case again when Mourdock, the GOP nominee in Indiana's U.S. Senate race, argued that pregnancies that result from rape are part of God's plan. Democrats instantly attacked Mourdock and attached him to Mitt Romney, noting that Romney appeared in a Mourdock campaign ad.
- Aaron Blake and Sean Sullivan
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October 29, 2012 Monday
Suburban Edition
National ocean policy faces rising partisan tide
BYLINE: Juliet Eilperin
SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A16
LENGTH: 1191 words
Partisan battles are engulfing the nation's ocean policy, showing that polarization over environmental issues doesn't stop at the water's edge.
For years, ocean policy was the preserve of wonks. But President Obama created the first national ocean policy, with a tiny White House staff, and with that set off some fierce election-year fights.
Conservative Republicans warn that the administration is determined to expand its regulatory reach and curb the extraction of valuable energy resources, while many Democrats, and their environmentalist allies, argue that the policy will keep the ocean healthy and reduce conflicts over its use.
The wrangling threatens to overshadow a fundamental issue - the country's patchwork approach to managing offshore waters. Twenty-seven federal agencies, representing interests as diverse as farmers and shippers, have some role in governing the oceans. Obama's July 2010 executive order set up a National Ocean Council, based at the White House, that is designed to reconcile the competing interests of different agencies and ocean users.
The policy is already having an impact. The council, for example, is trying to broker a compromise among six federal agencies over the fate of defunct offshore oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. Recreational fishermen want the rigs, which attract fish, to stay, but some operators of commercial fishing trawlers consider them a hazard and want them removed.
Still, activists invoking the ocean policy to press for federal limits on traditional maritime interests are having little success. The Center for Biological Diversity cited the policy as a reason to slow the speed of vessels traveling through national marine sanctuaries off the California coast. Federal officials denied the petition.
During a House Natural Resources Committee hearing on ocean policy last year, the panel's top Democrat, Rep. Edward J. Markey (Mass.), said that "opposing ocean planning is like opposing air traffic control: You can do it, but it will cause a mess or lead to dire consequences."
Rep. Steve Southerland II (R-Fla.), who is in a tight reelection race, retorted that the policy was "like air traffic control helping coordinate an air invasion on our freedoms." An environmental group called Ocean Champions is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to unseat him.
The sharp rhetoric puzzles academics such as Boston University biologist Les Kaufman. He contributed to a recent study that showed that using ocean zoning to help design wind farms in Massachusetts Bay could prevent more than $1 million in losses to local fishery and whale-watching operators while allowing wind producers to reap $10 billion in added profits by placing the turbines in the best locations. Massachusetts adopted its own ocean policy, which was introduced by Mitt Romney, the Republican governor at the time, and later embraced by his Democratic successor, Deval L. Patrick.
"The whole concept of national ocean policy is to maximize the benefit and minimize the damage. What's not to love?" Kaufman said, adding that federal officials make decisions about offshore energy production, fisheries and shipping without proper coordination.
Nearly a decade ago, two bipartisan commissions called upon the government to coordinate its decisions regarding federal waters, which extend from the roughly three-mile mark where state waters end to 200 miles from shore.
When Romney moved to establish ocean zoning in 2005 in Massachusetts, he warned that without it there could be "a Wild West shootout, where projects were permitted on a 'first come, first served' basis."
In Washington, however, legislation to create an ocean zoning process failed. The policy set by Obama in 2010 calls for five regions of the country - the Mid-Atlantic, New England, the Caribbean, the West Coast and the Pacific - to set up regional bodies to offer input.
White House Council for Environmental Quality spokeswoman Taryn Tuss said the policy does not give the federal government new authority or change congressional mandates. "It simply streamlines implementation of the more than 100 laws and regulations that already affect our oceans."
House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) said he is not opposed to a national ocean policy in theory. But he said he is concerned that the administration's broad definition of what affects the ocean - including runoff from land - could open the door to regulating all inland activities, because "all water going downhill goes into the ocean. . . . That potential could be there."
The House voted in May to block the federal government from spending money on implementing the policy, though the amendment has not passed the Senate.
Two influential groups - anglers and energy firms - have joined Republicans in questioning the administration's approach.
In March, ESPN Outdoors published a piece arguing that the policy "could prohibit U.S. citizens from fishing some of the nation's oceans, coastal areas, Great Lakes, and even inland waters." The article, which convinced many recreational fishermen that their fishing rights were in jeopardy, should have been labeled an opinion piece, the editor said later.
"Fishermen saw this as just another area where fishing was going to be racheted down," said Michael Leonard, director of ocean resource policy for the American Sportfishing Association, whose 700 members include the nation's major boat manufacturers, as well as fish and tackle retailers. Leonard added that the White House has solicited some input from anglers since launching the policy and that they will judge the policy once its final implementation plan is released, after the election.
The National Ocean Policy Coalition - a group based in Houston that includes oil and gas firms as well as mining, farming and chemical interests - has galvanized industry opposition to the policy. Its vice president works as an energy lobbyist at the law firm Arent Fox; its president and executive director work for the firm HBW Resources, which lobbies for energy and shipping interests.
Brent Greenfield, the group's executive director, said that the public has not had enough input into the development of the policy and that his group worries about "the potential economic impacts of the policy on commercial or recreational activity."
Sarah Cooksey, who is Delaware's coastal-programs administrator and is slated to co-chair the Mid-Atlantic's regional planning body, said the policy will streamline application of laws already on the books. "No government wants another layer of bureaucracy," she said.
In Southerland's reelection race, Ocean Champions has labeled the congressman "Ocean Enemy #1" and sponsored TV ads against him. Jim Clements, a commercial fisherman in the Florida Panhandle district, has mounted billboards against Southerland on the grounds his stance hurts local businesses.
Southerland declined to comment for this article.
Ocean Champions President David Wilmot said that while most ocean policy fights are regional, this is "the first issue I've seen that's become partisan. I do not think it will be the last."
eilperinj@washpost.com
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The New York Times
October 28, 2012 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
Obama's Squandered Advantages
BYLINE: By FRANK BRUNI
SECTION: Section SR; Column 0; Editorial Desk; OP-ED COLUMNIST; Pg. 3
LENGTH: 1070 words
AFTER ''a couple of Cadillacs,'' a summer belly-flop abroad, a dismissive swipe at 47 percent of the population and a convention best remembered for Clint Eastwood's chat with a chair, Mitt Romney is seemingly tied with President Obama. He has a real chance. It's a remarkable turn of events, given how many errors he's made and how ill suited he is to this particular juncture in the American story. And to size up the situation honestly is to consider one conclusion as seriously as any other:
Obama isn't quite the candidate, or politician, he's cracked up to be. The One is a fraction of his reputed self.
Yes, I know: the economy. It's supposedly the source of most of his woes, the great weight he lugs around, a nearly fatal handicap. And the fact that he's doing as well as he is affirms the sway of his personality and sense of his policies, at least according to his most fervent admirers.
I don't buy it. For starters, a great many Americans understand that he doesn't bear primary responsibility for the high rate of unemployment and the drops in home prices and incomes. A CNN/ORC poll last month showed that 54 percent of likely voters placed the blame chiefly on George W. Bush and Republicans.
Additionally, 68 percent indicated some optimism about economic conditions, which they said would be ''somewhat good'' or ''very good'' in a year. There's room in those numbers for Obama to pull well ahead of a rival as profoundly flawed as Romney. Yet he hasn't.
Race isn't a sufficient explanation. It has flared in subtle and unsubtle ways during this campaign, but if a majority of Americans were too biased to vote for a black man, Obama wouldn't have beaten John McCain by nearly 200 electoral votes last time around. In fact Obama's 52.9 percent of the popular vote was a bigger number than all but three other Democrats in American history have reached.
And ''super PACs'' aren't doing Obama in. Things could change in this final stretch, but until now, he hasn't been buried under the avalanche of Republican ads that, six months ago, Democrats were terrified about. Obama and his supporters have in fact run more commercials, which seem to have reached a larger audience in some key battlegrounds, than Romney & Co. have.
Obama has enjoyed other advantages as well. He didn't go through a contested primary, and as Matt Bai recently observed in The Times's Sunday magazine, all three of the incumbent presidents who lost their re-election bids over the last 36 years were weakened by primary challengers. Romney, meanwhile, endured an ugly primary that tugged him to the right of most swing voters and teed him up for the shape-shifting he has attempted -- and been justly dinged for -- over the last month.
Romney is further tarnished by association with a Republican Party that seems to be accommodating more and clumsier extremists, whose statements -- like the one that Richard Mourdock, a Senate candidate from Indiana, made about abortion and rape -- cause him recurring grief. That's not to mention the party's grandstanding windbags, two of whom -- Donald Trump and John Sununu, a co-chairman of Romney's campaign -- were in full and demented flower over the last few days.
The country's changing demographics favor Obama, as he acknowledged to The Des Moines Register last week, saying that the Latino vote could seal his victory. Incumbency has its benefits, too. Earlier this year, he sidestepped a bickering, paralyzed Congress and pleased many Latino voters with an executive order that will probably spare hundreds of thousands of young immigrants deportation for at least two years.
But Obama's greatest gift has been Romney himself, whose wealth, his tin-eared allusions to it, his offshore accounts and his unreleased tax returns are an especially awkward fit for a moment of increased anxiety about income inequality.
A ''Saturday Night Live'' skit from before the debates summarized this archly.
''Our campaign has a secret weapon,'' says Obama.
The camera cuts to Romney at a rally. ''I understand the hardships facing ordinary Americans,'' he says. ''One of my horses failed to medal at the Olympics.''
Back to Obama, who croons ''Let's Stay Together.''
And then to Romney, who warbles ''Old MacDonald Had a Farm,'' declaring the song ''pretty groovy.''
Obama smiles: ''The man is a Christmas miracle.''
THE miracle ended at the first debate, in Denver, and the problem with that face-off went beyond Obama's sleepwalking to the kinds of subsequent debates it forced on him. To shake off what happened, he had to turn truculent, and while that technically ''won'' him his second and third meetings with Romney, he lost something in the bargain. He undercut his high-minded, big-vision brand, whole stanzas of doggerel intruding on the poetry.
His ''bayonets'' line was clever all right, and plenty fair in its way, but it had a schoolyard nastiness to it, the same nastiness in one of his campaign's most prominent ads, which showcases Romney's off-key rendition of ''America the Beautiful.'' I wonder how that line, that ad and the overall atmospherics register with voters in the middle, some of whom are no doubt asking themselves where ''hope and change'' went and hid.
The main cause for this contest's closeness is arguably Obama -- and the ways in which he has disappointed, confused and alienated some of the voters who warmed and even thrilled to him four years ago. During his first term, he at times misjudged and mishandled his Republican opposition. As a communicator, he repeatedly failed to sell his policies clearly and forcefully enough.
His tone is markedly changed from 2008, a tactical decision that may not be the right one. And his moments of genuine oratorical transcendence are interspersed, as they've always been, with spells of detachment, defensiveness, disgruntlement. Denver wasn't the first or only time that he seemed put out by the madness of the political merry-go-round, even though it's a whirl he himself elected.
I still think he'll win this thing, and I think he'll win it because he's a seriously intelligent, thoughtful leader more in tune and in touch with Americans' lives than his sheltered opponent is. He still has poetry in him, and he still has fight. But this campaign has illuminated nothing so brightly as the limits of his magic, along with shortcomings that he would carry with him into a second term (should he get one) and would be wise to address.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/opinion/sunday/Bruni-Obamas-Squandered-Advantages.html
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The New York Times
October 28, 2012 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
Tracking Clicks Online To Try to Sway Voters
BYLINE: By NATASHA SINGER and CHARLES DUHIGG
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; Pg. 16
LENGTH: 1338 words
A few weeks ago, Thomas Goddard, a community college student in Santa Clara, Calif., and a devoted supporter of President Obama, clicked on mittromney.com to check out the candidate's position on abortion.
Then, as he visited other Web sites, he started seeing advertisements asking him to donate to Mitt Romney's campaign. One mentioned family values, he said, and seemed aimed at someone with more conservative leanings.
''It doesn't make any sense,'' Mr. Goddard said. ''I'm the opposite of a Romney supporter. But ever since I went to the Romney site, they've been following me.''
One of the hallmarks of this campaign is the use of increasingly sophisticated -- but not always accurate -- data-mining techniques to customize ads for voters based on the digital trails they leave as they visit Internet sites.
It is a practice pioneered by online retailers who work with third-party information resellers to create detailed portraits of consumers, all the better to show them relevant marketing pitches. Mr. Goddard, for example, may have received those Romney ads because of ''retargeting'' software designed to show people ads for certain sites or products they have previously viewed.
Now, in the election's final weeks, both presidential campaigns have drastically increased their use of such third-party surveillance engines, according to Evidon, a company that helps businesses and consumers monitor and control third-party tracking software.
Over the month of September, Evidon identified 76 different tracking programs on barackobama.com -- two more trackers than it found on Best Buy's Web site -- compared with 53 in May. It found 40 different trackers on mittromney.com last month, compared with 25 in May.
The report provides a rare glimpse into the number of third-party tracking programs that are operating on the campaign Web sites -- as many as or more than on some of the most popular retailers' sites.
The campaigns directly hire some companies, like ad agencies or data management firms, that marry information collected about voters on a campaign site with data about them from other sources. But these entities, in turn, may bring their own software partners to the sites to perform data-mining activities like retargeting voters or tracking the political links they share with their social networks.
Now some consumer advocates say the proliferation of these trackers raises the risk that information about millions of people's political beliefs could spread to dozens of business-to-business companies whose names many voters have never even heard. There is growing concern that the campaigns or third-party trackers may later use that voter data for purposes the public never imagined, like excluding someone from a job offer based on his or her past political affiliations.
''Is the data going to be sold to marketers or shared with other campaigns?'' said Christopher Calabrese, the legislative counsel for privacy-related issues at the American Civil Liberties Union. ''We simply don't know how this information is going to be used in the future and where it is going to end up.''
Evidon offers a free software program called Ghostery that people can use to identify third-party trackers on the sites they visit. On Oct. 18 the program identified 19 different trackers on the Obama Web site and 12 on the Romney site. A reporter contacted 10 for comment.
Among those who responded, Cassie Piercey, a spokeswoman for ValueClick, whose MediaPlex marketing analytics division was identified as operating on the Obama site by Ghostery, said she could not comment on specific clients and referred a reporter to the company's privacy policy. The policy says that ValueClick may collect information about users -- like their Internet Protocol addresses, Web browsing histories, online purchases and searches -- that does not involve identifiable information like their names, and that the company may share that data with its clients and marketing partners.
Adam Berke, the president of AdRoll, an advertising and retargeting company identified by Evidon on the Obama site, said the company did not aggregate user data or share it with other clients.
Meanwhile, Nanda Kishore, the chief technology officer of ShareThis, a service found on the Romney site by Ghostery that collects information about the links visitors share with their social networks, said the company collects only ''anonymous'' information about users and does not share or sell it.
The privacy policies on the campaigns' Web sites acknowledge that they work with third parties that may collect user data.
Evidon executives said the tracking companies on the campaign sites included services that collect details about people's online behavior in order to help mold ads to their political concerns; advertising networks that track people's browsing history to measure the effectiveness of ads; and companies that record user behavior so they can analyze the effectiveness of sites to attract and hold on to Web traffic.
Officials with both campaigns emphasize that such data collection is ''anonymous'' because third-party companies use code numbers, not real names, to track site visitors.
Adam Fetcher, a spokesman for the Obama campaign, said the Web site does not allow its partners to share data collected from visitors with other clients or use it for other purposes like marketing consumer goods.
''We are committed to protecting individual privacy and employ strong safeguards to protect personal information,'' Mr. Fetcher wrote in an e-mail. ''We do not provide any personal information to outside entities, and we stipulate that third-party partners not use data collected on the site for other purposes.''
In response to a reporter's query about whether the Romney site placed limitations on the collection or use of voter data by its partners, Ryan Williams, a campaign spokesman, wrote in an e-mail: ''The Romney campaign respects the privacy rights of all Americans. We are committed to ensuring that all of our voter outreach is governed by the highest ethical standards.''
Evidon compiled the statistics on campaign tracking by aggregating data from a panel of about seven million volunteers who use its Ghostery program.
From May to September, Evidon identified 97 tracking programs -- ''far more than the average site employs,'' a company report said -- on the Obama and Romney sites combined. (Some trackers appeared on both sites.)
The campaigns' increased use of tracking technology represents ''a significant windfall for online data collectors and ad targeting companies,'' Andy Kahl, the director of consumer products at Evidon, wrote in the report. But, he added, ''the campaigns need to realize that being on top of which technology partners are appearing on their site, and ensuring clarity into what these partners can and can't do with the data, is essential.''
Industry executives say the campaigns simply use data-mining to show the most relevant message to each voter.
''Political campaigns now for the first time can actually reach out to prospective voters with messaging that addresses each person's specific interests and causes,'' according to a recent report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau, a trade group.
But privacy advocates say such personalization raises questions about transparency.
''Individual voters may not be aware that the message they are getting is based on information that has been gleaned about their activities around the Web and is precisely targeted to them,'' said Mr. Calabrese of the A.C.L.U. ''It may be a private message just for me that is not the type of statement the campaign makes publicly.''
While some voters may be turned off by the customized campaign appeals, for others, they are expected.
''Companies are doing it, why shouldn't campaigns?'' said Michael James, a New Jersey high school teacher who visited both campaign sites this year to determine whom he would support. ''The Internet has changed privacy. We can't expect either campaign to pretend we're living in the past.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/us/politics/tracking-clicks-online-to-try-to-sway-voters.html
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GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: Thomas Goddard, left, of Santa Clara, Calif., says online ads for Mitt Romney have continued to appear since he visited the candidate's Web site. A program called Ghostery shows the tracking software at the campaign sites of President Obama and Mr. Romney, top. (PHOTOGRAPH BY JASON HENRY FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES) (A19)
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The New York Times
October 28, 2012 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
A Troubleshooting 'Wingman' Plotting Romney's Trajectory
BYLINE: By MICHAEL BARBARO and ASHLEY PARKER
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1445 words
BOSTON -- When Mitt Romney's record at Bain Capital first came under assault, his beleaguered campaign staff turned to Bob White, an informal adviser. He quickly recruited researchers to conduct a deal-by-deal autopsy, searching for uplifting examples to share with voters to counter rivals' accounts of exploitative ones.
When Mr. Romney's team of longtime aides risked becoming insular, Mr. White navigated a minefield of office politics to ensure that Ed Gillespie, a veteran Republican operative brought in from the outside, had a major hand in strategy decisions.
And when Mr. Romney was portrayed as a robotic Mr. Fix-It, unwilling to tell his personal story, Mr. White pushed to recast him as a compassionate church leader, selfless neighbor and adoring father.
Mr. White, a former college hockey player with a pronounced Boston accent, has emerged as a singular force within the Romney campaign. A designated troubleshooter and in-house consultant, he helped steady a wobbly candidacy and reverse its trajectory in recent weeks, according to interviews with a dozen Romney aides and advisers.
Little seen and little known to the public, Mr. White -- a multimillionaire businessman who has the nebulous title of campaign chairman and accepts no salary -- plays an outsize role. Variously described by aides as the candidate's alter ego, his aide-de-camp, his genial enforcer and his gut check, Mr. White gained his stature entirely through his long relationship with Mr. Romney, who hired him 31 years ago for a management consulting job. His place in a Romney White House, should there be one, is all but guaranteed.
''Bob's voice in Romneyworld carries enormous weight, both internally and externally,'' said Spencer Zwick, the campaign's finance chief. ''People crave his approval and his sign-off. They know Mitt listens to him.''
Mr. White, 56, jokes that his job is ''Friend of Candidate.'' Mr. Romney calls him ''my wingman.''
Their partnership is devoted and durable, with Mr. Romney relying on Mr. White as an informal adviser at every stage of his career: Bain, the Massachusetts governorship, the Olympics and both presidential campaigns. Aides say it falls to him to channel what he sees as the real Mitt Romney.
''That's not Mitt,'' Mr. White is known to say at strategy meetings about a proposal, at times directly asking Mr. Romney, ''Are you really comfortable with this plan?''
Inside a campaign that long favored hammering on President Obama and playing down the details of Mr. Romney's biography, Mr. White has pushed for transparency, arguing that the benefits outweighed the risks. He advocated that Mr. Romney discuss his Mormon faith, publicly embrace his financial success and release his recent income taxes, taking to a whiteboard to tutor a campaign media relations team befuddled by the candidate's far-flung investments and trusts.
Aides, who say nothing in the campaign is achieved without exhaustive consensus, said Mr. Romney's emergence in the final stretch of the race as a pragmatist, talking about his charitable acts, business career and record as governor, bore Mr. White's fingerprints.
He ''wants people to see the Mitt Romney he knows,'' said Ron Kaufman, a top campaign adviser. ''He wants to give people a reason to go to the polls.''
Neither Mr. White nor Mr. Romney would talk about their relationship for this article. But by granting Mr. White access to every meeting and any aide, Mr. Romney has revealed something about his own leadership style, suggesting the limits of his faith in political operatives and his enduring belief in the problem-solving powers of fellow management consultants. In Mr. White, Mitt Romney has, in a sense, found his very own Mitt Romney.
At Romney for President headquarters here, Mr. White peppers advisers with provocative questions, tests their assumptions and challenges their plans, just as he and Mr. Romney did at Bain Consulting. ''Why are we running this ad now?'' he has asked. ''Is this the best use of money?''
When he learned that the fund-raising team was leaning against participating in the federal government's public financing program -- it figured the program was impractical since Mr. Obama had opted out to raise unlimited amounts from donors -- Mr. White said he could not support that position until team members had backed it up with a thorough analysis. They dutifully did, and the campaign rejected public financing.
Thinking like a consultant, he urged that the advertising team find ways to work with outside experts to get new ideas. And he created Project Patriot, a way to use the talents of big donors for more than writing checks; Charles Schwab and James J. Liautaud, the founder of the Jimmy John's sandwich chain, among others, are now deployed to make the case for Mr. Romney to groups of businesspeople around the country.
Mr. White may not apply the same cleareyed scrutiny to his friend the candidate, though, that he does to campaign operations. At least publicly, he speaks of Mr. Romney with near reverence, unable or unwilling to find fault.
Mr. White, a silver-haired father of six, has a barking laugh and an easy grin. His lucrative career at Bain, where he is still an investor, has given him the freedom to help out Mr. Romney and pursue enthusiasms, like his part ownership of the Boston Celtics. But he grew up far from the wealthy Michigan suburbs and elite prep schools of Mr. Romney's youth.
The son of an Irish Catholic machinist and a telephone service representative in Woburn, Mass., he was the first member of his family to attend college -- Bowdoin, on financial aid. He was the goalie on the hockey team, ''which at Bowdoin is like being the starting quarterback on a college football team,'' said David Binswanger, a classmate.
But Mr. White stood out for blending in, splitting his time between the jocks and the A students. ''You would have expected somebody like that to be the ego, or the big man on campus,'' Mr. Binswanger said.
That understated quality, colleagues said, drew Mr. Romney to him. After recruiting Mr. White to Bain Consulting in 1981, Mr. Romney made him the first employee of Bain Capital, the private equity firm he founded three years later. Mr. White's trademark, then and now: making change without making waves. Respected and well liked, Mr. White generally gets his way. ''He has a very light touch,'' said Mr. Gillespie, the senior campaign adviser.
Mr. Romney relied on Mr. White to recruit top campaign staff for his governor's race in 2002, intervene in delicate personnel problems in the governor's office and lay the groundwork for his first presidential campaign.
Mr. White traveled to Iowa and New Hampshire in 2006 and 2007, handing out $600 checks from Mr. Romney's political action committee to local candidates and talking up the national prospects of a Massachusetts governor most of them had never heard of.
Tom Rath, a longtime strategist in New Hampshire, recalled Mr. White showing up in a blue blazer and gray slacks seeking a tutorial in how to organize a presidential campaign. ''Tell me how this works,'' he said.
Mr. Romney gave a toast and a reading at Mr. White's wedding; Mr. White takes Mr. Romney to Boston sporting events when he is in town. ''I think he's appreciative of the success he's gotten with Mitt,'' Mr. Binswanger said of Mr. White. ''He thinks Mitt is one of the great human beings in the country.''
Mr. Romney, in his book ''Turnaround,'' was effusive in his praise. ''Bob,'' he wrote, ''had saved my bacon time and again in my career.''
Campaign aides said Mr. White has pulled off the tricky job of being Mr. Romney's close friend while earning the trust of the candidate's staff, by making clear that much of what he learns will remain confidential. He works from an office on the second floor of the Romney campaign office in Boston's North End, where a whiteboard is covered in handwritten charts.
But he is frequently on the road, sitting a row behind Mr. Romney on the candidate's plane, offering jokes and counsel. He has a knack for figuring out when Mr. Romney is feeling disconnected from headquarters and should be looped in on a conference call, or when he needs a break in his tight schedule.
And if Mr. Romney makes it to the White House? Mr. White is on the team planning the transition, and aides cannot imagine that Mr. Romney would not turn to him again.
Mr. White has at least contemplated a role for himself in the capital. Back in the 1990s, he interviewed a job candidate at Bain Capital named Marc Walpow, who said he asked Mr. White what he wanted to do after his time at the firm.
Mr. Walpow still remembers his answer: ''I might go to Washington with Mitt.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/us/politics/bob-white-a-troubleshooter-plotting-romneys-trajectory.html
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Bob White with Mitt Romney. Mr. White, whom Mr. Romney hired at Bain Consulting in 1981, jokes that his job is ''Friend of Candidate.'' (PHOTOGRAPH BY STEPHEN CROWLEY/THE NEW YORK TIMES)
Mr. White at the Republican convention in August. (PHOTOGRAPH BY MARK WILSON/GETTY IMAGES)
Mr. White in a meeting in 2007 during Mr. Romney's first bid for the White House. (PHOTOGRAPH BY JODI HILTON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES) (A20)
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The New York Times
October 28, 2012 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
President In Shining Armor
BYLINE: By ROSS DOUTHAT
SECTION: Section SR; Column 0; Sunday Review Desk; OP-ED COLUMNIST; Pg. 14
LENGTH: 854 words
FAR in the future, long after today's partisan passions have cooled, some enterprising women's studies doctoral student will be able to write a fascinating dissertation on the rhetoric and iconography surrounding gender in Barack Obama's 2012 campaign.
Such a dissertation might start with the Obama campaign's striking ''Life of Julia'' slide show, which portrayed an American woman protected from toddler-hood by the ''steps President Obama has taken,'' and menaced at every turn by Mitt Romney's reactionary policies.
From there, it could touch on the campaign's unusual suggestion that Obama supporters use their wedding registries to solicit donations to the president's re-election effort. It might linger over the White House's elevation of Sandra Fluke, a progressive activist and Georgetown University law student, as a kind of martyr for free contraception after she was insulted by Rush Limbaugh. And it would probably conclude with the Obama campaign's release last week of a winking video from ''Girls'' creator Lena Dunham, urging young women to make sure their ''first time'' is with a ''great guy'' like President Obama. (Their first time voting -- what do you think she meant?)
To today's Obama supporters, these forays -- like the campaign's broader ''war on women'' framing, and its recent attempts to make the election a referendum on abortion in cases of rape -- just emphasize that the president is on the side of female empowerment, sexual, professional and otherwise.
But given the way Obama's once-enormous edge among female voters has shrunk in many polls, tomorrow's feminists may look back on his campaign's pitch to women and see a different theme emerge: a weirdly paternalistic form of social liberalism, in which women are forever single girls and the president is their father, lover, fiancé and paladin all rolled into one. (Our future dissertation author may note with bemusement, for instance, that Dunham's ad mirrors a similar advertisement cut for ... Vladimir Putin.)
This paternalistic pitch assumes that liberalism's traditional edge with women is built mostly on social issues, and that Democrats -- especially male Democrats -- win when they run as protectors of the sexual revolution, standing between their female constituents and the Todd Akins of the Republican Party.
But that conceit is probably wrong. The gap between men and women on issues like abortion is overstated, and the female preference for Democrats predates Roe v. Wade. In a recent blog post, Christina Wolbrecht of the University of Notre Dame calls the gender gap ''a recurrent, if not consistent, feature of presidential elections throughout the postwar era,'' which probably dates to Barry Goldwater's 1964 presidential campaign.
Not coincidentally, that was a year when Republican economic rhetoric took on a particularly individualistic cast. If there's a deep driver of the gender gap, it's usually views about spending and the role of government. Men are more likely to be libertarian, women are more likely to be communitarian, and this creates what Wolbrecht calls a natural ''divergence in preferences for social welfare policies.''
This helps explain why, among recent elections, the gender gap yawned widest in 1996 -- not an election with many culture-war flash points, but a year when Bill Clinton relentlessly tied Bob Dole to the Congressional Republicans' attempted cuts to domestic spending and entitlements.
It also helps explain why Romney made ground with women after his performance in the first presidential debate -- when he mostly pivoted toward the center on economic issues, and emphasized solidarity and community rather than ''you built that!'' individualism.
None of this means that the Obama White House's social issues appeals don't resonate with many female voters. But they're most successful as a form of narrowcasting -- a pitch to a particular group of women, often younger and left-leaning and unmarried, rather than to the female population as a whole.
Which is why it once seemed safe to assume that Obama's social issues strategy was a way of solidifying his base, and a warm-up act for the fall campaign. He would extol Planned Parenthood and hail Sandra Fluke all summer, the theory went, and turn Clintonian and talk mostly about entitlements and economic security after his convention.
Instead, the idea of Obama as a kind of knight protector for America's Julias and Lenas and Sandras, waging a lonely counteroffensive in the war on women, has basically become the White House's concluding pitch not only to his base, but to female undecided voters as well.
An imaginary Republican plot to ban contraception, the illusory threat that Mitt Romney would ban abortion in cases of rape, a wave of faux-chivalric outrage over Romney's line about ''binders full of women'' -- in a tight-as-a-tick, economy-centric election, this is the message that Obama is relying on to push him back over the top.
Perhaps it will actually work. Perhaps the Electoral College will save the president. But I'll just say this: It's awfully hard to imagine Hillary Clinton closing out a campaign this way.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/opinion/sunday/douthat-President-Obama-in-Shining-Armor.html
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The New York Times
October 28, 2012 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
Of Mad Men, Mad Women and Meat Loaf
BYLINE: By MAUREEN DOWD
SECTION: Section SR; Column 0; Editorial Desk; OP-ED COLUMNIST; Pg. 13
LENGTH: 835 words
WASHINGTON
MY sister, who was a secretary in the ''Mad Men'' era, is not worried that Republicans want to drag us back to being secretaries in the ''Mad Men'' era, as Tina Fey suggests.
Peggy is that most sought-after creature, an undecided woman who is a swing voter. She started as a blond concrete block in President Obama's female firewall, but like many other women, is now pondering divorcing him for the man who looks and darn well talks like a '50s sitcom dad.
She does not believe the economy is getting better, and she trusts Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan not to do anything radical on women's reproductive rights or Medicare. She rejects my contention that Republicans in Congress would force them to; they see Mitt as an empty suit who would happily sign their far-right bills as long as he got Air Force One.
Our mom, a strict Catholic, taught us that it was immoral for a woman to be expected to carry a rapist's baby for nine months. (Don't even mention that rapists can assert parental rights in 31 states.)
But compassion is scant among the Puritan tribe of Republicans running now. As The Huffington Post reports, at least a dozen G.O.P. Senate candidates oppose abortion for rape victims. The party platform calls for a constitutional amendment with no exceptions for rape, incest or the mother's life.
Representative Todd Akin, running against Senator Claire McCaskill in Missouri, differentiated between rape and ''legitimate rape,'' implying that women would fake rape to get abortions, and suggested that women have a magic way not to get pregnant from rape.
Representative Joe Walsh, running for re-election in Illinois, contended that ''with advances in science and technology, 'health of the mother' has become a tool for abortions of any time or for any reason.'' Appalled obstetricians ticked off a litany of life-threatening situations.
Last week, Richard Mourdock, a Senate candidate in Indiana, said in a debate that ''even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.''
Mitt was certainly no profile in courage after Mourdock's comment blew up. He didn't take back his endorsement. He hid from reporters on his plane, and even dodged his usual custom of giving a reporter a birthday hug. Instead, he broadcast a birthday message to her on the intercom from the safety of first class.
It shouldn't be a surprise that many women support Romney, even though he has somersaulted on reproductive rights and his running mate sponsored a bill with Akin giving fertilized eggs the ''legal and constitutional attributes and privileges of personhood.'' Just as it shouldn't be surprising that Romney has the support of a huge swath of blue-collar white men, even though he's on a mission to make the 1 percent 100 percent able to indulge in car elevators.
Republicans are geniuses at getting people to vote against their own self-interest. Hispanics, however, do not seem inclined to vote against their self-interest on immigration laws, and Obama is counting on that to buoy him.
After the draining W. years -- when grumpy old men foolishly refought grumpy old wars -- Barack Obama was going to sweep us to modernity.
But, as the Republican strategist Alex Castellanos notes, ''He gets to Washington and calls Larry Summers.'' The only hope and change Obama could conjure this time was changing the period on his campaign slogan -- ''Forward.'' -- to an exclamation point. Romney was right when he spoke at a rally in Iowa on Friday and said the president had made the election ''about small, shiny objects.''
Mitt may have peaked too soon. Now he is left counting on what advisers call ''the silent majority.'' Obama's support among white voters has dived, and news reports call this the most racially polarized race since 1988. John Sununu, shockingly still a Romney surrogate, offered another flash of thinly veiled racism when he suggested that Colin Powell endorsed the president because they both were black, a comment he recanted. Sarah Palin said Obama was guilty of ''shuck and jive'' on Benghazi.
The high-minded Obama is trying to be hip, trash-talking Mitt in Rolling Stone, going on MTV to chitchat about hip-hop, joking with Jay Leno about his childhood in Kenya with Donald Trump. His campaign has a new ad with Lena Dunham, the creator of ''Girls,'' slyly comparing your first vote to ''your first time.'' The ad agitated some conservatives -- one used Twitter to align Dunham and Obama with Satan -- but was harmless. Ronald Reagan had a racier version 32 years ago.
Mitt hopes Americans are ready for some rules -- and binders. He is baked in the fuddy-duddy dad image from the era when white men ruled and the little women toiled over a hot stove. On Thursday, Ann Romney made his annual birthday treat, meatloaf cakes, on Rachael Ray's show while the candidate collected the endorsement of Meat Loaf, another blast from the past who balked at the notion that the cold war was over.
Mitt may have my sister. But he still needs Ohio.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/opinion/sunday/dowd-Of-Mad-Men-Mad-Women-and-Meat-Loaf.html
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October 28, 2012 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
In a Tight Senate Race in Nevada, an Ethics Investigation Looms Large
BYLINE: By NORIMITSU ONISHI
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; Pg. 17
LENGTH: 1221 words
RENO, Nev. -- Representative Shelley Berkley, battling for a Senate seat, flew to northern Nevada hours after appearing with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. at a rally in her Las Vegas district. On Oct. 19, before returning south for the start of early voting, Ms. Berkley crisscrossed Washoe County, the battleground where her image has been largely shaped by a barrage of television advertisements from her rival attacking her ethics.
With Ms. Berkley, a Democrat, locked in a very tight race for one of the most fiercely fought Senate races in the country, her Republican opponent, Senator Dean Heller, was calculating that he could scrape his way to re-election with an unrelenting focus on the ethics cloud surrounding her, analysts said.
Mr. Heller made no public appearances during the week, but his ubiquitous television ads have hammered at the congresswoman, who is being investigated by the House over allegations that she used her office to help her husband's medical practice.
The race has remained tight despite the investigation, experts said, because of Ms. Berkley's popularity in her district, which she has represented for seven terms, her tenacious campaigning and the formidable support of Senator Harry Reid's muscular machine. In the early morning cold, Ms. Berkley sought votes from Teamster members at a United Parcel Service center before heading to a breakfast here with a receptive group of older residents.
''I will stand with you, I will work with you, and I will fight for you,'' she said, pledging to protect Medicare and Social Security.
A victory by Mr. Heller is critical to Republican hopes of wresting the Senate from Democratic control and dislodging Mr. Reid, this state's senior senator, as majority leader. A former congressman who was elected to a safely Republican district here in 2007, Mr. Heller was appointed last year by Gov. Brian Sandoval to succeed John Ensign, another Republican, who resigned from the Senate over a sex scandal.
Still reeling from the nation's highest unemployment rate and one of its highest home foreclosure rates, Nevada has emerged as one of the most contested states in the presidential battle, and the Senate race has also become a proxy, pitting two candidates with records of voting along partisan lines.
A onetime stockbroker who referred to the unemployed as ''hobos'' in an unguarded moment, Mr. Heller, 52, is a social conservative who has attacked Ms. Berkley for supporting President Obama's economic policies. A social liberal, Ms. Berkley, 61, has assailed her opponent for embracing the Republican top of the ticket's proposed spending cuts and Medicare changes.
Ms. Berkley is depending on Mr. Obama, whose formidable voter turnout operations helped him carry the state in 2008. But Mitt Romney has invested considerable resources in forging a ground operation in the state, which has a significant Mormon population. Both Mr. Romney and Mr. Heller are Mormons. Here in Washoe, the county that makes Nevada a swing state, registered Republicans slightly outnumber Democrats this time.
Darren Littell, a spokesman for Team Nevada, which oversees Republican campaigns, said candidates were now coordinating their efforts on the ground.
''I think it's going to positively affect the Senate race here,'' he said.
To overcome her deficit in the polls, Ms. Berkley must win big in her Democratic district and blunt a likely victory by Mr. Heller here. In Las Vegas, she tried to fire up core supporters recently, eating a hot dog at a picnic by the Laborers' International Union of North America and riding in a red Jeep in the annual Hispanic Day Parade.
Ms. Berkley mentioned her support for the Dream Act, a bill that would have given legal status to young illegal immigrants and was popular among Hispanics, who account for 14 percent of the state's electorate. Mr. Heller opposed the Dream Act, which he called a ''backdoor amnesty program'' and ''pandering'' to Hispanics, and has also spoken in favor of eliminating birthright citizenship, a hard stance on immigration that resonates in rural areas and among some white voters elsewhere.
''I believe it was a portion of the Constitution years ago at the beginning of this country. It made a lot of sense then; it makes less sense today,'' Mr. Heller said during the third and final debate on Oct. 15.
But more than anything, Mr. Heller's television ads, as well as those financed by ''super PACs'' pouring money into Nevada, have aimed at Ms. Berkley's ethics problems. A House panel is investigating whether Ms. Berkley wrongly intervened with Medicare officials in 2008 to keep open a troubled kidney transplant center with ties to her husband's practice.
The investigation has hurt Ms. Berkley among voters like Steven Foremaster, 47, a lawyer who was watching the Hispanic parade. An Obama supporter, he said Ms. Berkley would not get his vote because of the investigation.
''That was the main thing for me,'' he said.
In an interview, Ms. Berkley repeated her position that Nevada politicians worked together to save the state's only kidney transplant center and that her husband's ties to it were widely known.
Speaking of her opponent's focus on her ethics -- his latest ad called her ''one of the most corrupt members of Congress'' -- she said, ''He doesn't have anything else.''
But Mr. Heller clearly believes it is enough to win, analysts said.
''Heller is running this safe, lackluster, almost issue-less campaign, except for Berkley's ethics,'' said Eric Herzik, chairman of the political science department at the University of Nevada, Reno.
Mr. Heller has held few events open to the public, and his aides have refused to inform journalists in advance of the rare event on his schedule. Asked why, Chandler Smith, a spokeswoman for Mr. Heller, declined to comment.
''When you're ahead, you try not to make mistakes,'' said Dave Buell, chairman of the Washoe County Republican Party.
But Mark Peplowski, a political scientist at the College of Southern Nevada, said Mr. Heller might be overestimating the impact of Ms. Berkley's ethics problem, especially in her district, where more than 70 percent of the state's voters live.
''Ethics resonates in Washoe County because they don't know her up there,'' he said. ''But down here, people are going: 'That's not Shelley. She's not that type. She's a scrapper. She fights for us.' ''
Here in Washoe County, the enthusiasm for Mr. Obama has ebbed since 2008, when he carried the county by 12 percentage points, a fact that will make it even more crucial for Ms. Berkley to define herself on her own terms in the final weeks before Election Day. Reno, the county's biggest city, whose gambling industry has been decimated by the popularity of Indian casinos in Northern California, is struggling to pull itself out of the recession and find a new economic base.
Here in downtown Reno, where many shuttered casino buildings have sat empty for years, Larry Thomas stood in line recently to hear Mr. Biden speak.
Mr. Thomas, 52, a longtime registered Democrat, said Mr. Heller's ads had planted doubts in his mind about Ms. Berkley. But he said she had won his support after he wrote to her office and he received a reply elaborating on her policies.
''The only way she's known here is through the ads,'' he said, ''and it's not a way to get to know her.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/us/politics/in-tight-nevada-senate-race-an-ethics-cloud-looms-large.html
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GRAPHIC: PHOTO: Representative Shelley Berkley, a Democrat running for Senate, is popular in her district despite a House inquiry into accusations that she used her office to help her husband's medical practice. (PHOTOGRAPH BY ISAAC BREKKEN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)
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October 28, 2012 Sunday
Billionaires Going Rogue
BYLINE: THOMAS B. EDSALL
SECTION: OPINION
LENGTH: 1717 words
HIGHLIGHT: The political parties are losing control of the political dialogue, which might not be as good as it sounds.
If there is one rule of thumb governing campaign finance regulation, or the lack thereof, it is that the consequences of any changes in the system are unpredictable.
In 2002, when Congress enacted the McCain-Feingold law barring large "soft money" contributions from corporations, unions and rich people to the political parties, many observers assumed that the Democrats would suffer more. The party had never fully cultivated a small donor base and had consistently been more dependent on mega-contributions than the Republican Party.
In less than two years, this assumption was proven wrong. First, in the 2004 election, small donors in droves gave their credit card numbers to the Democratic campaign of John Kerry, and Kerry was able to keep pace with George W. Bush, dollar for dollar. Four years later, the cash flow to Barack Obama swamped John McCain. The Internet, and with it the ability of campaigns to inexpensively reach millions of prospective donors, permanently transformed fundraising.
In 2010, campaign finance law was turned on its head. The Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, and appeals court decisions such as Speech Now v. F.E.C., opened the door to unlimited contributions to technically independent political action committees (super PACs) from corporations, unions and individuals.
The result has been a stupefying array of PACs, 501(c)4s and 501(c)6s that even professionals can barely keep track of. The future that Buckley v. Valeo set in motion almost 40 years ago has arrived, and the current multiplicity and multidirectionality of "reform" has overwhelmed both the people and the parties.
The virtually unanimous view throughout the course of four decades of revised regulation was that the Republican Party and its candidates would be the major beneficiaries, and, so far, that has been true.
The first chart, provided by the Center for Responsive Politics, shows that outside spending tilted left in every year from 2000 to 2008, but that in 2010 - in the aftermath of deregulation - the balance skewed decisively to the right. In the current 2011-12 election cycle, it shifted overwhelmingly to the right:
The movement rightwards of almost half a billion dollars in this cycle alone - signified by the red bar on the graph representing Republican donations - is not, however, the pure gold that analysts on both sides expected.
While, the rapid growth of well-financed and autonomous competitors threatens all existing power structures, the bulk of the costs are likely to fall on the Republican Party. The right wing of the Republican Party has more disruptive potential than the left wing of the Democratic Party because it is more willing to go to extremes: see the billboards showing Obama bowing down before an Arab Sheik, or the ads and DVD claiming that Obama is the bastard son of the African American communist, Frank Marshall Davis.
There are, furthermore, structural and historical differences between the parties: the Republican Party and the conservative establishment is institutionally stronger than the Democratic Party, with an infrastructure that served as a bulwark through the 1960s and 70s - the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, the Olin Foundation, etc. - when Republicans appeared to be a permanent congressional minority. Its financial prowess enabled the party to enforce more discipline on its consultants and elected officials. The Republican establishment also exercises more authority over policy and candidate selection than does its Democratic counterpart.
In recent years, the Democratic Party organization has gained some strength and it plays a much more active role in campaigns at all levels than in the past, but as an institutional force capable of command and control, it remains light years behind the Republican Party.
Republicans, in contrast to Democrats, prefer hierarchical, well-ordered organizations, and are much more willing to cede authority to those in power. Democrats, despite the discipline of individual campaign efforts, tend more toward anarchy than hierarchy. Historically, one result of this partisan difference is that the Republican establishment has tightly managed candidate selection at the presidential level. With extraordinary consistency, the party has crushed insurgent candidates and selected the next in line. Ronald Reagan and Bob Dole, for example, both had to wait until it was their turn.
The Republican establishment has a full arsenal of weapons at its disposal, including endorsements, favored speaking engagements at key party gatherings, leverage over top consultants and a signaling process to show who has been anointed from on high.
The most powerful weapon of all was always the oversight exercised by party leaders over the flow of money to candidates. Every four years when the nomination process began, business leaders, Republican-leaning trade associations, top corporate law firms and investment bankers slowly formed a consensus behind a favored candidate.
The establishment snuffed out insurgencies, including candidates from the social right - Pat Buchanan, Pat Robertson and Gary Bauer - and candidates from the economic right like Jack Kemp and Steve Forbes. None of these outsiders rose past marginal status, although their presence in primary contests often forced the mainstream candidate to make concessions that proved damaging in the general election.
Compare that history of unbroken authoritarian dominance to the 2012 Republican nomination fight.
Unleashed by Citizens United, a handful of renegade billionaires made life miserable for Mitt Romney, the establishment candidate. More importantly, it only took four men - Sheldon Adelson, the Las Vegas and Macao casino mogul; Harold Simmons, a Dallas-based leveraged buyout specialist; Foster Friess, a conservative Christian and a successful investor; and William Dore, a Louisiana energy company C.E.O. - to stun traditional party power brokers during the first four months of 2012.
The millions of dollars these men put into the super PACs associated with two clearly marginal candidates, Newt Gingrich and the former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, turned the primary process into an open contest, giving full voice to the more extreme wings dominated by the Tea Party and the evangelical right.
The newly empowered billionaires are positioned to challenge the Republican Party at its point of greatest vulnerability, during the primaries. The three major party organizations - the Republican National, Congressional and Senatorial Committees - cannot, except in unusual circumstances, intervene in primaries. Those are to be decided by voters, not the party.
The new class of financial bosses, equipped to legitimate primary candidates at all levels, has no such restriction over participation in primaries. Instead, the incentives are substantial to engage full force in the nomination process where the marginal value of each dollar is higher and more likely to influence the outcome than in the general election.
These new players, along with their super PACs, undermine the influence of the parties in another crucial way. Before Citizens United, the three major Republican Party committees exerted power because their financial preeminence gave them the final word on the award of contracts to pollsters, direct mail, voter contact, and media consultants - very few of whom were willing to alienate a key source of cash.
The ascendance of super PACs creates a separate and totally independent source of contracts for the community of political professionals. Super PACs and other independent groups already raise more than any of the political party committees and almost as much as either the Republican or Democratic Party committees raise in toto.
This chart shows the rapidity of the growth of independent spending:
And this chart shows the amounts raised so far this year by the party committees:
Nathan Persily, a professor at Columbia Law School and a political scientist, made the point to me with a question: "Who is the Republican Party in the Citizens United age? If you had to point to the 'Republican Party' would you be more likely to point to Reince Preibus (and implicitly the R.N.C.) or Karl Rove (and Crossroads G.P.S.)? I think candidates might consider Rove more important."
Preibus is the chairman of the R.N.C.; Karl Rove founded American Crossroads, a super PAC, and Crossroad GPS, a tax exempt independent expenditure organization that is not required to disclose donors. So far in the 2011-12 election cycle, American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS have spent $174.28 million, a sum two million dollars greater than the $172.2 million spent by the Republican Congressional and Senatorial Committees combined.
By now you may have the question in the back of your mind: who cares about the political parties? Aren't they just agents of the status quo at a time when innovative thinking is needed? Maybe diminishing their role will help lessen polarization and open up the system?
There may be some truth to this and perhaps the benefits will outweigh the costs. Conversely, the diminishment of the parties means that the institutions with the single-minded goal of winning a majority will be weakened. When parties are influential, they can help keep some candidates and office holders from going off the ideological deep end. The emergence of independently financed super PACs give voice to those with the most extreme views. An ad like this is likely to alienate as many citizens as it motivates:
Predictions are notoriously dangerous, given the multitude of possible outcomes. If the parties are eviscerated, the political system could adjust itself and regain vitality. But I doubt it. For all their flaws, strong political parties are important to a healthy political system. The displacement of the parties by super rich men determined to flex their financial muscles is another giant step away from democracy.
Thomas B. Edsall, a professor of journalism at Columbia University, is the author of the book "The Age of Austerity: How Scarcity Will Remake American Politics," which was published earlier this year.
Toe to Toe
Happy Lobbyists, Unhappy Citizens
Google's Crystal Ball
Obama's Narrow Victory
Premature Desperation
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October 28, 2012 Sunday
Tracking the Storm
BYLINE: THE NEW YORK TIMES
SECTION: NYREGION
LENGTH: 22750 words
HIGHLIGHT: Get the latest as the city and region endure a once-in-a-generation storm.
Millions of people across the mid-Atlantic region struggled to recover from widespread storm damage on Tuesday amid power failures, high winds, downed trees and powerful flooding. Transit shutdowns and school closings continued, the death toll from the storm rose, and people in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and elsewhere began assessing the aftermath.
More than six million American homes were without power, and more than 1.9 million of them were in New York, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said. The New York City subway system, hit by unprecedented damage from the storm, will remain closed for "a good four or five days," and schools will be closed again on Wednesday, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said.
Officials reported deaths related to the storm from North Carolina to Connecticut. The New York Police Department confirmed that there had been nine storm-related deaths in the city and said that number was expected to rise. Scores of homes in the Breezy Point section of the Rockaways were destroyed by a wind-whipped fire.
President Obama declared a federal disaster area in New York City, Long Island and eight counties in New Jersey. Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey praised Mr. Obama, repeatedly and effusively, for leading the federal government's response to the storm. He said the storm's cost in his state was "incalculable."
01:55 PM | Total Death Toll at 38
As searches revealed grim scenes up and down the Eastern Seaboard, the overall death toll from the storm had climbed to 38, officials said.
Here are the state-by-state totals, reported by The Associated Press on Tuesday afternoon, with two deaths not listed:
New York: 17
Pennsylvania: 5
New Jersey: 4
Connecticut: 3
Maryland: 2
Virginia: 2
West Virginia: 1
North Carolina: 1
Off the coast of North Carolina: 1
- Andy Newman
1:54 P.M. | Cultural Cancellations
For those interested in finding out about cancellations of cultural events, the Arts Beat blog has an updated list.
- The New York Times
1:45 P.M. | Obama Signs Disaster Declaration
President Obama signed major disaster declarations for New York and New Jerseyon Tuesday, authorizing the distribution of direct federal assistance to victims of Hurricane Sandy from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
- The New York Times
01:27 PM | Congressman's Home Burned Down in Storm
Representative Bob Turner's home in Breezy Point, Queens, was one of dozens that burned down in the storm, a spokeswoman confirmed Tuesday.
Mr. Turner, a Republican, was home when the fire broke out early Tuesday morning, but both he and his wife are safe, said Jessica Proud, who was a spokeswoman for his campaign. "They made it out safely. They were there well into the storm," she said.
Michael R. Long, chairman of the state Conservative Party, had a home nearby that also burned down, Ms. Proud said. It was not his primary residence and he, too, was safe, she said.
The fire in Breezy Point, fueled by the storm's unrelenting winds, reduced more than 80 homes to smoldering ash. Flooded streets in the area prevented firefighters from reaching the blaze, compounding the devastation.
"If you and I were trying to walk in waist-deep water, it's difficult - now picture doing that to fight a fire. It's incredibly difficult," said Frank Dwyer, a spokesman for the city's Fire Department. "Very high winds were creating blow-torch effects on the blocks, spreading the fire around."
- Sam Dolnick
01:25 PM | Blizzard Conditions in Appalachians
The freak winter storm that crashed into the tropical storm from the Atlantic brought as much of two feet of snow to Appalachian states, spreading blizzard or near-blizzard conditions over parts of Tennessee, West Virginia, Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina, officials said.
The storm dumped what may well be a record amount of heavy, wet snow in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
"Our average snowfall for the month of October is two inches, and now here we are at over 22 inches and we still have another day to go," Dana Soehn, a park spokeswoman, said on Wednesday morning.
More than a foot had fallen at Newfound Gap, Tenn., a small community at about 5,000 feet near the Tennessee-North Carolina border, according to the National Weather Service.
A few inches of snow had fallen in higher elevations in other parts of eastern Tennessee, as well, and in parts of the North Carolina mountains near Asheville, N.C.
Wet snow and high winds spinning off the edge of the storm also spread blizzard conditions over parts of West Virginia and Maryland, The Associated Press reported.
The National Weather Service said a foot and more of snow was reported in lower elevations of West Virginia, while higher elevations were getting more than two feet, according to The A.P.
Authorities closed more than 45 miles of Interstate 68 on either side of the West Virginia-Maryland state line because of blizzard conditions and stuck cars.
Meanwhile, gusty winds from the storm continued to be felt in eastern Alabama and parts of Georgia, some of them topping 35 miles per hour.
- Kim Severson
12:53 PM | Bus Service by 5 P.M., Cuomo Says; J.F.K. Open Tomorrow
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York said that officials expected limited, and free, New York City bus service to be restored by 5 p.m. today.
"Basically, a Sunday schedule," he said. "Hopefully tomorrow, there will be full service on the buses." No fares will be charged on the buses today or tomorrow.
The governor said that he also expected Kennedy International Airport to reopen tomorrow, though not La Guardia Airport, "due to extensive damage."
Mr. Cuomo also said that the state's death toll from the storm had climbed to 15.
Other highlights from the governor's 11:30 a.m. briefing.
*Lower Manhattan flooding: The Federal Emergency Management Agency has sent its National Unwatering Team to drain out downtown, and is offering other assistance.
*Power: About two million families are without power, nearly half of them on Long Island.
*Bridges: All bridges reopened at noon today. The Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel and the Holland Tunnel will remain closed.
*Global warming: "Anyone who thinks that there is not a dramatic change in weather patterns is denying reality," Mr. Cuomo said. "We have a new reality, and old infrastructures and old systems."
*Reflections: "What I saw last night in downtown Manhattan, on the South Shore of Long Island were some of the worst conditions I have seen," the governor said. "The Hudson was literally pouring into the ground zero site, with such a force that we were worried about the structure of the pit itself. The Hudson River was pouring into the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel like a river at high velocity. The response of the first responders was as courageous as anything I've seen. They were running right into the face of danger. If it wasn't for their heroism, things would have been much worse."
- Andy Newman and Sharon Otterman
12:43 P.M. | Falling Tree Kills 2 Westchester Boys
North Salem is horse country, known for some multimillion-dollar estates owned by film stars and other celebrities, but it is also mainly a working-class town with many winterized bungalows, and it was on one of those wood-frame cottages that a tree downed by high winds crashed through the roof Monday night and killed two boys.
"I lost my son," Valerie Baumler told Danny Seymour, the boy's uncle, as she clasped him and cried. "I lost my son."
Jack Baulmer, 11, a sixth-grader known as one of the best Little League baseball players in North Salem, and his best friend and neighbor down Bonnieview Street, Michael Robson, 13, were killed by the tree that tore through the roof of the one-room cottage. It is one of a number of modest homes on Peach Lake, some of which were once summer cottages. Two other boys who were also in the house while the storm raged outside were slightly injured. Ms. Baulmer was physically unscathed.
"We lost two beautiful young boys last night," said Mr. Seymour, choking back tears, in an interview outside the Baulmer house. "Our hearts are broken. The pain is raw. We believe faith will carry us through. North Salem has a huge heart, and they will wrap their arms around thee two families. These two boys exemplify everything that's best about America. We're so proud to have them in our lives."
Mr. Seymour was helping neighbors clear out furnishings from the house. It was so badly damaged that a police officer guarding the street said it might have to be demolished.
- Joseph Berger
12:30 P.M. | Flooding Blamed for New Jersey Power Failures
PSE&G said it had 1.3 million electricity customers in the dark, including many customers in Newark without power, because a surge in Newark Bay had flooded substations and other equipment.
The company, the Public Service Electric and Gas Company, had laid sandbags, based on previous experience with flooding from rain and runoff, but was not prepared for the surge, said Ralph A. LaRossa, president and chief operating officer of Public Service.
The sandbagging "really didn't match up with where this storm surge hit us in Newark Bay," he said in a telephone conference call with reporters on Tuesday morning. "This wall of water that hit us was not something we could have prepared for, although I certainly wish we could have." The surge knocked out power to Essex County and Hudson City, among other areas. Some gas-fired generating stations in Newark and the Raritan Bay area were also knocked out, Mr. LaRossa said.
- Matthew L. Wald
12:20 PM | Christie Praises Obama for Storm Response
Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey took an unscheduled break from partisan attacks on the President Obama on Tuesday to praise him, repeatedly and effusively, for leading the federal government's response to the storm.
"Wonderful," "excellent" and "outstanding" were among the adjectives Mr. Christie chose, a change-up from his remarks last week that Mr. Obama was "blindly walking around the White House looking for a clue."
Some of Mr. Christie's Republican brethren have already begun grumbling about his gusher of praise at such a crucial time in the election.
But the governor seemed unconcerned. When Fox News asked him about the possibility that Mitt Romney might take a disaster tour of New Jersey, Mr. Christie replied:
I have no idea, nor am I the least bit concerned or interested. I have a job to do in New Jersey that is much bigger than presidential politics. If you think right now I give a damn about presidential politics, then you don't know me.
Read more on The Caucus.
- Andy Newman
12:12 P.M. | New York Stock Exchange to Open Wednesday
The New York Stock Exchange intends to open as usual on Wednesday at 9:30 a.m. Eastern time, but it is testing its contingency plan as well, "just in case," Larry Leibowitz, the company's chief operating officer, said Tuesday, according to Reuters.
"As of now, we are shooting hard to open tomorrow and fully expect to do so," he said in an interview.
- Andy Newman
12:05 P.M. | Nursing and Adult Homes Struggling
Several nursing and adult homes in the Rockaways, which were heavily hit by the storm, struggled with flooding and knocked-out generators Tuesday.
Administrators at Horizon Care Center and Seaview Manor said they had repeatedly sought instructions and advice from the city's emergency management authorities but did not receive directions to evacuate before the surge hit between 8 p.m. and midnight on Monday.
At Horizon, all 269 patients had been moved to the second floor when the surge came. But there was very rapid flooding within 5 minutes and the generator was knocked out within 10 minutes, said Nicole Markowitz, an administrator. By Tuesday morning, residents were cold and scared. One patient was on oxygen, and only about five hours of oxygen remained.
Ms. Markowitz said they had stayed put because the city did not give them orders to evacuate. "We weren't mandated to leave," Ms. Markowitz said. "It's much harder to leave than to stay."
At Seaview Manor, an adult home on Beach 47th Street, a case manager who would give her name only as Younger said Tuesday morning that the generator was out and several staff members had fled the institution that morning.
A reporter visiting the nursing home found flooding, sand on the floors and tables overturned in what appeared to be the kitchen area. But patients seemed unhurt.
She said the staff had called the city's emergency operations center a few times during the night. "They said they're going to get back to me," she said. "They never did."
The home could not cook and was feeding patients sandwiches. "How many times can I give a cheese sandwich?" the case manager said. Staff members' cellphones were out of power, and they were trying to use their car batteries to charge them. Late in the morning, the adult home began directing a few patients -- some in pajamas, many clutching pillows and blankets -- into a van for evacuation.
- Sheri Fink and Anemona Hartocollis
11:50 A.M. | Breezy Point Fire Destroys Scores of Homes
Dozens of homes in the Breezy Point section of the Rockaways - many of them elaborate year-round homes, some of them seasonal bungalows - were turned into acres of smoldering ash by a wind-whipped fire that burned for perhaps nine hours throughout Monday night and early Tuesday morning.
The fire left a huge swath of this private community in Queens on the western tip of the Rockaway Peninsula scorched. Small flames and smoke still emanated from acres of land on the neighborhood's southwest section.
City officials said as many as 50 homes had been destroyed, but the number appeared to be higher.
With the New York Fire Department tending other fires on the peninsula, and also blocked from getting its trucks into Breezy Point by the high floodwaters, a small team of local residents and volunteer fire departments tried to fight the fire, even while stopping to rescue other residents seeking to flee the rising waters.
The area where the homes burned had been reduced to an expanse of charred timbers, melted beach toys and cheery mailboxes with snappy summer slogans.
- Corey Kilgannon
11:57 A.M. | Obama's Response to the Storm
President Obama worked through much of Monday night to oversee the federal response to the storm, telephoning state and local leaders in New York and New Jersey and signing federal disaster declarations for both states, according to the White House.
After abruptly leaving the campaign trail to fly home to Washington, Mr. Obama spent the day in briefings in the White House Situation Room, and spoke with Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York, and Mayor Cory Booker of Newark. Thefull report is on the Caucus blog.
- The New York Times
11:53 A.M. | All Power Out in Jersey City and Newark, Christie Says
At his briefing Tuesday morning, Gov. Chris Christie sounded tired but determined, wearing his navy-colored "Chris Christie" pullover. He is planning to go on an aerial tour of the damage this afternoon.
Overview:
Tidal flooding is widespread.
All power in Jersey City is out; all power in Newark is out from the tidal surge.
National Guard is helping in Jersey City with evacuations.
450 high-water vehicles and helicopters from the National Guard have been deployed statewide.
5,500 residents statewide are in shelters.
An additional 2,000-person shelter is being opened at Rutgers.
Salvation Army and FEMA are distributing food statewide.
2.4 million New Jersey households are without power: "This is twice the number as Hurricane Irene," Mr. Christie said. 1.2 million of those are PSE&G (in the Newark and Jersey City areas.) "Hurricane Irene took eight days to restore, this may take longer," the governor said.
Avoid travel unless absolutely necessary. Private employers: "Unless you can identify a safe route for employees to get to work, I'd ask you to let them stay home today."
Garden State Parkway is open. The turnpike is open from Exits 1 to 10.
24 small rail cars were moved by the tidal surge onto the elevated roadway on the New Jersey turnpike, northbound side, around Exit 12. Cranes are working to remove these railcars.
New Jersey Transit is assessing the system. There is major damage on "each and every one of New Jersey's rail lines." Large sections are washed out on the coast, large trees are on rails across the state, and several rail bridges are damaged.
Drinking water: There are 10 facilities with minor or major problems, but there is not yet a risk to public health.
Health care facilities. 29 hospitals lost power, plus additional facilities. Many have generator power.
- Sharon Otterman
11:40 A.M. | Schools to Stay Closed, Bloomberg Says; Subways Out '4 or 5 Days'
The New York City subway system, hit by unprecedented damage from the storm, will remain closed for "a good four or five days," and schools will be closed again on Wednesday, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said Tuesday morning.
The mayor said, however, that he hoped some bus service would be restored by Tuesday afternoon, and that he hoped to announce full restoration of bus service by Wednesday.
Other highlights from the mayor's 11 a.m. briefing:
Death toll: Now stands at 10
Breezy Point fires: The blazes that destroyed more than 80 homes overnight in the Rockaways are finally under control. "It looked like a forest fire out in the Midwest," the mayor said.
Other fires: At least 23 major fires elsewhere in the city.
Tap water: Safe to drink, but heavily chlorinated so it will taste different.
Group cabs: An executive order was signed, allowing yellow cabs to pick up multiple passengers at multiple points, and allowing livery cars to pick up street hails.
Power: At least 750,000 New York City residents are without power, including residents of 59 public-housing buildings.
Shelters: More than 6,100 people are now at 76 shelters.
Airports: Closed.
Causes of storm fatalities: "A whole variety of causes," the mayor said. "Someone was in their house in their bed and a tree fell on him and killed him. Someone stepped in a puddle where there was an electric wire. We had a couple of bodies in someone's house, I'm not sure what the story is there."
Dangling crane: It is stable but can't be fully secured till the winds die down. "The procedure will be to get the boom and strap it to the building, then we can reopen the streets," Mr. Bloomberg said.
- Andy Newman
11:04 A.M. | Cuomo Raises Possibility of Building Levee in Harbor
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York on Tuesday raised the possibility of building a levee in New York in the aftermath of major flooding in Lower Manhattan and other parts of the city.
"It is something we're going to have to start thinking about," Mr. Cuomo said. "The construction of this city did not anticipate these kinds of situations. We are only a few feet above sea level. The flooding in downtown Manhattan was really extraordinary and unlike anything I had seen."
- The New York Times
10:53 A.M. | Homes Destroyed in Breezy Point, Queens
In Breezy Point, in the Rockaways in Queens, at least 50 tightly packed homes in the beach community were destroyed overnight.
10:51 A.M. | Death Toll in New York City Rises
The New York Police Department confirmed on Tuesday that there had been nine storm-related deaths in New York City and said that number was expected to rise. No further details were available.
- The New York Times
10:49 AM | Some Bridges Set to Reopen
The city expected the Manhattan, Brooklyn, Williamsburg and Ed Koch Queensboro Bridges to reopen shortly on Tuesday morning, an official said.
Earlier on Tuesday, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said the Tappan Zee Bridge had been reopened.
The Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel and Queens-Midtown Tunnel remain closed, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which operates the tunnels. The Lincoln Tunnel has been open throughout the storm.
On Monday, the governor closed many of the area's major bridges, including the George Washington, Verrazano-Narrows, Whitestone and Throgs Neck Bridges.
- Matt Flegenheimer
10:11 A.M. | Power Could Be Out in Manhattan for Days, Con Ed Says
Watch on Youtube.
Much of Manhattan below Midtown could be without electricity for several days after an explosion at a substation on the East River on Monday night, a spokesman for Consolidated Edison said Tuesday morning.
More than 240,000 customers - and many more people - were without power more than 12 hours after the explosion that looked spectacular but did not injure any of about a dozen utility workers who were at the site at the east end of 14th Street. Each customer could represent a household or even an entire apartment building.
The blast knocked out electricity for all of Manhattan below 39th Street on the east side and 31st Street on the west side - with the exception of a few pockets, including Battery Park City.
In the two hours before the explosion, Con Edison officials purposefully turned off all power to two small sections of the financial district in Lower Manhattan and in the Brighton Beach section of Brooklyn. Power to those areas could be restored in three or four days after utility crews pump out floodwater and dry and repair equipment below ground, said Bob McGee, a spokesman for Con Edison. But he said it may take longer to restore power to customers whose service was interrupted by the explosion.
John Miksad, the company's senior vice president for electric operations, said, "This is the largest storm-related outage in our history."
Con Edison officials believed the explosion was caused by water flooding the substation but had not ruled out flying debris, the spokesman said.
- Patrick McGeehan
10:00 A.M. | Mayor Bloomberg Updates New Yorkers
Watch on Youtube.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg addressed New Yorkers in a news conference this morning.
- The New York Times
09:28 AM | Transit Restoration Likely to Be Piecemeal
Joseph J. Lhota, the chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, suggested that New Yorkers should expect their mass transit to return "in pieces and parts" in the days to come.
"We're going to try to be creative," Mr. Lhota said in an interview with WNYC. "Those portions of the system that can be up and running, I want them up and running as quickly as possible."
He added, "If there's a portion of the system that's going to take longer to repair, that doesn't mean the whole system is down."
He suggested, for instance, that buses could be rerouted to complement the mass transit services that are available.
Mr. Lhota declined to give a timetable for restoring service, saying that to do so would be "a scientific wild guess on my part." He said the authority could provide a more substantial update later in the day Tuesday, as the sunlight allowed crews to assess the system more thoroughly.
But it was already clear that significant damage had been done. "Our electrical systems, our alarm systems, tell us when there's water down there," Mr. Lhota told WNYC. "They basically shut off. It's an automatic system that saves the electricity and doesn't cause problems. And they all shut off in relatively quick fashion. They would only shut off if there was water down there."
While seven subway tunnels were flooded beneath the East River, Mr. Lhota has emphasized that the damage was not confined to the Lower Manhattan area. On the Metro-North Railroad's Hudson line, power was lost from 59th Street to Croton-Harmon. On the New Haven line, it was lost through New Haven. The Long Island Rail Road evacuated its West Side Yards, and one East River tunnel flooded.
The Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel flooded end to end, and the Queens-Midtown Tunnel took on water as well.
Mr. Lhota told WNYC he had just sent a text message to Patrick J. Foye, the executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, in hopes of determining how and when the agencies could open bridges and tunnels.
"The tunnels, if they're dry, the assessment can be relatively straightforward," Mr. Lhota said. "The bridges, given the extent of the wind, we're going to need a couple hours having the engineers assess that there's no damage to any of the bridges."
- Matt Flegenheimer
09:20 AM | Search and Rescue in Atlantic City
Search-and-rescue missions were combing Atlantic City on Tuesday morning as floodwaters receded.
Much of the city, particularly inland from the shore, appeared to have survived without great damage, at least from an initial survey of the main commercial district.
Around the city, planters, newspaper boxes and garbage cans had been tossed around. Many neighborhoods did not have power, and it remained quite windy. But the waist-high floodwaters that surged through the streets on Monday had largely receded. Most buildings remained intact, and most roads were passable.
The high-rise casinos that line the Boardwalk appeared largely unscathed. Near the Trump Taj Mahal, an overhead traffic light had crashed down into the road, but the slot machines inside the casino remained illuminated, ready for gamblers. By Bally's, some fencing on the beach had toppled, but the Boardwalk was intact.
Some of the most visible damage was in the city's northern section, where an older stretch of the Boardwalk had washed away on Monday as Hurricane Sandy approached. By Tuesday, the storm had left little more than a tangle of timber planks and bits of concrete. Some bits of the Boardwalk had washed as far as a quarter of a mile inland.
The city still felt like a ghost town, with storefronts covered in plywood and many traffic lights not working, but there were a few signs of life. One restaurant, the Tun Tavern, remained open Monday night, running out of pumpkin ale but otherwise nourishing dozens of people who were hunkered down at a hotel.
And although a 20-foot red awning for a pizza shop lay across the street nearby, the 24/7 Food Market on Atlantic Avenue had ample hot coffee on Tuesday morning.
One of its owners, Faheem Tariq, said the store had about 20 customers over the course of the storm. "We've been open the whole time," he said.
- Thomas Kaplan and Jon Hurdle
09:10 AM | Storm's Death Toll Is at Least 14
At least 14 deaths have been confirmed or are being investigated as related to the storm over the past 48 hours, the authorities said.
In Connecticut, a 90-year-old woman and a firefighter were killed in separate incidents, the first confirmed casualties in the state since Hurricane Sandy struck the Northeast region, the state police said.
In Maryland, the deaths of three adults were confirmed to be related to the storm, in traffic- or vehicle-related accidents or after a tree fell on a house, a medical official there said.
And in West Virginia, a 40-year-old woman was killed when her vehicle was in an accident in snowy weather conditions, an emergency official confirmed.
In North Carolina, a man was killed when his vehicle hit a tree that was crashing down in Surry County, said an official with the state emergency offices.
Officials in Pennsylvania said two deaths - a boy in Susquehanna County and a 62-year-old man in Berks County - were being investigated but that the county coroner had not yet confirmed them as related to the storm.
In New York, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo's office said late Monday night that at least five deaths in the state were caused by the storm.
A New York City emergency management official said more deaths were being investigated as related to the storm, but no determination had been officially made by the medical examiner.
In New York City, where three people had been reported dead, rescuers have found a fourth person dead, inside a home in Midland Beach on Staten Island on Tuesday, The Staten Island Advance reported.
In Virginia, there were no confirmed storm-related deaths.
- Christine Hauser
09:28 AM | Atlantic City Mayor Strikes Back at Christie
Atlantic City's mayor, Lorenzo Langford, struck back at Gov. Chris Christie on Tuesday after the governor accused him of encouraging the city's residents to defy his evacuation order and called him a "rogue mayor."
"The governor is either misinformed or ill advised or just deciding to prevaricate," Mr. Langford said Tuesday on the "Today" show on NBC. "Isn't it sad that here we are in the throes of a major catastrophe and the governor tries to play politics?"
Mr. Christie said Monday that he had heard that Mr. Langford had told the city's residents they could ride out the storm at home or in a school a block from the ocean.
Mr. Langford said: "That is absolutely false and the governor needs to be challenged. He is dead wrong."
The mayor said what happened was the city had a contingency plan in place for those who did not heed the warning to evacuate.
"It's better to have options and not need them than to need options and not have them," Mr. Langford said. "Fortunately, most of our residents did heed our warnings to flee the city."
Mr. Langford did not seem inclined to let the matter rest there. "I would love nothing better than that than to confront the governor mano-a-mano," he said.
- Andy Newman
7:56 A.M. | Assessing Damage in Montauk
Officials were out before dawn in Montauk on Tuesday, roving in pickup trucks and S.U.V.'s, trying to get a grasp on the damage the coming light of day would reveal. On the edge of the Atlantic Ocean, just south of Main Street, South Emerson Avenue was strewed with flotsam, clumps of seaweed and deep with sand swept along when the sea had breached several sand levees along the avenue at the height of the storm.
That was just one snapshot of the damage caused by the potent storm, which knocked out power to more than 900,000 customers on Long Island, according to officials. Many roads were impassible as a result of downed tree limbs and the threat from fallen electrical wires.
On the north side of Montauk Village, along the Long Island Sound, roads were flooded and sand dunes wiped out, commercial fishing ships in Montauk Harbor were battered and the popular waterside restaurants filled with water.
"It's by far been the worst on the North Side that I've ever seen in my life," Bill Wilkinson, the East Hampton town supervisor, said Tuesday just before sunrise in Montauk. More than 175 people spent the night in a shelter in East Hampton, which will be open for a second night on Tuesday.
On Monday night, seawater began to pour over the Napeague Stretch, cutting off Montauk from the mainland. Teams worked to excavate the dunes, and redeposit the sand as a levee against the ocean, said, Stephen Lynch, the East Hampton town highway superintendent. "I haven't seen that since I was in sixth grade," he said.
On Cooper Lane in East Hampton on Monday, a giant tree uprooted, slamming down into the house next to it, crushing the roof. "There's a lot of wind damage; trees are snapped and broken down," said Richard Webb, the town's maintenance crew leader.
At the Gurney's Inn, on Old Montauk Highway, the early light of Tuesday morning revealed the decimation of the beach club restaurant, the Beach Barge, which guests at the bar on Monday night had watched slowly disintegrate, battered by waves. The restaurant, which had recently been renovated following damage from Tropical Storm Irene, was shattered, the boardwalk outside gone and the restaurant tipped on its side and partly washed away.
"They love the Barge, the people that stay here," said Nancy Miller, the front desk supervisor. "It's very sad to see that thing go."
- Sarah Maslin Nir
08:24 AM | 5,700 Flights Canceled Tuesday; 3 Major Airports Remain Closed
More than 5,700 flights have been canceled on Tuesday, bringing the total number of cancellations caused by the storm to 15,500, according to FlightStats.com. That surpasses the disruptions from Hurricane Irene, which caused 14,000 flight cancellations in August 2011.
The three major New York airports remained closed Tuesday morning. Airlines hope to resume service to and from New York by Wednesday afternoon. Travel experts say it could take several days, or even into next week, for passengers to be rebooked.
- Christopher Drew
7:13 A.M. | A Bridge Divided as Night and Day
The power failures that plunged much of Lower Manhattan into darkness appeared to stop halfway across the East River on the Williamsburg Bridge.
The above photo, submitted by a reader and taken from Williamsburg on Monday evening, showed a stark dividing line between areas where residents shuffled about with candles and flashlights late into the night and early Tuesday morning, and neighborhoods where the bulbs still burned.
A similar electrical line in the sand could also be found on the Brooklyn Bridge, according to live images broadcast on NY1 news overnight.
- J. David Goodman
08:32 AM | Storm's Cost 'Incalculable,' Christie Says
Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey appeared on a half-dozen morning talk shows on Tuesday to outline the difficulties his state still faced in the aftermath of the storm.
There were 2.4 million without power in the state, a "devastated Jersey Shore," "almost no power in the city of Newark" and many people stranded in areas where waters breached protective barriers.
He said the cost to the state was, at the moment, "incalculable."
"We are in the midst of urban search and rescue," he said on CNN, describing the situation in the borough of Moonachie in Bergen County as tidal floodwaters overwhelmed a natural berm.
Hundreds had been rescued so far in the area, he said, but the search continued in an area where high waters threatened residents of trailer parks who had clambered to the roofs and awaited rescue. "Those are the folks that were most in danger," Mr. Christie said, adding that those living on higher ground or in two-story homes could get to higher ground.
He also spoke of the situation in Atlantic City, sharply criticizing Mayor Lorenzo Langford for sending "a mixed message" to residents by telling them they could safely stay in the city after Mr. Christie had ordered an evacuation.
"That was the wrong thing to do," he said, and now "urban search and rescue" was continuing in the city on Tuesday morning.
On a subsequent appearance on the Fox News Channel, Mr. Christie was asked whether he had plans to tour storm-ravaged areas of the state with Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee for president who is supported by Mr. Christie.
"I have a job to do that much bigger then presidential politics," he said, taking time on each show to mention three calls he had with the president. "If you think right now that I give a damn about presidential politics, then you don't know me."
- J. David Goodman
08:29 AM | Crossings Remain Closed Tuesday Morning
There appeared to be no reopenings of major crossings Tuesday morning, as officials said they had not yet been able to inspect roadways and assess the damage wrought by the storm. The Lincoln Tunnel, operated by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, remained open, as it had been throughout the day on Monday, but the Metropolitan Transportation Authority said the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel had flooded end to end. The Queens-Midtown Tunnel also took on water, the authority said.
For the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, workers would have to "wait until water goes down enough where they can pump out the rest," said Judie Glave, a spokesman for the authority. She added that flooding was not nearly as substantial at the Queens-Midtown Tunnel.
On Monday, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo ordered that many of the area's major bridges close, including the George Washington, Verrazano-Narrows, Whitestone and Throgs Neck Bridges. The city also shut down its East River crossings like the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges.
- Matt Flegenheimer
08:26 AM | Connecticut Gov. Malloy Spoke
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy of Connecticut said that two people were missing on Tuesday morning, in addition to the one firefighter and one civilian who died in the storm on Monday. He announced that the travel ban on the state's highways has been lifted. "Right now, my attention is 100 percent focused on getting people's lives back on track," the governor said.
- Andy Newman
08:03 AM | Obama Declares Disaster Area in New York and New Jersey
President Obama declared a federal disaster area in New York City, Long Island and eight counties in New Jersey on Tuesday. The declaration makes federal money available to people in the area.
The affected New Jersey counties are Atlantic, Cape May, Essex, Hudson, Middlesex, Monmouth, Ocean and Union.
- Andy Newman
07:02 AM | In Lower Manhattan, Beneath a Darkened Skyline
In Battery Park before dawn, a darkness unseen since the New York City blackout of 2003 painted every high-rise building the color of a deep bruise. Even 1 World Trade Center was just a black monolith, without even an aircraft-warning light on the top.
"It's like a ghost town," said Melvin Allen, a maintenance worker who was stranded. "Darkness everywhere."
In most parts of Lower Manhattan, the only lights were the flashing red-and-blue strobes on police cars acting as roadblocks.
On West Street, the traffic artery for the area, a torrent of floodwater rushed north late Monday, flooding north past 1 World Trade Center, and poured down into the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel. Everyone in the area was marooned for the night on an island within an island, and many residents tried to drive away, only to find each route blocked by water.
- Nate Schweber
6:57 A.M. | Storm Heads Through Pennsylvania
Early on Tuesday morning, the former Hurricane Sandy continued to spin westward through southern Pennsylvania, the National Hurricane Center said, packing still-ferocious winds with a maximum sustained speed of 65 m.p.h. and gale-force winds from Virginia to New England.
At 5 a.m., the storm - now known to meteorologists as a post-tropical cyclone - was roughly 90 miles west of Philadelphia and was expected to take a turn north later on Tuesday. It would then pass through New York State on its way to Canada, crossing the border sometime on Wednesday, the hurricane center said.
The storm, while steadily weakening, could still cause coastal surges that, when combined with the next high tide on Tuesday, could cause some flooding, the center said.
- J. David Goodman
06:59 AM | Rockaways Still Burning; 3 Dead Elsewhere in City
A six-alarm fire that has engulfed several entire blocks of houses in the Queens beach community of Breezy Point in the Rockaways was still burning out of control on Tuesday morning, the Fire Department said. Firefighters were hampered by high winds and the lack of available water.
"Once we get there it's hard to begin fighting it," a spokesman, Firefighter Danny Glover, said.
"The wind is pushing it from house to house; that's a big factor," he said. "Another big factor is the difficulty of gaining access to viable water sources." Seawater cannot be used in firefighting equipment, he added.
Fire officials did not know if there were people injured in the Breezy Point fires.
But three deaths were recorded elsewhere in the city on Monday night:
- A tidal surge in Tottenville at the bottom of Staten Island caused the collapse of four homes on Yetman Avenue and killed one person.
- A woman on 105th Avenue and 134th Street in Queens was electrocuted in her home.
- A man in East Flushing, Queens was killed when a tree fell on his house.
- Andy Newman
06:18 AM | Nearly 2 Million Without Power in New York State
Of the more than six million American homes that are waking up to darkness on Tuesday, more than 1.9 million of them are in New York, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said on Twitter, the largest numbers of them in Long Island and New York City.
#NYS#outages 6am: Cent Hudson82,489 Con Ed647,988 LIPA 932,836 Natl Grid20,935 NYSEG 106,013 Orange+Rockland 130,024 RG+E 23,287
- Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) October 30, 2012
In New York City and Westchester County, where more than 670,000 Consolidated Edison customers, some of them large buildings with hundreds of residents, were dark Tuesday morning, a spokeswoman for the company, D. Joy Faber, said it would take days to restore power.
In Manhattan, Ms. Faber said, where pre-emptive power shutdowns by the utility to to keep floodwater from hitting live equipment account for a large number of the 230,000 customers without power, "we could see some restoration within three or four days," Ms. Faber said.
"Tidal surge caused considerable damage to equipment," she said, and assessments need to be done.
"In other areas," Ms. Faber added, "particularly for Westchester and Staten Island, we've got larger things that are going to hamper our restoration efforts," including closed roads and the fact the utility has to wait until winds die down to send crews up to fix wires and poles.
- Andy Newman
6:42 A.M. | Evacuations in New Jersey River Town After Levee Breaks
Hundreds of people were being evacuated early on Tuesday from Moonachie, N.J.,after a wall of water swept over the New Jersey Turnpike and into the Bergen County town, according to published reports. Residents of a trailer park were on the roofs of their trailers awaiting a rescue, officials said.
No one had been reported killed or injured. People are being evacuated by boat and by high-water vehicles.
Moonachie, a town of about 2,700 residents, lies along the Hackensack River.
- The New York Times
3:49 A.M. | Fire Spreads in Rockaways
A huge fire in the Breezy Point section of the Rockaways in Queens spread further during the early morning hours of Tuesday, destroying more than 50 homes and drawing nearly 200 firefighters attempting to quell the blaze.
The Fire Department upgraded the fire to a six-alarm around 3:30 a.m. and said it had not yet been contained.
Video from the scene posted by NBC News showed homes in the beach community flattened by the flames.
- J. David Goodman
2:34 A.M. | Worst Disaster in Subway's History, M.T.A. Chief Says
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority said early on Tuesday that the storm was the worst disaster in the history of the New York City subway system.
"The New York City subway system is 108 years old, but it has never faced a disaster as devastating as what we experienced last night," said Joseph J. Lhota, the authority's chairman, in a statement. "All of us at the M.T.A. are committed to restoring the system as quickly as we can to help bring New York back to normal."
He outlined the extent of the damage that city workers and residents would face in the coming days:
As of last night, seven subway tunnels under the East River flooded. Metro-North Railroad lost power from 59th Street to Croton-Harmon on the Hudson Line and to New Haven on the New Haven Line.
The Long Island Rail Road evacuated its West Side Yards and suffered flooding in one East River tunnel.
The Hugh L. Carey Tunnel is flooded from end to end and the Queens-Midtown Tunnel also took on water and was closed. Six bus garages were disabled by high water.
Asked when New Yorkers could expect the transit system to be back up and running, a spokesman for the authority, Aaron Donovan, said in a television interview that there was "no firm timeline."
- J. David Goodman
1:41 A.M. | Patients Evacuated From NYU Langone
A backup power system failed at one of the New York City's premier medical centers on Monday night, forcing the evacuation of all patients to nearby hospitals amid the storm's strong gusts, officials said.
The medical center, NYU Langone, began transporting all 215 patients at the hospital to other facilities on Monday evening. Read more
- J. David Goodman and Colin Moynihan
1:27 A.M. | Three-Alarm Fire in the Rockaways
More than 140 firefighters were battling a three-alarm fire that broke out just after 11 p.m. on Monday in Breezy Point, Queens, a small beach community in the Rockaways that has experienced severe flooding from the storm.
"It's a huge fire - a lot of houses involved," said Firefighter Michael Parrella, a spokesman for the department, adding that the area was "probably the most flooded part of the city so there are all sorts of complications."
The fire, which affected a number of tightly packed homes, was not yet under control early Tuesday morning, he said.
- J. David Goodman
11:52 P.M. | Explosion and Flooding Knock Out Power
At least 660,000 people in New York had lost power as of late Monday night, the result of a higher than normal storm surge, a planned power shut-down and an explosion at a substation in Manhattan, John Miksad, a senior vice-president at Consolidated Edison said in a news briefing.
The explosion occurred on Monday evening at a substation in the vicinity of 14th Street and the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive, Mr. Miksad said. The precise cause of the blast was unknown, but Mr. Miksad said floodwaters or flying debris could have been involved. It knocked out power to about 250,000 people, he said.
A video of the explosion showed a large fireball light up the New York skyline on the East Side.
Con Edison intentionally cut power to tens of thousands of people in an effort to protect equipment from rising floodwaters. But the flooding was more extensive than expected.
"We were expecting tides at 10 to 12 feet," Mr. Miksad said. "Not only did we exceed those tides, we went up to 14-foot levels, which no one expected."
Flooding left another 250,000 people without power.
- Michael Schwirtz
10:53 P.M. | Dangerous Water Levels at Nuclear Plant
Rising water threatened the cooling system at the Oyster Creek nuclear plant, in Toms River, N.J., on Monday night. The plant declared an alert at 8:45 p.m., which is the second-lowest level of the four-tier emergency scale established by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The water level was more than six feet above normal. At seven feet, the plant would lose the ability to cool its spent fuel pool in the normal fashion, according to Neil Sheehan, a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The plant would probably have to switch to using fire hoses to pump in extra water to make up for evaporation, Mr. Sheehan said, because it could no longer pull water out of Barnegat Bay and circulate it through a heat exchanger, to cool the water in the pool.
If ordinary cooling ceased, the pool would take 25 hours to reach the boiling point, he said, giving the operators ample time to take corrective steps. The reactor itself has been shut since Oct. 22 for refueling, so it is relatively cool.
Alerts are declared a handful of times every year among the 104 power reactors around the country.
So far, no reactors in Sandy's path have been forced by the hurricane to shut down, although one in Waterford, Conn., Millstone 3, has lowered its power output to 75 percent. The operator said this was done to assist the New England grid, which would be destabilized if the reactor shut down suddenly from full power, and also to reduce the chance that it would automatically shut down; at 75 percent, Millstone 3 could withstand the loss of a pump without having to close.
Several other reactors in the region are now closed for refueling, which is ordinarily carried out in the spring or fall, when electricity demand is low.
- Matthew Wald
10:48 P.M. | Flooding in Tunnels and Subways
The storm surge in Battery Park City on Monday exceeded 13 feet, and was much higher than expected. Floodwaters rushed into the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel and seeped into the tubes connecting Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn.
CBS News showed footageof water streaming into the tunnel.
A spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority said water had also entered the No. 1 subway line between Chambers Street and South Ferry.
While the authority said it could not predict when service might be restored, officials estimated that pumping water out from flooded under-river tunnels could take anywhere from 14 hours to more than four days. It is possible that the subway system will return at partial capacity as floodwaters are pumped out of the system and imperiled equipment is inspected for potential water damage.
Some PATH train stations also flooded, a spokesman said.
Flood waters rush in to the Hoboken PATH station through an elevator shaft. #Sandytwitter.com/PANYNJ/status/
- Port Authority NY&NJ (@PANYNJ) October 30, 2012
- Matt Flegenheimer
10:42 P.M. | New York's 911 System Overloaded
As trees fall, power shuts down and flood waters rise to higher than expected levels, New York's 911 system is being deluged with calls, many unwarranted, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said in a press conference Monday evening.
The volume of calls was creating a potentially dangerous situation as emergency officials were wasting time responding to requests that did not involve life-threatening emergencies, Mr. Bloomberg said.
The system was receiving 10,000 calls per half hour, Mr. Bloomberg said. On a typical day, it receives 1,000, he said.
There were dire situations unfolding across the city as Sandy pushed through the region. The mayor said the hospital at NYU Langone Medical Center had lost its backup power supply, forcing it to move patients elsewhere.
At least two people have died in New York, the authorities said. A 29-year-old man was killed on Monday when a tree crashed through his home in Queens. Another man in Queens was electrocuted, officials said. He has yet not been identified.
At his news conference, Mr. Bloomberg called on New York drivers to stay off the roads, saying they could interfere with the work of emergency officials.
- Michael Schwirtz
9:29 P.M. | 250,000 Without Power in Manhattan
Just as executives of Con Edison finished methodically cutting off power to three relatively small parts of New York City's power grid on Monday evening, an unforeseen event knocked the lights off for about 250,000 customers across a broad swath of Manhattan.
At about 8:30 p.m., electricity suddenly stopped flowing to apartments and office buildings from East 39th Street all the way down to the southern tip of the island, said Michael Clendenin, a spokesman for Con Edison. The abrupt failure even turned Con Edison's headquarters building near Union Square dark for several minutes before a generator kicked on, he said.
Several blocks away on West 14th Street, traffic signals stopped working.
Mr. Clendenin said company officials assumed that flooding in substations interrupted the flow of power. He said they expected to be able to restore it before the night was over.
- Michael Schwirtz
8:53 P.M. | Q & A: What About the Post Office?
According to Connie Chirichello, a spokeswoman for the United States Postal Service, mail was "curtailed" in all five boroughs, as well as on Long Island, on Monday. In the five boroughs, mail carriers returned from their routes by noon. About 90 percent of the mail in postal boxes was picked up, but only until 1:30 p.m. Monday. Service at the postal lobbies in Manhattan and the Bronx closed at 9 a.m., and at noon in the other boroughs.
Depending on local conditions tomorrow, postal management will consider, on a case-by-case basis, whether it is safe for carriers to deliver, Ms. Chirichello said.
The famous motto of the U.S. post office that "neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds" apparently did not take a hurricane like Sandy into account.
"Every attempt was made to deliver mail today, however, with suspended subways, M.T.A. railroads and New Jersey transit, many employees were not able to make it to work," said Ms. Chirichello, who added that the safety of the carriers was paramount, as was the fact that mail trucks should not get in the way of emergency vehicles. Also, the weather conditions endangered the safe delivery of the actual mail itself.
Because of the impact of the hurricane, the processing facility at the Morgan Station, on 31st Street and Ninth Avenue, suspended postal operations from 4 p.m. until 7 a.m. tomorrow morning, Ms. Chirichello added.
She said that postal workers who could not get to work and wished to inquire whether their offices were open should call the USPS national emergency notification number at 888-363-7462.
- Liz Robbins
8:56 P.M. | Q & A: When Will the Subways Resume Service?
John from Queens asks "How long will it take for the Transit Authority to resume service, and can they have partial service if some of the lines have flooding in places?"
The decision on when to restore service will hinge largely on how damaging the storm surge is to the authority's equipment. Stations in low-lying areas and tunnels that go underneath rivers could be susceptible to flooding. Joseph J. Lhota, the chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, has said that service could return about 12 hours after the storm ends in earnest, and officials have suggested that Wednesday is perhaps the likeliest day for service to return, but it all hinges on how the equipment holds up against the brunt of the storm. Switches can corrode if introduced to excessive salt water. And the authority's electronic signaling system could also be vulnerable, Mr. Lhota said.
The authority also said that if subway tunnels that cross beneath the Hudson and Harlem Rivers become flooded, pumping the water out could take anywhere from 14 hours to more than four days. Obviously this could snarl several lines well after the storm has passed, but it is unlikely that a decision will be made on a restart of service until the authority can inspect its tunnels and equipment.
There is a precedent for the authority to bring back partial service without returning to an entirely normal schedule. After a storm in 1992, three tunnels flooded, and the authority briefly suspended service on every line. Many were restored the same day; the L train under the East River, however, was out of service for several days.
- Matt Flegenheimer
8:27 P.M. | Three Leaders, Three Different Faces on Storm Response
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and Gov. Chris Christie each have their own styles of communicating to the public. In their emergency weather briefings on Monday, those styles were displayed in stark relief.
- The New York Times
08:14 PM | The Storm Makes Landfall
No longer classified a hurricane but still a powerful system, the storm made landfall on Monday evening close to Atlantic City at about 8 p.m., the National Hurricane Center said.
The storm is now classified a post-tropical cyclone, having merged with a cold weather system approaching from the west.
But the center said the reclassification had no bearing on the powerful winds, driving rains and life-threatening storm-surge expected to accompany its push onto land.
The storm no longer has a warm center or convection, the upward movement of warm air through the eye, two key characteristics of hurricanes, the National Hurricane Service said.
The service said the storm was heading north-northwest at about 23 miles per hour, with maximum sustained winds of about 80 m.p.h., slightly weaker than earlier.
- Michael Schwirtz
8:16 P.M. | Red Hook Residents Defy Orders
The community of Red Hook falls almost entirely within Zone A, for which Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg ordered mandatory evacuations Sunday afternoon. But even as water surged up the streets of the neighborhood on Monday, some residents lingered in bars.
- Lisa Foderaro and Cara Buckley
08:08 PM | Subway Bridge to Rockaways Underwater
The North Channel bridge, which takes the A train from Howard Beach, Queens, across the island of Broad Channel and into the Rockaways, was submerged by Jamaica Bay shortly before 7 p.m., a Metropolitan Transportation Authority spokesman reported on Twitter.
Shortly before 7pm, the North Channel Bridge, connecting the A train to the Rockaways, was submerged. #Sandy#MTA
- Kevin Ortiz (@MTA_NYCT_Vocero) October 29, 2012
- Andy Newman
08:05 PM | First N.Y.C. Fatality
Shortly after 7 p.m., a 30-year-old man was killed in Queens when a tree fell on his house, a fire official said. The man lived on 166th Street in East Flushing. His death was the first to be reported in the city linked to the storm.
- Marc Santora
7:43 P.M. | Christie Lashes Out at Atlantic City Mayor
As the floodwaters rose in Atlantic City on Monday and stranded unknown numbers of people who stayed behind, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey squarely laid the blame for whatever fate may await them in the lap of their mayor.
In the latest dispute between the men, Mr. Christie said he had heard that Lorenzo Langford, the mayor of Atlantic City, had told the city's residents that they could ride out the storm at home or in a school a block from the ocean, directly contradicting the governor's evacuation order.
"You have a mayor, a rogue mayor, telling his citizens not to leave, that it's O.K. not to leave," Mr. Christie said. "I don't know what you call that. I don't call it effective governance."
The remarks came during Mr. Christie's early evening news briefing on the storm at the state emergency command center in West Trenton. Mr. Christie spoke directly to those who stayed behind, saying the storm had grown too close and they would have to wait out the storm until it was safer for emergency workers to return.
The clash between the men, as reported by The Press of Atlantic City, began more than two years ago, when Mr. Christie proposed a tourism district in Atlantic City. Mr. Langford likened the district's proposed borders to apartheid, which Mr. Christie called "playing to the lowest common denominator."
The governor recently said Mr. Langford had "failed" as mayor and was "impossible to work with in any significant kind of way," according to The Press.
Mr. Christie said he had been told that part of the mayor's reasoning behind the instruction to stay in town was that some Atlantic City residents believed they had evacuated unnecessarily last year during Tropical Storm Irene, which did not cause the level of damage that had been expected.
The governor did not spare those residents his wrath.
"I will never understand these people," he said. "They came home to very little property damage and they were alive. And they're angry because they spent a couple of days at Rutgers. We're going to see how they feel now, when they stayed. It's just not acceptable conduct."
But he focused his ire on the mayor, who may have been too busy to defend himself. Mr. Christie said the state had sent New Jersey Transit buses to evacuate people from Atlantic City, but evacuation personnel were told that many people felt they could stay because the mayor had said so.
"And now I'm going to have federal and state emergency personnel going in their first thing tomorrow morning with live downed electrical wires all over the place, risking their lives," Mr. Christie said. "Because Mayor Langford was worried that some of his people were angry? That's not leadership, everybody."
Lest anyone think that Mr. Christie had been subsumed by politics amid a disaster, the governor, who spoke at the Republican National Convention in support of Mitt Romney, heaped praise on President Obama.
Mr. Christie said Mr. Obama had called to make sure he had everything needed from the federal government and left a number to call him directly at the White House should any unmet needs arise.
"I appreciate that call from the president," Mr. Christie said. "It was very proactive. I appreciate that kind of leadership."
- Russ Buettner
07:46 PM | Lady Liberty Goes Dark
Around 7 p.m. the torch at the top of the Statue of Liberty, which shone all through thick daytime fog, driving rain and an early nightfall, went black.
Soon after, lights began blinking out in buildings all over Lower Manhattan, and two flashes that looked like explosions lighted the sky above New Jersey.
- Nate Schweber
07:45 PM | Record Water Level at Battery, With Higher To Come
At the Battery at the bottom of Manhattan, the water level was at 10.7 feet as of 7:20 p.m., breaking the record of 10.0 feet set by Hurricane Donna in 1960.
The level was expected to hit nearly 12 feet by the time the tide crests at 8:53 p.m., the National Weather Service said.
- Andy Newman
7:38 P.M. | Cars Floating on Wall Street
As the evening high tide was drawing closer, there were reports of flooding in several low-lying areas around the five boroughs, places that had not in recent memory experienced flooding. In Lower Manhattan, water crossed South Street, and cars could be seen floating on Wall Street on television screens at the ConEd headquarters. In Brooklyn, water had piled back onto Van Brundt Street - which flooded during the morning high tide - well in advance of the evening high water mark. At 7:25 p.m., Ninth Street in Gowanus was a nearly uncrossable river of water.
- Wendell Jamieson
7:25 P.M. | Con Ed Shuts Off Power to Lower Manhattan
As the surge of water pushed into parts of Lower Manhattan on Monday night, Consolidated Edison took the unprecedented step of cutting off power to customers because of weather.
The utility said it needed to do that to try to prevent damage to equipment stored underground so that power could be restored more quickly after the storm.
At 6:42 p.m., Con Ed shut down the first network at the southern tip of Manhattan, which serves 2,500 customers.
About 20 minutes later they turned off a second network in lower Manhattan that serves about 4,000 customers.
At about 7:47 p.m., with the tide at 12 and 1/2 feet above normal high tide, a Con Ed official called for the Brighton Beach network to be turned off. Suddenly, an additional 28,000 customers were without power.
- Patrick McGeehan
07:04 PM | Building Facade Collapses in Chelsea, N.Y.C.
The facade of an apartment building at 92 Eighth Avenue in Chelsea collapsed around 6:20 p.m., the Fire Department said. No injuries were reported, and no one appears to be missing, a fire spokesman said.
- Andy Newman
6:35 P.M. | Atlantic City, Washing Away
This was atlantic city. Wow twitpic.com/b8lm7k
- OccuWeather (@Occuweather) October 29, 2012
5:55 P.M. | Scenes at City's Shelters
At some shelters, the number of people seeking refuge in shelters set up by the city increased as the day wore on.
The total number of people at the 10 shelters administered by the City University of New York stood at over 1,200 late on Monday afternoon. There were 184 at the Hunter College shelter on East 68th Street, near its capacity.
The occupants were residents of the Baruch Houses, on the Lower East Side, and some of New York's homeless population. Students from Hunter's Brookdale dormitory, on East 25th Street between First Avenue and the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive, were sent across the street to the theater at Hunter College.
Rodrigo Garcia, a chef and a jewelry maker who normally sells in Bryant Park, called several city agencies asking to volunteer as a chef. Mr. Garcia, 35, who said he has catered large events in Vermont, did not realize that the food at the shelters was already packaged and needed little assembly. He stayed anyway to help. "I put salt in the water with the meals," he said. On the menu: chicken with noodles and rice with chicken.
Earlier on Monday, a relatively small number of people were at the Philippa Shuyler School on Greene Avenue in Bushwick.
Among them was Rossely Muñoz, 22. Ms. Muñoz's parents lived through a terrifying earthquake in Mexico and did not want to leave on Sunday night, but Ms. Muñoz convinced her parents that they should leave their Bushwick apartment for a sturdier building. "My father was like 'Ah, nothing is going to happen, please,'" she said. "I panicked. I tend to worry. So I was like, 'Guys take this seriously.'"
She spent Sunday night in a classroom with her parents and two sisters. "My apartment is very old," she said. "A lot of buildings here are not properly renovated. They have landlords where you constantly have to fight for them to fix things. I don't trust them."
At the shelter, workers and storm refugees gathered in the cafeteria to watch CNN. They also began eating the emergency rations - cereal and peanut butter and jelly - stored away at the school.
- Liz Robbins and Julie Turkewitz
05:51 PM | More Area Bridges Are Closing
The Brooklyn, Manhattan, Williamsburg and Ed Koch Queensboro Bridges across the East River will close at 7 p.m., officials said.
In addition, two of the three bridges between Staten Island and New Jersey, the Outerbridge and the Bayonne, closed on Monday afternoon. With the 7 p.m. scheduled closing of the George Washington Bridge and the morning closing of the Holland Tunnel, only the Lincoln Tunnel and the Goethals Bridge will remain open as crossings between New York and New Jersey.
Scores of highways are also closing throughout the region, including the F.D.R. Drive south of 155th Street as of 6 p.m., the Garden State Parkway south of the Driscoll Bridge, and parts of the New Jersey Turnpike.
- Andy Newman
5:31 P.M. | Power Losses Cascading as Storm Descends
In late afternoon, Hurricane Sandy started to play havoc with overhead electrical wires.
As of 4:45 p.m., Consolidated Edison said the number of its customers that had lost power had jumped to 68,700 and was sure to keep rising as the storm neared the metropolitan area. Most of the power failures were caused by falling trees and branches' pulling down cables.
About 21,800 of the affected customers were in Westchester County; 18,500 were on Staten Island; and 18,200 were in Queens. Most of the rest were in Brooklyn. The company has no overhead wires in Manhattan. Con Ed is regularly updating a map to show power failures.
Con Edison also said that it had expanded the area receiving automated calls warning of potential cutoffs of power networks to some of its customers in the South Bronx and some along the northern edge of Queens.
Jersey Central Power & Light, which provides electricity in many shore towns, had more than 290,00 customers without power just after 5 p.m.JCP&L's map is here. Public Service Energy & Gas, also in New Jersey, reported that more than 74,000 customers were without power in counties between Gloucester in the southern part of the state and Bergen in the north. A map is here.
Connecticut Light & Power had more than 185,000 customers without power at about the same time. A regularly updated map is here.
- Patrick McGeehan
4:42 P.M. | Replica of H.M.S. Bounty Sinks Off North Carolina; Body of 1 Missing Crew Member Found
A replica of the H.M.S. Bounty, a tall ship built for the 1962 movie "Mutiny on the Bounty" starring Marlon Brando and used in the recent "Pirates of the Caribbean" series, sank Monday off the North Carolina coast. The body of one crew member, Claudene Christian, 42, was recovered; another crew member, Robin Wallbridge, 63, remained missing. The ship had been battered by 18-foot-high seas and thrashed by 40-mile-an hour winds from Hurricane Sandy, the United States Coast Guard reported.
In a dramatic early morning rescue over the Atlantic Ocean, Coast Guard crews in a pair of MH-60 Jayhawk helicopters hoisted up 14 sailors who had huddled together in the darkness on two covered life rafts as the Bounty, a 180-foot wooden vessel, took on water nearby.
A Coast Guard video (see above) shows one of the helicopters hovering - at times just 33 feet over the roiling sea - as a rescue swimmer in flippers helps stranded sailors into a small basket, which is then pulled up to the helicopter and then let down again for the next sailor. As each sailor is lifted to safety, the voice of the helicopter's computer system can be heard repeating the word "altitude," to warn crew members how close the chopper is to the water.
The Bounty, built in 1961 and based on the 1789 original, went down 90 miles southeast of Hatteras, N.C. - some 160 miles west of the eye of Hurricane Sandy.
When Coast Guard crews arrived after receiving a phone call Sunday night from the ship's owner, who was not aboard, and a subsequent distress signal from the ship that pinpointed its location, the Bounty was already taking on water and had lost the use of its twin 375-horsepower engines.
The Bounty had been trying to sail from New London, Conn., where the ship had been docked to host a private party last Thursday, to an event scheduled for Nov. 10 in St. Petersburg, Fla., according to the Coast Guard and the Bounty's Web site.
- Timothy Williams
04:06 PM | Bridges Around New York to Close
Half a dozen bridges in and around New York City are closing, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced Monday afternoon.
The Tappan Zee Bridge over the Hudson River, about 20 miles north of New York City, closed at 4 p.m.
The George Washington Bridge, the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, the Throgs Neck Bridge and the bridges to the Rockaways are closing at 7 p.m., the governor said.
The Holland and Brooklyn-Battery Tunnels closed earlier in the day.
For now, the Lincoln and Midtown Tunnels will remain open, along with the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge and the Bayonne, Goethals and Outerbridge crossings.
But he added, "If the winds continue to increase, and the weather conditions get worse, they can close on very, very short notice."
- Andy Newman
04:05 PM | Governor Cuomo News Conference
- The New York Times
4:04 P.M. | Atlantic City Official: 'City Is Under Siege'
The storm captured Atlantic City early and refused to let go. As the rainwater and surging waters of the ocean that hugged the city's beaches invaded its streets and wrenched apart pieces of its famed Boardwalk, the city was left an anxious and isolated island missing its slot-machine pulse.
Well before the worst ravages of Hurricane Sandy were expected to descend on the New Jersey coastline, Atlantic City was already in big trouble.
By high tide around 8 a.m. on Monday, officials said 70 to 80 percent of the city was underwater. Water as much as eight feet deep coursed through many streets, leaving them impassable. Heavy rains and sustained winds of more than 40 miles an hour battered the city.
All arteries leading into Atlantic City were closed, and officials speculated that they might remain so for days. No one could enter Atlantic City. Casinos were shut down.
"The city is under siege," said Thomas Foley, the chief of emergency services. "Sandy is pretty furious at Atlantic City. She must have lost a bet or something. As we say in our slogan, 'Do A.C.' She's doing A.C., all right."
Atlantic City, by many projections, is at or near where the hurricane will make landfall. And so as flooding eased as the tide receded later in the day, city officials feared that the storm's evil consequences might be far worse when the next high tide arrived at 8 or 9 p.m., around when landfall is anticipated.
The National Guard dispatched high-water trucks for the police and firefighters to try to evacuate some 400 people who had not heeded earlier warnings but later called for help. However, city officials said winds were approaching speeds at which they deemed it too risky to send out rescuers.
In the early afternoon, a gasoline spill inside City Hall from floating gas tanks in the basement shorted out some of the 911 equipment, and the city almost had to abandon its 911 system, but managed to keep it fully operative.
One 50-foot portion of the Boardwalk, worn down by earlier storms, was chewed apart. Chunks of woods floated down the flooded streets like crudely constructed rafts. "Timbers on Atlantic Avenue" came reports from first responders on police scanners.
- N.R. Kleinfield
3:58 P.M. | Q. and A.: What About Government Employees?
Several readers have asked, "Will city government employees be required to go to work on Tuesday?"
Several readers, including Ryan Shaffer, asked about how city employees - many of whom were at work on Monday - would be able to get around the city, with the subways shut down. And Jonathan Masserano asked about city employees whose offices are in the low-lying Zone A.
At a briefing Monday, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg defended his decision to keep most of the city government open for business on Monday, saying "that's what we're here to do, to serve New Yorkers." But he did say that he had instructed his commissioners "to use their judgment" to determine if employees who were not involved in response or shelter operations could "leave work early to get home." No word yet on Tuesday, though he did say that sanitation workers, for instance, would be on 12-hour shifts to pick up refuse, and clear storm debris.
- David W. Chen
3:49 P.M. | Q. and A.: What About Nuclear Power Facilities?
L. L. Barmack from New York City asks, "Why hasn't the nuclear power plant at Indian Point been shut down?"
"Indian Point is protected from hurricane force winds, but would act conservatively to shut the plant down if sustained wind speed on site was anticipated to reach 75 miles per hour," said Jerry Nappi, a spokesman for the Indian Point Energy Center, which is operated by Entergy Nuclear. "We are not anticipating sustained winds of that magnitude, but are prepared to shut down if needed."
farisam from 05401 asks "In the event of a prolonged power outage will the generators at Oyster Creek provide sufficient power for cooling?"
"Oyster Creek's reactor was shut down on Oct. 22 for a planned refueling outage, so a long-term power interruption brought on by Hurricane Sandy would not have a significant impact on reactor cooling," said David Tillman, a spokesman for Exelon Nuclear, which operates the Oyster Creek Generating Station in Lacey Township, N.J.. "If the station were online however, multiple and redundant power backups, including two locomotive-sized diesel generators, would provide ample power almost indefinitely to the station's emergency cooling systems."
- David W. Dunlap
2:17 P.M. | Q. and A.: What Happens to Inmates?
Are the city's jail inmates being relocated?
Inmates at are not being evacuated because the island is elevated and so not in any of the three evacuation zones, said Samantha Levine, a City Hall spokeswoman. The areas surrounding the island - including Hunts Point in the Bronx and Randalls Island - are awash in yellow and orange, and occasional spots of red, signifying the three evacuation zones, but Rikers is higher up, Ms. Levine said. It was not evacuated last year for Hurricane Irene, either.
- Elizabeth A. Harris
02:31 PM | Crane Collapses on West 57th Street
The boom on a crane at the luxury skyscraper under construction at 157 West 57th Street was collapsing as of about 2:40 p.m., the Fire Department said.
According to scanner reports at 2:57 p.m., debris, glass and bricks were falling from the site onto West 56th Street. The authorities did not immediately have reports of any injuries.
The crane was dangling about 80 stories above 57th Street. Police officers cordoned off surrounding blocks as spectators withstood a bufffeting mist to gawk and take pictures.
The building, known as One57, is to be New York City's tallest residential building and perhaps its priciest, with duplexes being offered for $90 million.
"We heard a big noise, and we didn't know what it was," said Victor Font, 40, who was eating lunch at Rue 57, a restaurant that looks out onto the high-rise. They rushed outside and saw the huge crane dangling over the street. As the police rushed to the scene, he said, his first thought was: "What are they going to do? How in the world will they bring that down?" At 3:15, with the wind starting to grow stronger, police officers began to widen the evacuation corridor, pushing pedestrians back to Fifth Avenue.
Damaged, dangling crane atop (for now) 1 57th Street NYC. twitter.com/jonathanwald/s
- Jonathan Wald (@jonathanwald) October 29, 2012
Marc Santora and Randy Leonard contributed reporting.
- Andy Newman
02:26 PM | More Than 9,000 Flights Canceled So Far
Hurricane Sandy has forced airlines to cancel roughly 9,000 flights, stranding travelers and raising the prospect that air travel might not be back to normal until next week.
FlightAware, a data provider based in Houston, said that more than 6,800 flights were canceled on Monday. It said that 1,300 flights had been canceled on Sunday, and that many more were being dropped for Tuesday, when high winds and heavy rain are still expected to buffet the East Coast.
FlightAware said that Philadelphia International Airport led the way in cancellations on Monday, grounding over 1,200 flights. The three major airports in the New York City area each canceled around 1,000 flights on Monday, the data service said.
Kate Hanni, the director of FlyersRights.org, a passenger rights group, said that given high fuel costs, extra seats were hard to find on most airlines even before the storm.
"The airlines have cut back so much on staffing, and some are flying less, and I think it could take well over a week for them to reschedule all the passengers, " she said. "We've got a huge problem."
She said her group's phone hotline was already flooded with calls from passengers who could not get through to the airlines, whose customer service numbers have been overwhelmed by the high volume of calls.
US Airways, which has substantial East Coast operations, said it canceled 1,641 flights on Monday, or nearly half the normal daily total for its entire system. It said it would shut down all flights to and from Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Washington on both Monday and Tuesday.
Delta and United said they would resume flights Tuesday around midday. American Airlines and American Eagle suspended flights at airports along the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast regions from 10 p.m. Sunday to about midday Wednesday.
American warned that the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy may force some additional delays and cancellations of scheduled flights beyond Wednesday.
Most airlines are allowing travelers to make changes with paying fees - and are granting refunds in some cases - for itineraries potentially impacted by the storm.
The best way to make flight changes is on airline Web sites. Airlines are also asking travelers not to go to airports for extended waits.
Given the storm's huge expanse of rain and winds, some flights were canceled as far inland as Buffalo and Pittsburgh.
Jad Mouawad and Joe Sharkey contributed reporting.
- Christopher Drew
2:16 P.M. | Fast-moving Storm Churning Toward Southern Jersey
The huge storm, which has been picking up speed and strength over water, was producing sustained winds of 90 miles per hour at 2 p.m., the National Hurricane Center said.
The storm was moving northwest at 28 m.p.h., a bit faster than forecasters had anticipated. They now forecast that the eye of Sandy will come ashore along the southern tip of New Jersey in the early evening. The storm will likely remain at hurricane strength for several hours as it moves inland.
- The New York Times
2:34 P.M. | Con Ed Warns of a Possible Power Shutoff
At the headquarters of Consolidated Edison near Union Square, company executives were expecting Hurricane Sandy to cause a record number of their customers to lose power. But the strong winds that would cause those problems are not the company's primary concern.
The most critical question is how high the water in New York Harbor will rise on Monday evening. If the forecasts prove accurate, the storm surge will cause so much flooding in Lower Manhattan and possibly also in the Brighton Beach section of Brooklyn that Con Edison will take the unprecedented step of shutting off entire electrical networks because of weather.
"That is unprecedented for us," said John Miksad, the utility's senior vice president for electric operations. "We came close during Hurricane Irene."
The networks would be shut down as a pre-emptive move to protect underground equipment. The three networks the company is considering turning off serve about 35,000 customers. But the total number of people affected would be a multiple of that number, Mr. Miksad said, because in some cases a single meter covers a large number of apartments.
Con Ed customers in the most vulnerable networks, as well as others in Manhattan as far north as 34th Street, have been receiving automated calls from the company warning them that their power could be shut off.
The tidal forecasts show the water rising 10 to 12 feet above normal. "We suspect that if we get to the upper end of that 10- to 12-foot range, we will not be O.K."
By that, Mr. Miksad meant that he would expect to hear from crews monitoring critical equipment in those areas that floodwater was threatening to cause damage that would take much longer to repair than if the networks were shut down. The most susceptible networks in Manhattan are at the southern tip of the island and just north of there along the East River. That is where the worst flooding occurred in Manhattan during the Irene storm last year, he said.
The highest tide will occur after 8 p.m., but the surge could cause company officials to cut the power earlier in the evening, on short notice, Mr. Miksad said. And he added, if the surge is "worse than we're expecting, we will be looking at other networks."
- Patrick McGeehan
1:35 P.M. | Q. and A.: How Strong Will the Winds Be?
Several readers, including Jerold Paulson from Richmond Hill, N.Y., and Nick from New York, have asked about the strength of the winds and what risk they will pose. AVB from Upper Manhattan asked:
Could the storm cause window breaking or building collapse in N.Y.C. - especially for the high buildings - due to high winds? Is there something people should do to minimize risk of injury while either staying home or walking in the streets?
Wind gusts from Hurricane Sandy, according to the National Weather Service, are expected to reach 80 miles per hour in the New York City area on Monday night, and up to 60 to 70 miles per hour Monday afternoon. Wind at that speed does present a danger to pedestrians and others out on the streets, due mostly to the risk posed by flying debris. It is for that reason that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, in his news briefing on Monday morning, asked New Yorkers to stay home if possible.
Apartment windows in high-rises are designed to withstand winds upward of the strength we will see in this storm. Therefore, most residents should not face a problem with their windows breaking. However, people who live on upper floors of high-rises, generally considered over the 10th floor, were urged by the mayor to close their window shades and stay away from their windows as much as possible. That's because wind speeds are amplified at higher altitudes.
A pamphlet (pdf) issued by the city on hurricane preparedness contains more tips, including making sure that items on balconies are secured and residents should relocate to a lower floor if possible during the worst conditions.
- Sharon Otterman
2:24 P.M. | In Westchester, Concern About Those Who Stayed
In Westchester, Robert P. Astorino, the county executive, toured the lower-lying towns of Rye and Mamaroneck on Monday. The choppy Long Island Sound surf already covered much of the beach at Rye Playland and was almost at boardwalk level. Still, he expressed concern about the number of people he saw casually walking around in areas that were supposed to be evacuated.
"This is not the time to be a hero, this is not the time to be a thrill-seeker," he said. "This is a dangerous storm."
Earlier, Mr. Astorino suspended the county's bus service, the Bee-Line, and closed much of the flood-prone Bronx River Parkway.
The county has also closed all its parks for Monday and Tuesday and said county offices would be open but with limited staffing. Westchester County Airport is open but all flights have been suspended. The Indian Point nuclear power plant is operating normally, the county said. A number of shelters are open in area schools and community centers, some of which also accept pets.
- Joseph Berger
1:47 P.M. | No Holiday for the Highest Court
Proving that it is an independent branch of the government, the United States Supreme Court heard two hourlong arguments on Monday morning. The court has historically been reluctant to close its doors for weather. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who died in 2005, ordered the court to remain open during a winter storm in 1996 that shut down the rest of the federal government.
During the first argument, concerning government surveillance, Justice Stephen G. Breyer referred to Hurricane Sandy in questioning a government lawyer about how much proof was needed to show that something was bound to happen. "It might not be a storm tomorrow," he said. "I mean, you know, nothing is certain."
Shortly after the second argument, the court announced that it would be closed on Tuesday, rescheduling that day's arguments for Thursday.
- Adam Liptak
1:54 P.M. | Parts of Atlantic City Are Flooded
EGG HARBOR TOWNSHIP, N.J. - Parts of Atlantic City and other coastal communities in South Jersey were underwater on Monday even before the brunt of Hurricane Sandy arrived in the area.
Knee-high water filled streets in some parts of Atlantic City, where on Sunday the casinos had been ordered shut down and residents had been told to evacuate. Widespread flooding was also reported in oceanfront areas like Cape May, Wildwood and Long Beach Island. Here in Egg Harbor Township, about 10 miles west of Atlantic City, the rain and wind had grown stronger over the course of Monday morning.
More than 2,200 people were in shelters in New Jersey, according to the State Office of Emergency Management. But some people in the most vulnerable areas had hunkered down in their homes; in Cape May County, the southernmost portion of the state, officials estimated that perhaps 40 percent of the residents of the county's barrier islands had decided to stay put.
Across the state, emergency officials urged people to stay indoors, asking residents not to be tempted to go outside to take cellphone pictures or video of the storm. Atlantic County banned travel on public roads, and the Garden State Parkway was shut down in both directions south of Exit 38 at the Atlantic City Expressway because of flooding. State officials warned that additional shutdowns of major highways were likely as the storm approached.
- Thomas Kaplan
1:52 P.M. | Stock Markets to Close on Tuesday
The New York Stock Exchange announced that it will close again on Tuesday. Read more on Deal Book.
- The New York Times
10:54 AM | As Surge Looms, Worries About Damage to Subway System
The dire storm surge forecasts have raised the possibility that subway infrastructure will be damaged during the storm. Joseph J. Lhota, the chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, said he was particularly concerned about the surge in Lower Manhattan, noting that saltwater and the subway system "do not mix very well together." Switches could "corrode quite easily" if the water reaches them, Mr. Lhota said, and the electronic signaling system could also be imperiled.
- Matt Flegenheimer
1:18 P.M. | Minor Flooding Along the Connecticut Coast
WESTPORT, Conn. - Gusts of 50 miles per hour whipped through Connecticut on Monday morning, and high tide brought minor flooding along the coast, swamping roads and low-lying areas along the shoreline as residents braced for worse to come with the full moon this evening.
High winds caused scattered power failures across the state. About 15,000 people were without power as of noon, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy said at a news conference in Hartford. Hundreds of thousands of residents were expected to lose power this evening as flooding and high winds were expected to grow more severe. The tidal surge was expected to rise 6 to 11 feet, more than double last year's surge from Tropical Storm Irene.
"The mother is yet to come," he said.
United Illuminating Company put out a warning before noon that it was shutting down a flood substation in Bridgeport, cutting off power to about 35,000 customers. But flooding was less severe than expected and the outage was averted, utility officials said. The utility warned that it may be forced to close the substation this evening as the tide rolls back in.
In East Haven, roads along Cosey Beach were flooded and city officials were urging residents to adhere to a mandatory evacuation order. In Weston, several miles inland, more than 1,000 people were without power.
In Westport, tidal waters surged over sea walls and engulfed Harbor Road leading to Saugatuck Island. Many of the residents in the area, which received substantial flooding during Tropical Storm Irene, heeded evacuation warnings. On one boarded-up house, a child's note was posted on plywood panels covering the windows. "Sandy go away," it read. "Don't come back."
- Ray Rivera
11:20 A.M. | In Westchester, More People Are Expected to Seek Shelter
Mamaroneck, a Westchester town that has both affluent and working-class areas, set up a shelter in its high school gymnasium, and by 10 a.m. Monday it held seven people. One of those was Owen Patterson, a 65-year-old Jamaican immigrant and retired laborer who lives not near the flood-prone Long Island Sound shoreline but near a narrow river inland that floods badly in drenching rains.
He lives by himself, and he recalls a few years ago when a storm flooded the streets off Mamaroneck Avenue with five feet of water and he could not easily leave his second-floor apartment on the avenue. He does not want to repeat that experience.
"What goes up must come down," he said. "I can stay in the building but can't come downstairs. So I decided to ride it out here. I'm not going home until it's safe to go back."
The gymnasium was outfitted with more than 100 green cots loaned by the American Red Cross. Luann Jacobs and her husband, Matthew, volunteers for the Larchmont-Mamaroneck Community Emergency Response Team, were among those taking care of those - mostly elderly single people - seeking refuge. They recalled that during Hurricane Irene the shelter housed 200 people, so they expect many more to come Monday night.
In a wealthier area known as Orienta, water was lapping over the harbor walls and shoreline and flooding the harbor park and Rushmore Avenue, a main approach to the leafy Orienta peninsula.
"This is crazy," said Robbie Goldberg, the owner of a Larchmont deli who came by to see the flooding and videotape it. "This early in the storm and the water has already covered Rushmore Avenue and the parking lots of both marinas."
Although many stores and gas stations were shuttered and the streets were unusually empty of traffic, some people proceeded as if Monday was not out of the ordinary.
"It's a normal day," said Don Freda, the owner of Hennessy-Freda, an automobile repair shop and Citgo gas station on Boston Post Road, as he pumped gas in a customer's car. "We come to work just as we always do. We're open as long as the electricity stays on. "
- Joseph Berger
11:34 A.M. | Wall Street Shutters, but Social Media Area Still Buzzing
The financial district was largely deserted, but there was much buzz about what was happening in the neighborhood on social media. Read more on Dealbook.
- The New York Times
12:12 P.M. | Confused Tourists in Times Square
All over Times Square Monday morning, tourists aimed their cellphones and cameras toward the gray and drizzly sky. With the city shut down tight, what else was there to do besides photograph the neon lights on Broadway?
Laura Taylor, an English and drama teacher at Lewis School in Pengam, South Wales, posed for a colleague, Mike Oliver, a history teacher, in front of the Times Square zipper, with the police station framed in the background.
They arrived Sunday and booked trips to all the usual tourist sites. But with the theaters dark and Central Park and most stores and restaurants closed, they were wandering around, improvising. "We're going back this Thursday, so we're not thinking we're going to see too much," Mr. Oliver said. Still, he was upbeat, adding: "That's life. This is still a great piece of Americana. We're doing this just because we're trying to make the most of what we can."
Being from Wales, he added, they were used to wet and windy weather, but they did not consider the impending hurricane a joking matter.
Down the block, a group of four friends from England took pictures of the bright lights of the Hard Rock Cafe, which was, however, closed.
"Strange, isn't it?" said Julian Cooke, a farmer from about 20 miles west of Oxford, looking around at the other dazed and glum-looking tourists, who looked like characters in an apocalypse movie, milling about aimlessly and gazing anxiously toward the sky. He was traveling with his wife, Sarah, and another couple, Rob Tylee, a Baptist minister, and his wife, Sue.
Ms. Tylee was optimistic despite the weather. She said she was still hoping to get to the Museum of Modern Art, Macy's and Bloomingdale's before their flight home on Wednesday. What will they do if they have no flight home on Wednesday? "No idea," she said.
- Anemona Hartocollis
12:58 P.M. | Brunt of Business Impact Is Yet to Come
From Wall Street to restaurants and stores, businesses up and down the East Coast are closed. The storm is expected to have a major economic effect.
- The New York Times
12:30 P.M. | A Closed Central Park Leaves Dogs at a Loss
They were crestfallen, whimpering in disbelief. The city's dogs walked right up to an east side entrance of Central Park, saw the fence and could not fathom why they - and their owners - were not allowed in. For a little wind? Light rain? They had seen worse.
"I may have to carry him away," said John Blondel, nodding to Rollo, a spry-looking white Labrador who was 10 and a half years old. Rollo decided to engage in a sit-down strike in front of the 79th Street entrance on Fifth Avenue.
Mr. Blondel, 56, who is in the investment management division for Goldman Sachs, had driven from his apartment in the West Village to give Rollo his daily constitution. Later, he would work from home. "This is going to be it for a while," he said to his friend.
Soon, Rollo was joined by several other dogs dragging their walkers to yet another blocked entrance. "They're just amazed," Mr. Blondel said.
When a gust of wind blew an opening in the temporary fencing, Rollo was wise to the opportunity. Mr. Blondel had to pull him back and head to the car.
The city's parks had been closed since Sunday evening, and the morning scene was an abject one indeed. As joggers dashed by on the slippery, leaf-laden sidewalk adjacent to the park - some took advantage of the empty bus lanes to run in the street - they had to dodge the dogs, who were similarly displaced from their morning routine.
- Liz Robbins
12:42 P.M. | President Urged People to Heed Evacuation Orders
President Obama, echoing mayor and governors across the Northeast, urged people in evacuation zones to get out of the way of Hurricane Sandy.
"Please listen to what your state and local officials are saying," the president said in a nationwide address at 12:45 p.m Monday. "If you are not evacuating when you've been asked to evacuate, you are putting first responders in danger."
The president said, regarding preparations and emergency response to the storm, "I'm confident that we're ready but the public need s to prepare for the fact that this will take some time to clean up."
The president waved off a reporter's question about the storm's impact on next Tuesday's election.
"I'm not worried about the impact on the election," the president said. "I'm worried about the impact on families, on first responders, on the economy and on transportation. The election will take care of itself next week."
11:41 A.M. | Considering the Storm's Impact on Election Polling
Hurricane Sandy may affect the ability of pollsters to capture the mood of the electorate in the final days of the campaign. Read more on the Five Thirty Eight blog.
- The New York Times
12:04 P.M. | Christie: Non-Evacuators 'Stupid and Selfish'
With the hurricane expected to make landfall near Atlantic City around midnight, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey warned Monday afternoon that for residents in evacuation zones who had not left yet, time was running out, and for some of them it was now too late to leave.
"They are now in harm's way and I don't know if we can get them out now," the governor said. "These decisions were both stupid and selfish and I don't know if we can get them out in the next 12 hours."
He said that tens of thousands of residents were already without power.
And he added that he was "trending" toward ordering state government offices and schools to close on Tuesday.
- Andy Newman
11:39 A.M. | New York City Schools Will Remain Closed on Tuesday
With mass transit expected to remain shut through Tuesday morning, city public schools will remain closed on Tuesday, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said.
"There's no chance that mass transit will be back in time to serve people," the mayor said.
The mayor delivered a stern warning to those who had defied his evacuation order that time was running out for them to get safely out of their neighborhoods.
"The window for you to leave is closing," he said. "You should have left but now it's getting to be too late to leave."
Mr. Bloomberg said that about 3,000 people had come in to city shelters, a tiny percentage of the 370,000 covered under the evacuation order, most of whom are presumably staying elsewhere. Pets are allowed at shelters, and the mayor said that about 70 had been brought in.
11:30 A.M. | Video: Mayor Bloomberg Gives Update
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York is giving a briefing on Hurricane Sandy.
- The New York Times
11:18 AM | City Offices Are Open, but Many Desks Are Empty
New York City's public agencies are purportedly open for business on Monday, per Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's instructions.
But a search for public servants near City Hall on Monday - amid a shutdown of virtually all of New York's mass transit network - proved somewhat futile.
The doors to the Department of Buildings, at 280 Broadway, opened with a gentle nudge, but the lone security guard stationed inside quickly indicated that the entry was mostly symbolic.
"Are you open today?" a reporter asked. The guard shook her head and made a throat-cutting gesture, then smiled apologetically.
City Hall itself was almost entirely deserted, although its stoic French Renaissance facade appeared unruffled in the morning winds.
The interior hallways had a ghostly feel. The office of the City Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn, was completely empty, although its gate remained open.
The mayor's insistence that city employees go to work on Monday - despite closed schools, no mass transit and a general encouragement from public officials to stay inside - raised eyebrows among some municipal observers. But asked about it at a Sunday news conference, Mr. Bloomberg said the city must function when its denizens need it most.
"We need the city workers," Mr. Bloomberg told a reporter. "We all take great pride in our dedication to serving the public, and this is something that we are going to have to do. It may be inconvenient, hopefully it's not dangerous, but city workers are here to help others, and I think they all understand that."
A spokeswoman for the mayor, Julie Wood, said on Monday that many city employees were working in the field, rather than offices.
- Michael M. Grynbaum
11:11 A.M. | Maryland Governor Provides Grim Prediction on Storm
Gov. Martin O'Malley of Maryland gave an unvarnished assessment of the grim situation as the storm raked the coast and roared inland, warning that "there will be people who die and are killed in this storm."
"We need to watch out for each other, but the intensity of this storm is such that there will undoubtedly be some deaths that are caused by the intensity of this storm, by the floods, by the tidal surge, and by the waves," he said in a news conference from the state's emergency center.
Shifts in the storm's trajectory are now raising concerns of flooding in the Chesapeake Bay. Rather than pushing water out of the bay as originally anticipated, the storm now appears poised to push water inland into rivers and streams already likely to flood.
High winds will most likely force the state to close the long Bay Bridge that links mainland Maryland to the Delmarva Peninsula, which is already seeing damage from the pounding surf, he said. Residents should "hunker down at home with your families - it's going to be a long 24 to 36 hours," he said.
"The more responsibly citizens act, the fewer people will die," he said.
- Theo Emery
10:48 A.M. | In Philadelphia, Some Seeking Shelter as Storm Worsens
Mayor Michael Nutter of Philadelphia said on Monday morning that about 150 people had checked into the city's three emergency shelters. Occupants include adults, children, dogs, cats, a turtle and a spider, he said.
In an interview with KYW Radio, Mr. Nutter said winds at about 6 a.m. were sustained at 21 miles per hour, gusting to 28 m.p.h. Those speeds are likely to double later in the day, he said.
"It's bad, and it's only going to get worse," he said. "It's getting colder, there's more rain, it's very windy. This is a serious storm and you need to take it seriously."
A refinery operated by Philadelphia Energy Solutions is cutting its output in response to the storm, said Cherise Corley, a spokeswoman for the company, which normally processes 330,000 barrels of crude oil a day into petroleum products. "We continue to monitor the storm and take the appropriate precautions. We are currently running at reduced capacity," she said.
- Jon Hurdle
10:32 A.M. | Holland and Battery Tunnels to Close at 2 P.M.
The Holland Tunnel and the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, which are particularly prone to flooding, will close at 2 p.m., Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said.
- Andy Newman
10:23 AM | N.Y. Gov. Cuomo's Address
New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo briefed New Yorkers Monday morning on Hurricane Sandy.
- The New York Times
09:46 AM | Morning Floods, Then a Pause, With a Deluge to Come
The flooding in New York City's coastal and riverfront neighborhoods that accompanied this morning's high tides will recede a bit as the day wears on, but it is only a dress rehearsal for tonight's surge, the National Weather Service said.
Forecasters are expecting a 6-to-11-foot surge to hit the city at high tide around 8 p.m. - the highest surge of the entire storm cycle.
"What we're seeing now is just the beginning of what we're going to be seeing worse, later," said David Stark, a meteorologist at the weather service office in Upton, N.Y.
At the Battery at the bottom of Manhattan, the water level was eight and a half feet at Monday morning's high tide, considered moderate flooding. Tonight at the Battery, Mr. Stark said, "We may see water level of 10 or 12 feet which is a major flooding category."
Tonight's high tides will coincide with Hurricane Sandy making landfall in southern New Jersey. "All the water the hurricane is bringing will be pushed on-shore right at high tide," Mr. Stark said. Tonight is also the peak tide time in the lunar cycle (full moon is at 3:49 p.m. Eastern time on Monday, not Sunday as reporter here earlier).
- Andy Newman
09:23 AM | Flood Waters Rising in Red Hook, Brooklyn
Via @greenpainting, the view from Red Hook: twitter.com/greenpainting/.
- Sam Sifton (@SamSifton) October 29, 2012
- Sam Sifton
9:16 AM | Flooding in Manhattan
In Battery Park City:
Battery Park esplanade under standing water #sandytwitpic.com/b8gxwmtwitpic.com/b8gxzw
- Newyorkist (@Newyorkist) October 29, 2012
And along the East River at the end of Wall Street:
East River rises above last two steps of Get Down, and approaches third, on esplanade at end of Wall St #sandytwitpic.com/b8gpf2
- Newyorkist (@Newyorkist) October 29, 2012
- The New York Times
08:49 AM | Flooding in Queens Near J.F.K.
The flooding in the Jamaica Bay, Queens neighborhood of Meadowmere. Courtesy of Kim Zatto, bait purveyor. twitter.com/coreykilgannon
- Corey Kilgannon (@coreykilgannon) October 29, 2012
- Corey Kilgannon
8:09 A.M. | Obama Cancels Florida Appearance to Monitor Storm
President Obama on Monday canceled an appearance at a rally in Florida to rush back to Washington to monitor preparations for Hurricane Sandy. Read more on the Caucus blog.
- The New York Times
7:45 A.M. | Checking the Tide at Beach 98th Street
- The New York Times
07:25 AM | On the Upper East Side, Waiting for a Cab
On the Upper East Side, a man who gave his name only as Patrick was trying to catch a cab to his job at a Midtown bank. He lives across the river in Hoboken, N.J., but he stayed with a friend in Manhattan because the PATH train was shut down.
"It's obviously not that bad right now," he said of the weather before the expected rain had started. "I just wish the subway was open."
Doormen at several buildings on Park Avenue in the upper 80s said there were fewer cabs out than normal. Alberto Ventura, who works at 1111 Park Avenue, was outside with a resident who stepped into a cab just before 7 a.m.
"We were waiting about a good 10 minutes," Mr. Ventura said. Normally this early there is little wait for a ride, he said.
- Randy Leonard
7:07 AM | Open for Business, and Walking to Work
In Brooklyn, south of Williamsburg and into Dumbo, Monday morning dawned calm, with a few gusts of powerful wind. A smattering of stores were open, mostly bodegas like J&J Navy Yard Sub Shop, owned by Marcos Martinez, who said he could not afford to stay closed.
"I can see there's no storm happening yet," Mr. Martinez, 47, said shortly after 6 a.m. He had driven to work from Park Slope.
How was business? "It's a slow morning."
A few lonely-looking police officers stood on street corners as the first fat drops of rain began to fall around 6:30. Workers in front of a Chinese market on Flushing Avenue were even seen sweeping fall leaves into dustpans on the sidewalk by their front door.
Some people were walking to work, in the absence of mass transit.
Felix Toro, 23, walked from his home in Fort Greene over the Manhattan Bridge to his barista job at Bowery Coffee on Houston Street. He said his boss had offered him the day off, but "I didn't want to spend today at home."
"I wanted to see what it was like," said Mr. Toro, who carried a dry change of work clothes in a plastic bag slung over his shoulder.
He said he was prepared to sleep at the coffee shop if he became stranded by the storm.
"I don't have a death wish or anything," he said.
- Nate Schweber
06:56 AM | Monday-Morning Non-Evacuators
The police have been going door to door in the evacuation zone. No one is going to drag you out of your house if you refuse to leave.
But the National Weather Service issued a rather blunt warning on Sunday to those considering defying an evacuation order:
THINK ABOUT YOUR LOVED ONES, THINK ABOUT THE EMERGENCY RESPONDERS WHO WILL BE UNABLE TO REACH YOU WHEN YOU MAKE THE PANICKED PHONE CALL TO BE RESCUED, THINK ABOUT THE RESCUE/RECOVERY TEAMS WHO WILL RESCUE YOU IF YOU ARE INJURED OR RECOVER YOUR REMAINS IF YOU DO NOT SURVIVE.
Those in New York City who refuse to evacuate will also earn the wrath of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, as well as the wrath of Hurricane Sandy itself, as Cara Buckley reported Sunday night.
But in the Rockaways, where rain has begun to fall, plenty of people were around. "Don't leave the castle," a father of four told WINS-1010 radio. "I don't think my safety's at risk. We're going to tough it out and play Wii all day until the power goes out."
- Andy Newman
06:46AM | Traffic Report: Not Much
Any worries that the canceling of all mass transit would clog the roads with excess drivers appeared unfounded at the start of what would normally be the Monday morning rush.
As of 6:20 a.m., there were no reported delays at bridges and tunnels and no reports of extensive road congestion anywhere. "Not many people driving on the L.I.E. or the Northern or Southern State," said the 6:18 report on WCBS 880.
There are, however, road closings, either preemptively - like a stretch of the Bronx River Parkway - or because of flooding: Route 7 in Hudson County, N.J., and Routes 18 and 27 near the Raritan River and New Brunswick. Route 36 out to Sandy Hook, N.J. is also closed.
- Andy Newman
6:41 A.M. | Tall Ship With 17 Aboard in Distress Off North Carolina
A three-masted tall ship that is a replica of the H.M.S. Bounty was in distress off the coast of North Carolina with 17 people aboard, as Hurricane Sandy barreled up the seaboard early Monday, the Coast Guard reported.
Coast Guard Sector North Carolina received a call from the ship's owner, who had not heard from the crew since late Sunday evening, the report said. A Coast Guard command center in Portsmouth, Va., then received a signal from a radio beacon registered to the Bounty that indicated where the ship was and that it needed help.
A plane crew found the ship caught in 40-mile-an-hour winds and 18-foot seas about 90 miles southeast of Hatteras, N.C., the Coast Guard said. The 180-foot-long ship reportedly had no power and was taking on water.
The Coast Guard said that it was monitoring the situation but did not report having rescued any of the crew or passengers.
The Coast Guard said that the Bounty's crew decided to abandon ship because it was taking on so much water. The crew and passengers donned cold-water survival suits and boarded two 25-man lifeboats lowered from the Bounty,
The lifeboats were equipped with radios, so their passengers could continue communicatingwith the Coast Guard, a Coast Guard spokesman said. He said that the Coast Guard had not decided yet whether to attempt to rescue the evacuees by helicopter or with a cutter.
- Patrick McGeehan
1:38 A.M. | Quiet in Times Square, Except for the Tourists
The approach of Hurricane Sandy may have shut down Broadway theaters on Sunday night, but it did not blow all of the tourists out of Times Square.
Late into the evening, hundreds of people milled about in the cool, fresh air, bathed in the glow of electronic signs and giant TV screens. They seemingly had no place to go: All the stores had been closed for hours, many surrounded by sandbags that appeared too small to hold back much more than the overflow from a bathtub.
Restaurants that normally would cater to the after-theater crowd were dark. Even the flashy McDonald's on 42nd Street had closed at 5 p.m. The only culinary offerings were the street meats sizzling on pushcarts parked all around the square.
But, save for the ominous, swirling images flashing on the giant screens overhead, nobody would have known that a monster storm was chugging up the seaboard. Tourists perched on the red staircase over the discount-ticket booth and chatted in various languages, undaunted. Some posed for sketch artists while others grinned for cellphone snapshots.
Several police officers were posted around the square, but they were so idle that one used the trunk of his cruiser as a desktop while he caught up on his paperwork. The clearest sign that something was amiss was that there were virtually no private cars mixed in with the stream of yellow taxis flowing slowly down Broadway.
All of the locals had heeded the warnings to get indoors and stay there. Only the out-of-towners were braving the tame streets of Midtown.
- Patrick McGeehan
12:49 A.M. | The Weather Channel's Hurricane Sandy Coverage
The Weather Channel's live coverage of Hurricane Sandy.
12:08 A.M. Monday | Mid-Atlantic States Start to Feel Effects of Storm
With Hurricane Sandy still churning several hundred miles off the Eastern Seaboard, its impact was already being felt in mid-Atlantic states late Sunday night.
There were reports of roadways flooding, and Gov. Jack Markell of Delaware ordered that no one would be allowed on Delaware roads after 5 a.m. on Monday.
Along the Maryland, Virginia and Delaware coasts, winds began to pick up intensity, and bands of rain whipped coastal towns.
Near the Norfolk Naval Station, there were reports of sustained winds of 45 miles per hour and gusts topping 53 miles per hour.
The latest forecast from the National Hurricane Center, issued at 11 p.m., said that the storm was still 470 miles from New York City and moving northward at 14 miles per hour.
It was not losing steam as it plowed forward. Hurricane force winds over 75 miles per hour were measured by monitors on ocean buoys 170 miles from the storm's center. Tropical force winds extended 520 miles from the heart of the giant weather system.
The computer tracking models showed the storm still likely to make landfall somewhere in the vicinity of southern New Jersey by late Monday evening.
In Ocean City, Md., where residents were evacuated earlier in the day, live-streaming Web cams - now disabled - showed the storm surge already reaching up to the boardwalk.
- Marc Santora
9:37 P.M. | A Long, Strange Trip, Involving Philadelphia
PHILADELPHIA - Kwame Osei-Prempeh, 26, an immigrant from Ghana in West Africa who now lives in Newark, was among the legion of travelers trying to find their way to the New York region on Sunday.
His trip had begun on Saturday in his hometown of Kumasi, Ghana, where he gone to set up a film and music business. He took a bus to the capital, Accra, a plane to Lagos, Nigeria, and another flight to Houston, where he learned that his connecting flight to Newark had been canceled. He quickly found a seat on a United Airlines flight to Philadelphia and his plane was one of the last to land at the Philadelphia airport before the authorities closed it to further arrivals Sunday night.
Mr. Osei-Prempeh then found his way to 30th Street Station in Philadelphia where he snagged a seat on an Amtrak train to Newark.
Judging by overheard conversations at the station, many other passengers had also been forced to reroute by plane through Philadelphia.
Despite the fact that he had been traveling for 38 hours, Mr. Osei-Prempeh seemed to be in good spirits.
"I have no choice," he said cheerily as he waited to board the train.
- Kirk Semple
9:23 P.M. | North Wildwood, N.J.: Scaring Away the Storm
9:19 P.M. | More Transit Shutdowns Ahead of Sandy
Subway, bus and rail services are shutting down from Virginia all the way to Connecticut ahead of Sandy's expected landfall, mirroring New York City's gradual closure of the subway and bus system.
In Washington, the Metrorail subway system and the city's buses will stop running on Sunday night. Metro has not said when service could be restored. Federal government offices in the Washington area will also be closed on Monday.
A bit further north in Maryland, MARC commuter train service will not operate on Monday.
In Pennsylvania, the rail, bus and trolley services around Philadelphia were to stop running late on Sunday night.
In New Jersey the NJ TRANSIT system started to gradually shut down on Sunday afternoon.
North of New York City, CTTRANSIT buses in Connecticut will suspend all service on Monday. No disruptions were reported to Rhode Island's public transportation.
In Massachusetts, commuter boat service around Boston was suspended but subways and buses were expected to run as usual on Monday morning.
Amtrak said Sunday that it had cancelled "nearly all service on the eastern seaboard on Monday," including all service to and from Washington, New York and Boston.
- Brian Stelter
9:14 P.M. | The Only Ride Going on the Coney Island Boardwalk
- The New York Times
08:52 PM | Utilities Batten Down Hatches
Utilities throughout the region were scrambling Sunday to prepare for the worst.
In New York City, Consolidated Edison shut off steam to some of its customers in Manhattan - most of them large buildings - in advance of expected storm surges.
Hot water and heat no longer an option in Stuytown. ConEd shuts down steam vaults ahead of #Sandy in #NYC / Glad we showered earlier.
- Steven Dilla (@StevenDilla) October 28, 2012
Power companies were calling drawing on crews from outside their territories to clear branches and fallen trees, replace broken poles and string new lines once the winds die down. By Monday morning, Jersey Central Power and Light expected to have 1,300 crews, arriving from as far away as Florida and Iowa, to augment its staff of 400. Connecticut Light and Power was seeking 2,000 outside crews to fix lines and 700 to clear trees. Read more.
- Patrick McGeehan
7:18 P.M. | Q. and A.: What About the Homeless?
Anna M. Freedman asks, "Where are the homeless being sheltered tonight? Is anybody doing outreach?"
The Department of Homeless Services has enhanced street outreach to encourage people on the street to seek shelter. Street outreach will continue during the storm, safety permitting, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said on Sunday.
The city has published a list of shelters open to the public on their Web site.
- Michael Schwirtz
6:55 P.M. | Fire Island Evacuates
A mandatory evacuation was ordered for Fire Island on Sunday.
- The New York Times
6:47 P.M. | Q. and A.: How Serious Is This Storm?
Several readers have asked if Hurricane Sandy will actually be as bad as meteorologists are predicting.
Any predictions about the storm's path and strength are subject to change, but forecasters and officials believe that Hurricane Sandy will have a significant effect on a large swath of the East Coast.
A major concern is the size of the storm. Forecasters warned that it could have ravaging effects far beyond its projected trajectory and urged people to heed calls for evacuation and prepare for the worst. Though the storm will not reach land until sometime on Monday, tropical storm-force winds will extend 520 miles from its center. Many regions will likely loose power, and there will be a significant danger of falling debris.
The storm surge is perhaps the most pressing danger immediately. In its latest report, the National Hurricane Center said there was a possibility of a storm surge as high as 11 feet above normal levels along Long Island Sound and Raritan Bay - significantly higher than in previous forecasts - and warned that major flooding could occur across the Eastern Seaboard. In addition to a storm surge, forecasters expected torrential rains in some regions, which would add to the flooding problems.
Emergency officials, local leaders and President Obama have urged people to take this storm seriously and heed the advice of local emergency services including requests to evacuate.
- Michael Schwirtz
6:38 P.M. | Q. and A.: What About Bridges and Tunnels?
Kristen Hudak from New York City asks, "Any word on bridges and tunnels?"
Decisions on closings will be based largely on wind speeds and will be determined on a case-by-case basis, depending also on rainfall and roadway conditions. If sustained winds exceed 60 miles per hour, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which operates seven bridges and two tunnels, could close some or all bridges to traffic. At lesser wind speeds, there may be some restrictions on driving speed or the type of vehicle that can traverse a bridge. Updates can be found on the M.T.A.'s Web site or the site for the New York State Thruway Authority.
- Matt Flegenheimer
6:12 P.M. | Q. and A.: Will Subways Be Closed on Tuesday?
Sharon S. asks, "How likely is it that the subway will continue to be closed Tuesday?
It's looking pretty likely. Joseph J. Lhota, the chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, said Sunday morning that the authority hoped to restore service by Wednesday. "I do think Monday and Tuesday are going to be difficult days," he said.
If you have a question about the storm, Tweet it with #AskNYT.
- Matt Flegenheimer
05:45 PM | Overview: What's Open and What's Not
Evacuations: Mandatory in Zone A, which covers parts of all five boroughs. See map for details and list of shelters.
Transportation:
M.T.A. subways, buses and Long Island and Metro-North Railroads: Service suspended beginning at 7 p.m. Sunday night. It is not clear when it will begin again. For status, check the M.T.A.'s Web site.
PATH: Suspended as of 12:01 a.m. Monday.
New Jersey Transit: Shutdown has begun, full shutdown expected by 2 a.m. Monday.
Amtrak: Northeast Corridor service north of New York stopping at 7 p.m. Sunday.
Airports: All major airlines expected to halt operations by Sunday night. Port Authority urges travelers to contact individual airlines. Updates can be found on the agency's Web site.
Roads: M.T.A. may close bridges if sustained winds exceed 60 miles per hour.
Staten I. Ferry: Last boat from Staten Island at 8 p.m. Last boat from Manhattan at 8:30.
East River Ferries: Suspended.
*
Schools: Closed in N.Y.C. and much of the surrounding region. For updates in N.Y.C., check the Education Department's Twitter page.
Garbage collection: Monday trash collection is on. Weigh down your trash cans so they don't blow away.
Street cleaning and parking meter rules: Suspended.
City offices: Open (but not courts, see below).
Courts: Closed in N.Y.C. and on Long Island, as well as in Westchester, Rockland, Putnam, Orange and Dutchess counties, except for arraignments and emergency applications.
N.Y.C. Parks: Closed.
N.Y.C. Libraries: Closed. Due dates postponed till libraries reopen.
Retail banks: Chase deciding on case-by-case basis. We are checking on others.
Stock Exchanges: New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq will be closed Monday. Read more.
Other general info:
Information for New Jersey residents can be found on the Web site for the state's Office of Emergency Management.
Long Island residents can find updates on the Web site of the Office of Emergency Management for Nassau County.
Connecticut residents can go to the site for the state's .
- Matt Flegenheimer and Andy Newman
05:25 PM | Storm's Approach Sends Cruise Ships Back to Sea
The Brooklyn and Manhattan Cruise Terminals planned to clear out their vessels as Hurricane Sandy churned toward the city. In Manhattan, the Norwegian Jewel, Aida Luna, and Carnival Miracle cruise ships were expected to leave by Sunday night, said Kyle Sklerov, a spokesman for the New York City Economic Development Corporation, which manages the terminals. In Brooklyn, the Queen Mary 2 was expected to depart.
Mr. Sklerov said he did not know where the ship planned to go next. A message left for the Queen Mary 2's operator was not immediately returned.
The storm's approach also prompted the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to close its maritime facilities beginning at midnight. The port terminals to be closed are: Port Newark Container Terminal, Port Elizabeth Marine Terminal, Port Jersey Marine Terminal, Howland Hook Marine Terminal on Staten Island, and the Brooklyn-Port Authority Marine Terminal.
Deep draft vessels have already departed the terminals. The agency said it was providing a safe berth for numerous barges, dredges, and floating cranes.
- Matt Flegenheimer
5:25 P.M. | Sand Bags in Red Hook
Jon Cronin, left, with his son, Miles, 4, stacked sandbags against the entrance to his wife's art studio on the Red Hook waterfront in Brooklyn. The building is within the mandatory evacuation zone.
- The New York Times
04:48 PM | Monday Garbage Collection Is On
Sanitation pickups are scheduled to proceed as normal on Monday morning in New York City, the mayor said. He urged New Yorkers to put weights on or in their trash cans so they don't get blown around.
- Andy Newman
5:14 P.M. | Wall Street Prepares to Work From Home
The New York Stock Exchange trading floor will be closed on Monday, but much of Wall Street will be open for business - with employees working remotely. Read more on Dealbook »
- The New York Times
04:48 PM | Courts To Be Closed Monday
Courts in New York City and seven downstate counties will be closed on Monday except for arraignments and emergency applications, a court spokesman said.
The counties outside the city affected by the closure are: Westchester, Nassau, Suffolk, Rockland, Orange, Dutchess and Putnam.
- Andy Newman
4:43 P.M. | Stocking Up in Brooklyn
There were long lines at the Foodtown supermarket on North Third Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
- The New York Times
4:20 P.M. | Broadway Goes Dark
The impending arrival of Hurricane Sandy has led to widespread cancellations of performances around the region. All Sunday and Monday night Broadway performances have been called off, according to a spokeswoman for the Broadway League, a trade association of theater owners and producers. Read more on ArtsBeat ».
- The New York Times
03:57 PM | In Red Hook, Short on Time, and Kale
In the Zone A neighborhood of Red Hook, Brooklyn, residents along the streets closest to New York Harbor were checking sump pumps in their basements, and piling sandbags against exterior doors.
Cars tore down Van Brunt Street and into the parking lot of the Fairway Market, where scores of people were stocking up on food supplies. (Jordana Rothman, the food and drink editor for Time Out New York, sent out a dire message via Twitter from the scene:
BREAKING: KALE SOLD OUT AT FAIRWAY. EVAC NOW! EVAC NOW! #sandy
- Jordana Rothman (@jordanarothman) October 28, 2012
Gino Vitale, a builder and landlord who owns several properties in the neighborhood, was delivering sandbags piled high in the bed of his white Ford pickup truck to tenants along Conover Street, a block from New York Bay.
"We dodged most of it with Irene," he said, referring to last year's tropical storm, which flooded basements in Red Hook but not much else. "I'm hoping we can do that again. This is a low-lying neighborhood, but this right here is the high spot."
- Sam Sifton
03:41 PM | Video: N.J. Gov. Christie Speaks
Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey spoke in Pompton Lakes, N.J., Sunday afternoon, telling residents to prepare for record rains as the state braces to take the brunt of Hurricane Sandy.
- Andy Newman
03:13 PM | More Transit Closings as Storm Nears
By Sunday afternoon, more transit services announced their plans to shut down. NJ Transit said it would began a gradual suspension of service at 4 p.m., with no service by 2 a.m. PATH trains will stop running at midnight. Amtrak said on one of its Twitter pages that its Northeast corridor and Keystone trains would be cancelled on Monday.
The Staten Island Ferry will be suspended after 8 p.m. from St. George in Staten Island and 8: 30 p.m. from Whitehall Terminal in Lower Manhattan. The East River Ferry announced earlier Sunday that it would suspend service on Sunday and Monday.
- Matt Flegenheimer
03:05 PM | List of City Evacuation Shelters
Here is the city's list of emergency shelters for those evacuating from Hurricane Sandy.
Shelter List (PDF)
Shelter List (Text)
- Andy Newman
2:56 P.M. | Cape May, N.J.: To Stay or To Go?
Hours before the deadline for a mandatory evacuation, the authorities on Sunday morning urged residents at the southernmost tip of New Jersey to head inland, but some were content to stay home and hope for the best.
Gov. Chris Christie ordered residents of New Jersey's barrier islands to evacuate by 4 p.m. Sunday, and the Cape May county government said it would open a handful of shelters in safer inland areas. By early afternoon, a cold drizzle had begun to fall, and most of the spectators along the beach headed for shelter.
Some residents planned to hunker down. Scott Thomas, 56, who manages a jewelry store, pointed out that his apartment was in a brick building. "The big bad wolf can huff and puff all he wants, you know?" Mr. Thomas said. "There's a lot of buildings in Cape May that I don't think I'd want to stay in, but this one's fine."
Mr. Thomas was helping a fellow merchant, Joanne Klineburger, cover the front windows of her novelty t-shirt shop. They used the same boards that had protected the storefront during Hurricane Irene, using black spray paint to change "Go away Irene" to "Go away Sandy."
Mike Keosky, 68, a human resources consultant, also pulled out the plywood that he had bought before Irene approached; he had stored it ever since behind his shed.
Taking a break from drilling, Mr. Keosky noted that he had a generator in his home. He listed several neighbors who, like he and his wife, Norma, were planning to ride out the storm in Cape May. "Last year we went away for two days," he said. "When I came back, all I had were a few leaves on the ground."
- Thomas Kaplan
02:01 PM | Disabling a Mass Transit System, Step by Step
What was once without precedent will now happen for the second time in 14 months: New York City's transit system is going dark.
But while the shutdown before Tropical Storm Irene last year began at noon on a Saturday - and the restoration of subway service began before the Monday workday - the suspension of subway, bus, and railroad service this time could prove particularly disruptive for the region.
Joseph J. Lhota, the chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, suggested the city could be without the bulk of its transit system for two full weekdays. By Wednesday, he hoped, some service might be restored.
While subways will begin suspending service at 7 p.m. on Sunday, some buses could remain on the road until 9 p.m. It takes about eight hours to shut down the subway system, but the bus system requires only six hours.
The authority's hurricane plan calls for service to be suspended if sustained winds reach 39 miles per hour. Thousands of buses and subway cars have already been removed from service and stored in safe locations. Flood-prone subway yards and depots have been cleared, and subway stations in vulnerable areas, like Lower Manhattan, will be evacuated.
The authority said that "critical track-level components" were being removed from beneath river tubes to protect the materials from the corrosive effects of salt water in the event of flooding.
On Metro-North Railroad, equipment was to be removed from low-lying areas like the east end of a New Haven yard and Highbridge and Mott Haven yards in the Bronx. Some trucks, cranes, bulldozers and other equipment was being moved to higher ground. Plans included bringing trains into Grand Central Terminal for shelter.
Some wooden crossing gates were also removed and secured on both Metro-North Railroad and Long Island Rail Road.
The authority cautioned riders that a suspension of service on its railroads did not imply that power would be cut to the third rail or overhead wires.
The authority's paratransit service, Access-A-Ride, suspended its outbound trips at noon Sunday; return trips were expected to continue until 5 p.m.
The authority said the Staten Island Railway would continue operations for as long as the Staten Island Ferry was in service, if conditions permitted, so that no riders would be stranded at the ferry terminal.
The authority's bridges will close to all traffic if sustained winds reach 60 miles per hour. Required slowdowns will likely be instituted if winds exceed 39 miles per hour.
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey announced that PATH train service would be suspended beginning at 12:01 a.m. Monday morning until further notice.
Operations remained normal at local airports, the agency said, but travelers were encouraged to check with their individual airlines.
Though Mr. Lhota expressed optimism about restoring service by Wednesday, a return to normal operations is likely to come in fits and starts. A little over 24 hours after subway, bus, and rail service was suspended for Tropical Storm Irene, some limited bus service returned. About 14 hours after that, the restoration of subway service began. Railroad service was restored on a line by line basis, as some required substantial cleanup of debris and mudslides and others waited on power to be restored.
- Matt Flegenheimer
02:14 PM | New York Stock Exchange to Stay Open
The New York Stock Exchange still plans to open as usual on Monday, according to a notice posted to the market operator's Web site. The exchange added that it is monitoring the weather conditions.
Because so much trading today is conducted electronically, the exchange has closed because of weather far less frequently. The NYSE shut down for three days after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
- Michael J. de la Merced
1:49 P.M. | In Times Square, Tourists Dwindle as Storm Nears
Mickey and Minnie, Woody and Buzz, and Elmo and Cookie Monster were out in force in Times Square Sunday morning, but there were not many tourists to greet them.
"It's the Frankenstorm economy," said Mike Tyler, one of the many ticket agents canvassing the area's pedestrian malls in search of someone - anyone - who wanted to a ticket to a show, a game or a tour. "It's just way emptier."
The crowds that normally clog Times Square were noticeably thin ahead of Hurricane Sandy's arrival in New York, which has already prompted the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to announce a shutdown of subways, buses and railroads beginning Sunday evening. Although visitors from around the country and the world could still be seen lining up for Broadway tickets at the TKTS booth, posing for photos against a backdrop of flashing billboards and consulting pocket-size maps of the city, the looming storm thriving economic force that is Times Square appeared to be slowing.
Mr. Tyler said he had been instructed to discount tickets that he normally sold for $130 or more to $99 or less in an effort to attract buyers who were shying away because of the impending storm.
Contemplating such deals were tourists like Randy and Sherry Chapman, from Waterloo, Iowa, who had been planning their trip to New York for months and changed their flights to come in a day earlier when they heard news of the hurricane. They were scheduled to leave on a cruise on Wednesday, to the Caribbean - "where the storm came from," said Mr. Chapman, 56, with a chuckle - but did not know if the ship would leave on time.
"We're a little nervous," admitted Mrs. Chapman, 61. The couple wanted to visit the 9/11 Memorial and the Statue of Liberty, but their plans had fallen into disarray. "It just kind of depends on what the storm does."
"The storm might end up being the entertainment," Mr. Chapman said.
Around the square, street vendors and store owners predicted the tourist hub would empty out by this evening. At the Yankees Clubhouse Shop, signs in English and Spanish announced that the store would be closing early, at 4 p.m., because of Sandy. Walter Wells, who runs a souvenir T-shirt stand, said he and other vendors were planning to leave well before the subways were to close at 7 p.m. They usually stay out until about midnight.
Mr. Wells bemoaned the lack of foot traffic. "I mean, I got bills to pay," he said.
The TKTS booth was still doing a healthy business, though lines were shorter than usual. Agents near the line advised tourists that though shows would likely still go on Sunday evening, shows on Monday and Tuesday might be cancelled.
Then there were Donald and Terri Beak and their two children, who appeared relatively unconcerned as they wandered around the TKTS plaza, holding shopping bags from the M&M store. "We're English; we don't worry about things like that," said Mr. Beak, 48, referring to the hurricane. "We're used to rain and bad weather."
Though they felt slightly inconvenienced by the transit shutdown, worrying that they might have trouble getting back to the city from the New York Jets game this afternoon, they said they would be happy to ride out the storm at a shopping mall somewhere in New Jersey.
"We just don't think it's as bad as the TV's making it out to be," Mr. Beak said.
Mrs. Beak appeared willing to give the meteorologists a little more credit. "Better to be prepared, I guess," she said.
- Vivian Yee
11:39 A.M. | How to Find Out if You Need to Evacuate
The mayor's evacuation order covers the part of New York City that is in "Zone A." Want to see if you're in that zone? The city'sinteractive map did not immediately appear to be working, but here is a map from WNYC.
The mayor said that the evacuation deadline is 7 p.m.
- Andy Newman
11:28 A.M. | Mayor: Evacuate Coastal Areas. No School Tomorrow.
Watch on Youtube.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced that school is canceled for tomorrow and ordered the immediate evacuation for coastal areas of New York City that are home to more than 350,000 people. They include:
*Parts of Manhattan along both the Hudson and East Rivers south of Midtown.
*Much or all of Coney Island, Red Hook, Dumbo, Brighton Beach and Manhattan Beach in Brooklyn.
*The waterfront fringes of Sunset Park, Williamsburg and Greenpoint in Brooklyn
*Most of coastal Staten Island.
*The Rockaways and parts of Long Island City in Queens.
*City Island in the Bronx.
- Andy Newman
A Break on Your MetroCard Because of the Storm? M.T.A. Says No
Transit Shutdown Under Way for Second Time in History
Transit Closings Possible as Hurricane Sandy Approaches
Switching Problems Snarl Morning Commute on Lexington Ave. Subways
Which Transit-Fare Increase Seems Fairest?
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Putting an Obama ad on troops into context
BYLINE: Glenn Kessler
SECTION: A section; Pg. A04
LENGTH: 853 words
"President Obama ended the Iraq War . . . Mitt Romney would have left 30,000 troops there . . . and called bringing them home 'tragic.' Obama's brought 30,000 soldiers back from Afghanistan. And has a responsible plan to end the war. Romney calls it Obama's 'biggest mistake.' "
- Voiceover from a new Obama campaign television ad
On the eve of last week's final presidential debate - which focused on foreign policy - the Obama campaign released a new television ad that uses Mitt Romney's words to indict how he would have handled the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In fact, the president echoed some of those claims during the debate, earning a rebuttal from Romney:
"What I would not have had done was left 10,000 troops in Iraq that would tie us down. And that certainly would not help us in the Middle East."
- Obama
"I'm sorry, there was an effort on the part of the president to have a status of forces agreement, and I concurred in that, and said that we should have some number of troops that stayed on. That was something I concurred with."
- Romney
Both campaigns have often taken their opponent's words out of context. Is that the case here as well?
The Facts
Ending the war in Iraq was a central Obama campaign promise in the 2008 election. But Romney is correct that the Obama administration tried to negotiate a "status of forces agreement" (SOFA) with the Iraqi government that would have allowed the United States to keep troops in Iraq after an earlier agreement reached by the Bush administration lapsed at the end of 2011.
The two sides could not reach agreement on immunity for U.S. troops, but up until the end, the administration was willing to keep 3,000 to 4,000 troops in Iraq. That's less than 10,000, but news reports at the time said that military commanders had wanted to keep 14,000 to 18,000 troops in Iraq.
It's unclear how hard Obama pressed for a deal; he had only two conversations with the Iraqi president, leaving most of the negotiations to Vice President Biden.
When Obama announced he was withdrawing all U.S. troops after he failed to reach a new SOFA deal with the Iraqis, Romney criticized the outcome of the negotiations:
"It is my view that the withdrawal of all of our troops from Iraq by the end of this year is an enormous mistake and failing by the Obama administration. The precipitous withdrawal is unfortunate - it's more than unfortunate, I think it's tragic. It puts at risk many of the victories that were hard won by the men and women who served there."
In other words, the phrase "tragic" referred to the failure to not reach a deal - not bringing the troops home.
Here's how Romney put it on Fox News Sunday on Dec. 18:
"We're, of course, very happy to see our troops come out. But I think you're going to see another lesson learned. I think we're going to find that this president, by not putting in place a status in forces agreement with the Iraqi leadership, has pulled our troops out in a precipitous way and we should have left 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 personnel there to help transition to the Iraqis' own military capabilities. I'm very concerned in this setting. I hope it works out. But I'm concerned."
That's where the "30,000 troops" comes from - it was an upper-range figure. In other interviews, Romney also said he would have preferred to have left 10,000 to 30,000 troops in Iraq. The mid-range of that point, of course, is what military commanders wanted.
In other words, Obama has spun a diplomatic failure - an inability to reach a deal with Iraq - into a "mission accomplished" talking point.
During the debate, in fact, Obama made a dubious claim that having any troops in Iraq "would not help us in the Middle East."
Since the departure of U.S. troops, the United States has lost leverage in Iraq. For instance, Iran uses Iraqi airspace and convoys on the ground to ferry arms and military equipment to the beleaguered regime in Syria - a government that Obama says must fall.
As for Afghanistan, here again we have another out-of-context quote. The ad makes it appear as if Romney is criticizing the plan to withdraw U.S. forces by 2014, calling it Obama's "biggest mistake."
Actually, in a pair of interviews Romney referred to Obama's "biggest mistakes," which included announcing dates when the surge would end and when combat operations would end.
Those are tactical questions. Critics say announcing a withdrawal date simply signals to insurgents how long they have to hang in there before the Americans leave; supporters say it motivates the Afghan government to improve its forces. But in any case it is not a criticism of ending the war.
Romney has at times been vague as to whether he would prefer fighting to continue past 2014, but in Monday's debate he said he agreed with the current plan: "We're going to be finished by 2014, and when I'm president, we'll make sure we bring our troops out by the end of 2014."
The Pinocchio Test
The Obama campaign frequently cries foul when it believes Romney has twisted Obama's words. But here the Obama campaign, in a negative way, gives as good as it gets.
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Storm alters plans
After East Coast rallies, both campaigns scrambled to make schedule changes just 10 days before the election.A4
Out of context
A close look at an Obama campaign ad attacking Romney's remarks on troop levels in Iraq and Afghanistan. Fact Checker, A4
Ballot bedlam
Voters in D.C. and Maryland rush to early-voting sites only to find long lines and overwhelmed election officials. C1
on washingtonpost.com
6To see comprehensive and continuing coverage of the 2012 presidential election, go to washingtonpost.com/politics.
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October 28, 2012 Sunday 8:12 PM EST
Betting onCory Booker
BYLINE: Elise Young | Bloomberg Markets
SECTION: ; Pg. G03
LENGTH: 1640 words
Cory Booker strides to the lectern at a June reception honoring hedge-fund founder Bill Ackman. Pershing Square Foundation, Ackman's philanthropic organization, had pledged more than $25 million since 2007 to help poverty-racked Newark improve schooling, enhance parks and find jobs for ex-convicts.
Now, in Manhattan's Mandarin Oriental ballroom, Newark's 43-year-old Democratic mayor salutes one of the titans of finance whom he has persuaded to help revive his city - though some have never set foot there.
"The room is packed," recalls Joseph Shenker, chairman of the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell. "You had every major hedge-fund, private-equity person."
Booker holds the guests spellbound, using the Hebrew phrase "tikkun olam" - "fixing the world" - to describe Ackman's generosity. It's a notion Booker has adapted to Newark, and the moneyed elite are buying in.
"One of the things Cory Booker has done is turned Newark into a national cause," says Shenker, 55, who remembers watching TV footage of the 1967 riots there that left 26 dead. "He has made it a serious issue for the United States."
Midway through his second four-year term, Booker has raised more than $250 million in donations and pledges for a city whose previous three mayors were convicted of or pleaded guilty to felonies after leaving office.
Benefactors view Booker as somebody they can work with after decades of corruption, says Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. Mining a network stretching back to Stanford University and Yale Law School, the mayor is promoting Newark as a lower-cost alternative to New York and overseeing nonprofit groups as they fund everything from security cameras to midnight basketball tournaments.
Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg pledged $100 million for education to aid a school system that's been under state control since 1995 and where just 61 percent of students graduate from high school. The Silicon Valley billionaire chose Booker's cause of school reform in 2010 after meeting him at the Allen & Co. conference in Sun Valley, Idaho.
Billionaires Nicolas Berggruen, founder of investment firm Berggruen Holdings, and Leon Cooperman, chief executive of the New York-based investment partnership Omega Advisors, are among others funding what Booker pitches as "a city of emergent hope."
Developers are responding by turning long-vacant land into corporate headquarters, factories and housing, with more than $700 million invested.
"The feeling is, if we can turn Newark around, we can turn anything around," Sabato says.
Booker's money and clout have not yet resolved the social ills that plague his city of 277,000, where 86 percent of residents are black or Hispanic.
Newark suffers from the 10th-highest poverty rate among major U.S. cities, and crime has remained stubbornly resistant. In 2012, through Sept. 2, murder was down 17 percent from a year earlier, but rape had soared 29 percent.
"Has the city turned around?" asks Brad Tuttle, author of "How Newark Became Newark: The Rise, Fall and Rebirth of an American City." "Everybody would say no."
On Oct. 2, Gov. Chris Christie (R) said he will order spending cuts in Newark because the city has yet to pass a budget for the year that began Jan. 1. Booker proposed a spending plan in February. The city council has not approved it.
Booker, speaking on his mobile phone as his security team drives him to an appointment in April, ticks off accomplishments.
"The first two new hotels are downtown in 40 years," he says. "The first office towers are going up in 20 years."
Construction began in February on Teachers Village, a $150 million complex featuring charter schools, housing and shopping, the work of architect Richard Meier, the Newark native who designed Los Angeles's Getty Center.
Berggruen and Goldman Sachs Group's Urban Investment Group provided financial backing. Panasonic Corp. of North America, aided by $102 million in state tax relief, broke ground on headquarters in May. Prudential Financial scored a $210 million state tax break for the $444 million tower it plans to open by 2014.
The state, which has reduced budget grants to distressed cities since Christie took office in 2010, helped Newark last year with $32 million in aid. Booker says such gifts will not be needed as Newark's tax base broadens.
"The legacy I want to leave is to be the first time in a generation that the city's not dependent on big lump-sum government payments," he has said.
Ackman likens the mayor's job to the task his hedge fund, Pershing Square Capital Management, took on as majority shareholder of J.C. Penney.
"A lot of what I do for a living is finding really super-talented people to step into a turnaround situation and make it better," he says. "Newark's a turnaround."
Return to Newark
A once-great hub for leather, plastic and chemicals, Newark fell into decay after World War II. Booker, born in 1969 to activist parents, grew up in nearby Harrington Park - a town so white that his father, Cary, described himself, his wife, Carolyn, and their two sons as "four raisins in a tub of vanilla ice cream."
But the family worshiped at an AME Zion church in Newark. One Sunday, young Cory spotted a man painting a house and asked his father whether they could paint the whole ugly city.
Booker won an athletic scholarship to Stanford, where he was an all-American football tight end. He earned a bachelor's degree in political science and a master's in sociology.
"It occurred to everybody at Stanford: This guy is going to the top," recalls Jody Maxmin, a professor of arts and classics. Stanford's alumni association honored him for tutoring and peer counseling. "He just lifted everybody up, including me," Maxmin says.
Booker was a Rhodes scholar at the University of Oxford before enrolling at Yale Law School. He accepted a fellowship to study community activism in Newark, trying his hand at fixing the town where he had worshiped as a child.
He was elected to the city council at 29, two years after Time magazine ranked Newark as America's most dangerous city. He made headlines at 30 by living in a tent for 10 days to agitate for policing of violence-prone apartments.
In 2006, he was elected mayor. Four years later, he faced an $83 million deficit in a $605 million spending plan. He raised property taxes 16 percent, sold 16 city-owned buildings and eliminated about 800 jobs, including 167 police officers.
Moody's Investors Service cut Newark's credit rating one step, to A3, that December, the fourth-lowest investment-grade level. The gloom stretched into 2011, when violent crime rose 12 percent and the year's 90 homicides totaled four more than in 2010.
Still, Booker enjoyed a knack for good press. Returning to his apartment one night in April, he saw flames next door and rushed in to rescue his 47-year-old neighbor. He described the feat on Twitter en route to the hospital for treatment of smoke inhalation and minor burns.
Such public relations antics rile state Sen. Ronald L. Rice, the Democrat whom Booker defeated in 2006. Booker's interest lies in self-promotion, Rice says, not city hall.
"If we have a homicide, he's out of town tweeting about it so people get the impression he's still here," Rice says. "Then he pops in for a ribbon cutting, and he's gone."
'Personal touch'
Booker, a single man who lives on the top floor of a three-family rental, reaches across party lines.
"He has the personal touch, whether he's communicating with 1 million Twitter followers or with the financial industry," says Margie Omero, a Washington-based Democratic strategist.
Julian Robertson, 80, whose Tiger Management was among the most successful hedge funds in the 1990s, backs Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney. That did not stop him from giving the maximum $26,000 to the campaign fund for Booker and his city council allies.
Media mogul Oprah Winfrey and director Steven Spielberg were among others who contributed that amount in 2010, helping Booker raise $7 million and win a second mayoral term.
"From the day I met him, I thought he would be our first black president, but I was wrong," says Whitney Tilson, who co-founded both New York-based hedge fund T2 Partners and Democrats for Education Reform, which advocates for charter schools and higher standards in public classrooms. "He'll be our second."
Booker says he will decide early next year whether to challenge Christie in 2013.
"He's certainly going to run for higher office," Sabato says. "He is salesman of the year in politics."
Booker's wooing of Wall Street can land him in trouble. He infuriated Democrats in May when he said on "Meet the Press" that he wasn't "about to sit here and indict private equity." Weeks earlier, a steelworker in an campaign ad for President Obama had described Bain Capital, the foundation of Romney's personal fortune, as a vampire.
Booker responded to his gaffe with a four-minute YouTube video lauding the president.
"He was out of line," says Bob Shrum, the Democratic strategist who helped Edward M. Kennedy defeat Romney in Massachusetts's 1994 U.S. Senate race. Booker will not repeat the misstep, Shrum says.
Booker stayed on script when he took the stage at the Democratic convention, espousing affordable health care, good-paying jobs and same-sex marriage. The Republican Party, he said, favors the fortunate few. "We choose inclusion," he roared, as delegates erupted in applause.
Shrum imagines Booker aiming for the governor's office, then a possible White House run.
"It could happen very fast," he says. "It happened with Obama."
The high-profile New Jersey mayor has already cultivated an enviable calling card: his ability to charm Wall Street.
The full version of this Bloomberg Markets article appears in the magazine's November issue.
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October 28, 2012 Sunday 8:12 PM EST
Same old culture wars
BYLINE: Kathleen Parker
SECTION: Editorial; Pg. A17
LENGTH: 734 words
We shouldn't be talking about this silliness - Big Bird, "bulls----er" or a girl's "first time."
We should be talking about The Issues, we keep telling ourselves. But in the waning days of the presidential campaign, these are the issues - binders full of cultural issues that continue to divide us and by which Barack Obama hopes to win reelection.
It is no accident that the war of competing economic theories has devolved into the same old culture war, beginning with the debate about the contraception mandate under the Affordable Care Act. Ever since, the Obama campaign has strategically tried to push the Republican Party and Mitt Romney into a corner by advancing the war-on-women narrative.
That Obama has had ample help from certain outspoken players (Missouri and Indiana Senate candidates Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock, respectively, to name the most notorious) has only made Romney's challenges greater. But the war against women has always been a red herring.
Random comments by a couple of outliers provided wind for Obama's sails. Akin's remarks, that women don't get pregnant when "legitimately" raped, was just idiotic and immediately dismissed by Republican Party leadership, including Romney. Yet Mourdock's view, that a child conceived by rape is God's will, deserves some perspective.
Obviously, he wasn't endorsing rape. He apparently belongs to that sliver of pro-lifers who insist that even babies conceived of rape are worthy of protection. They, too, are God's children.
Although most Americans, including those who are enthusiastically pro-life, support exemptions for rape and incest, Mourdock's argument is not nonsensical. If life begins at conception, then one life is not worth less than another owing to the circumstances of creation. The embryo bears no blame.
Given this context, Mourdock's argument is logical.
But we bend logic as needed. We weigh pros and cons and make difficult choices. Thus, most would resolve Mourdock's Muddle as follows: Given the horror of rape and the consequences for the woman, we find for the woman. It is no good solution, certainly not for the gestating human, but it is acceptable to most. It is also certainly not a decision one should make for another.
Mourdock may have been indelicate in stating his position, but he is hardly a monster for believing that the definition of life, like the definition of rape, should not be parsed. As to Romney's choice to not comment, why would he? This is the ultimate no-win - and the answer is meaningless except as a political point, which perhaps explains the media's insistence on a response.
Romney's position on the subject is clear. He supports exceptions for rape and incest. He also said early in the primary season: "Contraception, it's working just fine. Just leave it alone."
So why are we still talking about it? This pseudo-debate is, as Joe Biden would put it, "malarkey." Just possibly, a child could recognize the "bulls----er" aspect to this non-issue, to borrow the phrasing of Obama during a recent Rolling Stone interview.
The contraception issue never would have come up but for Obama's decision to force the hand of the Catholic Church. By placing religious institutions in the position of having to provide health insurance to pay for contraception as well as sterilization, which, agree or not, are against church teaching, Obama created the conversation.
Some church leaders support Obama's position, but not the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Nor do many religious institutions, including the University of Notre Dame, that have sued the Obama administration on First Amendment grounds.
Obama reasoned correctly that he had the majority with him, especially among women and youth, for many of whom these debates seem antiquated to not-applicable. Hence, a new Obama ad by the creator and star of HBO's "Girls," Lena Dunham, in which she compares voting for the first time (for a man who understands women) to, you know, "doing it" for the first time. It's . . . what it is: a message to young women that losing one's virginity is top of the bucket list, but first you gotta vote for the president who will give you free contraception.
The same ol' culture wars. But, of course, women have had access to birth control for decades, and no one is trying to take it away. Anyone who suggests otherwise may have been spending too much time with Big Bird.
kathleenparker@washpost.com
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October 28, 2012 Sunday 8:12 PM EST
The stealth surrogate campaign
BYLINE: Dana Milbank
SECTION: Editorial; Pg. A15
LENGTH: 743 words
How to explain this budding "bromance," as first lady Michelle Obama puts it, between her husband and Bill Clinton?
The 44th president and the 42nd president are indeed having a whirlwind affair in the closing days of the campaign. President Obama takes Clinton on three campaign stops next this week, stopping in Orlando, Youngstown, Ohio, and Northern Virginia to kick off the last full week of the race.
An ad Clinton cut, defending Obama against all "the stuff some folks are saying," is set to run in those states and in Nevada, Colorado and Iowa. Since their embrace on the stage of the Democratic convention last month after the former president's rousing speech, Clinton has been stumping and fundraising across the land for the man he once accused of peddling a "fairy tale" to the American public.
Sen. John McCain floated a theory last week about the bromance. The Arizona Republican, in a conference call for the Romney campaign Tuesday, told reporters that there are "some that think this may have a lot to do with 2016 and the president's wife, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Of course, I would never suspicion such a thing, but there are some real jerks around who think that might be the case."
I am one of those jerks. I don't subscribe to the prevailing theory that Clinton's efforts to boost Obama are about solidifying his own legacy. Clinton is a shrewd strategist, and he surely must have grasped that it is highly unlikely that Hillary Clinton, or any other Democrat, will win in 2016 if Obama does not win in 2012.
This is, as Obama likes to say in another context, just a matter of math. By just about all accounts, the U.S. economy will be dramatically stronger in 2016 than it is today, and an economy growing at a healthy clip almost always means victory for the incumbent party - whichever party that is.
On Friday, the Commerce Department reported that gross domestic product in the third quarter grew at a 2 percent annual rate, up from 1.3 percent in the second quarter. That's still sluggish, but in four years, the economy should be well into its long-delayed expansion. The Office of Management and Budget projects the economy will be growing in 2016 at an annual rate of 4 percent after inflation (with unemployment at 6 percent and falling.) The Congressional Budget Office has forecast real GDP growth of 4 percent. The private-sector Blue Chip Consensus forecast has real GDP growing at 2.9 percent.
Mitt Romney's economists are evidently making similar assumptions. They argue that under the GOP challenger's proposals, the recovery "will align with the average gains of similar past recoveries," resulting in 12 million jobs created by the end of 2016. As The Post's Glenn Kessler has pointed out, private forecasters expect the economy to add that number of jobs with or without Romney's policies.
Of course, any number of unknowns - wars abroad or debt crises at home - could make 2016 look very different. But from here it appears that if the Democrats can squeak through this election, a hostile one for the incumbent party, they will have a much easier time of it in 2016. Alternatively, if Republicans win now, their policies will get credit for the economic expansion, and they will cruise to victory in 2016.
Hillary Clinton continues to deny interest in another run, but she is already inching away from a similar vow that she would not serve as secretary of state in a second Obama term. "A lot of people have talked to me about staying," she told the Wall Street Journal in a recent interview.
This could give her time to repair any damage to her reputation caused by security lapses that led to the death of the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans. Her longtime aide in charge of protecting her image, Philippe Reines, has engaged in a series of high-profile squabbles with media outlets recently, which is more suggestive of an aspiring candidate than of a retiring diplomat.
Her campaign theme is already being prepared by her husband, who is establishing that the expansion of the next four years will be attributable to Clintonian methods. "We created 22 million new jobs and turned deficits into surpluses," Clinton says in his new ad for Obama. "President Obama's got it right. We should invest in the middle class, education and innovation, and pay down our debt with spending restraint and asking the wealthy to pay a little more. Sound familiar?"
Suspiciously.
danamilbank@washpost.com
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The Fix
October 28, 2012 Sunday 6:09 PM EST
Gingrich: Obama voted to allow 'killing babies in the eighth and ninth month'
BYLINE: Aaron Blake
LENGTH: 285 words
Newt Gingrich launched a harsh counter-attack on the issue of abortion on Sunday, saying President Obama voted as a state senator to allow "killing babies in the eighth and ninth month."
Gingrich was asked on ABC's "This Week" about Indiana GOP Senate candidate Richard Mourdock's comments about how pregnancy from rape can be something that "God intended." Gingrich said that's what "every Catholic and every fundamentalist in the country believes."
He then turned to Obama's record on abortion - something Mitt Romney's campaign hasn't spent much time attacking - and pointed out that Obama as a state legislator voted against banning late-term abortion.
"The radical on abortion is Obama, who as a state senator voted three times in favor of allowing doctors to kill babies in the eighth and ninth month who were born, having survived late-term abortion," Gingrich said, "and the Democratic Party platform, which says you should pay with your tax money for late-term abortion."
Gingrich said the Mourdock controversy is "nonsense."
"Every candidate I know, every decent American I know condemns rape. OK?" Gingrich said. "So why can't people like (Obama adviser) Stephanie Cutter get over it? We all condemn rape. Now let's talk about whether we also condemn killing babies in the eighth and ninth month."
Earlier on the show, Cutter attacked Romney for not more forcefully repudiating Mourdock's comments and not standing up to the extreme wing of the GOP.
"Just this past week we saw it, when he wouldn't take down his ad for Richard Mourdock, who had - you know, it's a now famous comment that it's God's will if a woman gets pregnant through rape," Cutter said. "He's not willing to stand up when it matters. "
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October 28, 2012 Sunday
Met 2 Edition
SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A01
LENGTH: 88 words
Storm alters plans
After East Coast rallies, both campaigns scrambled to make schedule changes just 10 days before the election. A4
Out of context
A close look at an Obama campaign ad attacking Romney's remarks on troop levels in Iraq and Afghanistan. Fact Checker, A4
Ballot bedlam
Voters in D.C. and Maryland rush to early-voting sites only to find long lines and overwhelmed election officials. C1
on washingtonpost.com
6To see comprehensive and continuing coverage of the 2012 presidential election, go to washingtonpost.com/politics.
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October 28, 2012 Sunday
Met 2 Edition
Putting an Obama ad on troops into context
BYLINE: Glenn Kessler
SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A04
LENGTH: 845 words
"President Obama ended the Iraq War . . . Mitt Romney would have left 30,000 troops there . . . and called bringing them home 'tragic.' Obama's brought 30,000 soldiers back from Afghanistan. And has a responsible plan to end the war. Romney calls it Obama's 'biggest mistake.'â[#x20ac][#x2c6]"
- Voiceover from a new Obama campaign television ad
On the eve of last week's final presidential debate - which focused on foreign policy - the Obama campaign released a new television ad that uses Mitt Romney's words to indict how he would have handled the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In fact, the president echoed some of those claims during the debate, earning a rebuttal from Romney:
"What I would not have had done was left 10,000 troops in Iraq that would tie us down. And that certainly would not help us in the Middle East."
- Obama
"I'm sorry, there was an effort on the part of the president to have a status of forces agreement, and I concurred in that, and said that we should have some number of troops that stayed on. That was something I concurred with."
- Romney
Both campaigns have often taken their opponent's words out of context. Is that the case here as well?
The Facts
Ending the war in Iraq was a central Obama campaign promise in the 2008 election. But Romney is correct that the Obama administration tried to negotiate a "status of forces agreement" (SOFA) with the Iraqi government that would have allowed the United States to keep troops in Iraq after an earlier agreement reached by the Bush administration lapsed at the end of 2011.
The two sides could not reach agreement on immunity for U.S. troops, but up until the end, the administration was willing to keep 3,000 to 4,000 troops in Iraq. That's less than 10,000, but news reports at the time said that military commanders had wanted to keep 14,000 to 18,000 troops in Iraq.
It's unclear how hard Obama pressed for a deal; he had only two conversations with the Iraqi president, leaving most of the negotiations to Vice President Biden.
When Obama announced he was withdrawing all U.S. troops after he failed to reach a new SOFA deal with the Iraqis, Romney criticized the outcome of the negotiations:
"It is my view that the withdrawal of all of our troops from Iraq by the end of this year is an enormous mistake and failing by the Obama administration. The precipitous withdrawal is unfortunate - it's more than unfortunate, I think it's tragic. It puts at risk many of the victories that were hard won by the men and women who served there."
In other words, the phrase "tragic" referred to the failure to not reach a deal - not bringing the troops home.
Here's how Romney put it on Fox News Sunday on Dec. 18:
"We're, of course, very happy to see our troops come out. But I think you're going to see another lesson learned. I think we're going to find that this president, by not putting in place a status in forces agreement with the Iraqi leadership, has pulled our troops out in a precipitous way and we should have left 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 personnel there to help transition to the Iraqis' own military capabilities. I'm very concerned in this setting. I hope it works out. But I'm concerned."
That's where the "30,000 troops" comes from - it was an upper-range figure. In other interviews, Romney also said he would have preferred to have left 10,000 to 30,000 troops in Iraq. The mid-range of that point, of course, is what military commanders wanted.
In other words, Obama has spun a diplomatic failure - an inability to reach a deal with Iraq - into a "mission accomplished" talking point.
During the debate, in fact, Obama made a dubious claim that having any troops in Iraq "would not help us in the Middle East."
Since the departure of U.S. troops, the United States has lost leverage in Iraq. For instance, Iran uses Iraqi airspace and convoys on the ground to ferry arms and military equipment to the beleaguered regime in Syria - a government that Obama says must fall.
As for Afghanistan, here again we have another out-of-context quote. The ad makes it appear as if Romney is criticizing the plan to withdraw U.S. forces by 2014, calling it Obama's "biggest mistake."
Actually, in a pair of interviews Romney referred to Obama's "biggest mistakes," which included announcing dates when the surge would end and when combat operations would end.
Those are tactical questions. Critics say announcing a withdrawal date simply signals to insurgents how long they have to hang in there before the Americans leave; supporters say it motivates the Afghan government to improve its forces. But in any case it is not a criticism of ending the war.
Romney has at times been vague as to whether he would prefer fighting to continue past 2014, but in Monday's debate he said he agreed with the current plan: "We're going to be finished by 2014, and when I'm president, we'll make sure we bring our troops out by the end of 2014."
The Pinocchio Test
The Obama campaign frequently cries foul when it believes Romney has twisted Obama's words. But here the Obama campaign, in a negative way, gives as good as it gets.
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Betting onCory Booker
BYLINE: Elise Young | Bloomberg Markets
SECTION: BUSINESS; Pg. G03
LENGTH: 1629 words
Cory Booker strides to the lectern at a June reception honoring hedge-fund founder Bill Ackman. Pershing Square Foundation, Ackman's philanthropic organization, had pledged more than $25 million since 2007 to help poverty-racked Newark improve schooling, enhance parks and find jobs for ex-convicts.
Now, in Manhattan's Mandarin Oriental ballroom, Newark's 43-year-old Democratic mayor salutes one of the titans of finance whom he has persuaded to help revive his city - though some have never set foot there.
"The room is packed," recalls Joseph Shenker, chairman of the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell. "You had every major hedge-fund, private-equity person."
Booker holds the guests spellbound, using the Hebrew phrase "tikkun olam" - "fixing the world" - to describe Ackman's generosity. It's a notion Booker has adapted to Newark, and the moneyed elite are buying in.
"One of the things Cory Booker has done is turned Newark into a national cause," says Shenker, 55, who remembers watching TV footage of the 1967 riots there that left 26 dead. "He has made it a serious issue for the United States."
Midway through his second four-year term, Booker has raised more than $250 million in donations and pledges for a city whose previous three mayors were convicted of or pleaded guilty to felonies after leaving office.
Benefactors view Booker as somebody they can work with after decades of corruption, says Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. Mining a network stretching back to Stanford University and Yale Law School, the mayor is promoting Newark as a lower-cost alternative to New York and overseeing nonprofit groups as they fund everything from security cameras to midnight basketball tournaments.
Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg pledged $100 million for education to aid a school system that's been under state control since 1995 and where just 61 percent of students graduate from high school. The Silicon Valley billionaire chose Booker's cause of school reform in 2010 after meeting him at the Allen & Co. conference in Sun Valley, Idaho.
Billionaires Nicolas Berggruen, founder of investment firm Berggruen Holdings, and Leon Cooperman, chief executive of the New York-based investment partnership Omega Advisors, are among others funding what Booker pitches as "a city of emergent hope."
Developers are responding by turning long-vacant land into corporate headquarters, factories and housing, with more than $700 million invested.
"The feeling is, if we can turn Newark around, we can turn anything around," Sabato says.
Booker's money and clout have not yet resolved the social ills that plague his city of 277,000, where 86 percent of residents are black or Hispanic.
Newark suffers from the 10th-highest poverty rate among major U.S. cities, and crime has remained stubbornly resistant. In 2012, through Sept. 2, murder was down 17 percent from a year earlier, but rape had soared 29 percent.
"Has the city turned around?" asks Brad Tuttle, author of "How Newark Became Newark: The Rise, Fall and Rebirth of an American City." "Everybody would say no."
On Oct. 2, Gov. Chris Christie (R) said he will order spending cuts in Newark because the city has yet to pass a budget for the year that began Jan. 1. Booker proposed a spending plan in February. The city council has not approved it.
Booker, speaking on his mobile phone as his security team drives him to an appointment in April, ticks off accomplishments.
"The first two new hotels are downtown in 40 years," he says. "The first office towers are going up in 20 years."
Construction began in February on Teachers Village, a $150 million complex featuring charter schools, housing and shopping, the work of architect Richard Meier, the Newark native who designed Los Angeles's Getty Center.
Berggruen and Goldman Sachs Group's Urban Investment Group provided financial backing. Panasonic Corp. of North America, aided by $102 million in state tax relief, broke ground on headquarters in May. Prudential Financial scored a $210 million state tax break for the $444 million tower it plans to open by 2014.
The state, which has reduced budget grants to distressed cities since Christie took office in 2010, helped Newark last year with $32 million in aid. Booker says such gifts will not be needed as Newark's tax base broadens.
"The legacy I want to leave is to be the first time in a generation that the city's not dependent on big lump-sum government payments," he has said.
Ackman likens the mayor's job to the task his hedge fund, Pershing Square Capital Management, took on as majority shareholder of J.C. Penney.
"A lot of what I do for a living is finding really super-talented people to step into a turnaround situation and make it better," he says. "Newark's a turnaround."
Return to Newark
A once-great hub for leather, plastic and chemicals, Newark fell into decay after World War II. Booker, born in 1969 to activist parents, grew up in nearby Harrington Park - a town so white that his father, Cary, described himself, his wife, Carolyn, and their two sons as "four raisins in a tub of vanilla ice cream."
But the family worshiped at an AME Zion church in Newark. One Sunday, young Cory spotted a man painting a house and asked his father whether they could paint the whole ugly city.
Booker won an athletic scholarship to Stanford, where he was an all-American football tight end. He earned a bachelor's degree in political science and a master's in sociology.
"It occurred to everybody at Stanford: This guy is going to the top," recalls Jody Maxmin, a professor of arts and classics. Stanford's alumni association honored him for tutoring and peer counseling. "He just lifted everybody up, including me," Maxmin says.
Booker was a Rhodes scholar at the University of Oxford before enrolling at Yale Law School. He accepted a fellowship to study community activism in Newark, trying his hand at fixing the town where he had worshiped as a child.
He was elected to the city council at 29, two years after Time magazine ranked Newark as America's most dangerous city. He made headlines at 30 by living in a tent for 10 days to agitate for policing of violence-prone apartments.
In 2006, he was elected mayor. Four years later, he faced an $83 million deficit in a $605 million spending plan. He raised property taxes 16 percent, sold 16 city-owned buildings and eliminated about 800 jobs, including 167 police officers.
Moody's Investors Service cut Newark's credit rating one step, to A3, that December, the fourth-lowest investment-grade level. The gloom stretched into 2011, when violent crime rose 12 percent and the year's 90 homicides totaled four more than in 2010.
Still, Booker enjoyed a knack for good press. Returning to his apartment one night in April, he saw flames next door and rushed in to rescue his 47-year-old neighbor. He described the feat on Twitter en route to the hospital for treatment of smoke inhalation and minor burns.
Such public relations antics rile state Sen. Ronald L. Rice, the Democrat whom Booker defeated in 2006. Booker's interest lies in self-promotion, Rice says, not city hall.
"If we have a homicide, he's out of town tweeting about it so people get the impression he's still here," Rice says. "Then he pops in for a ribbon cutting, and he's gone."
'Personal touch'
Booker, a single man who lives on the top floor of a three-family rental, reaches across party lines.
"He has the personal touch, whether he's communicating with 1 million Twitter followers or with the financial industry," says Margie Omero, a Washington-based Democratic strategist.
Julian Robertson, 80, whose Tiger Management was among the most successful hedge funds in the 1990s, backs Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney. That did not stop him from giving the maximum $26,000 to the campaign fund for Booker and his city council allies.
Media mogul Oprah Winfrey and director Steven Spielberg were among others who contributed that amount in 2010, helping Booker raise $7 million and win a second mayoral term.
"From the day I met him, I thought he would be our first black president, but I was wrong," says Whitney Tilson, who co-founded both New York-based hedge fund T2 Partners and Democrats for Education Reform, which advocates for charter schools and higher standards in public classrooms. "He'll be our second."
Booker says he will decide early next year whether to challenge Christie in 2013.
"He's certainly going to run for higher office," Sabato says. "He is salesman of the year in politics."
Booker's wooing of Wall Street can land him in trouble. He infuriated Democrats in May when he said on "Meet the Press" that he wasn't "about to sit here and indict private equity." Weeks earlier, a steelworker in an campaign ad for President Obama had described Bain Capital, the foundation of Romney's personal fortune, as a vampire.
Booker responded to his gaffe with a four-minute YouTube video lauding the president.
"He was out of line," says Bob Shrum, the Democratic strategist who helped Edward M. Kennedy defeat Romney in Massachusetts's 1994 U.S. Senate race. Booker will not repeat the misstep, Shrum says.
Booker stayed on script when he took the stage at the Democratic convention, espousing affordable health care, good-paying jobs and same-sex marriage. The Republican Party, he said, favors the fortunate few. "We choose inclusion," he roared, as delegates erupted in applause.
Shrum imagines Booker aiming for the governor's office, then a possible White House run.
"It could happen very fast," he says. "It happened with Obama."
The high-profile New Jersey mayor has already cultivated an enviable calling card: his ability to charm Wall Street.
The full version of this Bloomberg Markets article appears in the magazine's November issue.
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October 28, 2012 Sunday
Regional Edition
Same old culture wars
BYLINE: Kathleen Parker
SECTION: EDITORIAL COPY; Pg. A17
LENGTH: 734 words
We shouldn't be talking about this silliness - Big Bird, "bulls----er" or a girl's "first time."
We should be talking about The Issues, we keep telling ourselves. But in the waning days of the presidential campaign, these are the issues - binders full of cultural issues that continue to divide us and by which Barack Obama hopes to win reelection.
It is no accident that the war of competing economic theories has devolved into the same old culture war, beginning with the debate about the contraception mandate under the Affordable Care Act. Ever since, the Obama campaign has strategically tried to push the Republican Party and Mitt Romney into a corner by advancing the war-on-women narrative.
That Obama has had ample help from certain outspoken players (Missouri and Indiana Senate candidates Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock, respectively, to name the most notorious) has only made Romney's challenges greater. But the war against women has always been a red herring.
Random comments by a couple of outliers provided wind for Obama's sails. Akin's remarks, that women don't get pregnant when "legitimately" raped, was just idiotic and immediately dismissed by Republican Party leadership, including Romney. Yet Mourdock's view, that a child conceived by rape is God's will, deserves some perspective.
Obviously, he wasn't endorsing rape. He apparently belongs to that sliver of pro-lifers who insist that even babies conceived of rape are worthy of protection. They, too, are God's children.
Although most Americans, including those who are enthusiastically pro-life, support exemptions for rape and incest, Mourdock's argument is not nonsensical. If life begins at conception, then one life is not worth less than another owing to the circumstances of creation. The embryo bears no blame.
Given this context, Mourdock's argument is logical.
But we bend logic as needed. We weigh pros and cons and make difficult choices. Thus, most would resolve Mourdock's Muddle as follows: Given the horror of rape and the consequences for the woman, we find for the woman. It is no good solution, certainly not for the gestating human, but it is acceptable to most. It is also certainly not a decision one should make for another.
Mourdock may have been indelicate in stating his position, but he is hardly a monster for believing that the definition of life, like the definition of rape, should not be parsed. As to Romney's choice to not comment, why would he? This is the ultimate no-win - and the answer is meaningless except as a political point, which perhaps explains the media's insistence on a response.
Romney's position on the subject is clear. He supports exceptions for rape and incest. He also said early in the primary season: "Contraception, it's working just fine. Just leave it alone."
So why are we still talking about it? This pseudo-debate is, as Joe Biden would put it, "malarkey." Just possibly, a child could recognize the "bulls----er" aspect to this non-issue, to borrow the phrasing of Obama during a recent Rolling Stone interview.
The contraception issue never would have come up but for Obama's decision to force the hand of the Catholic Church. By placing religious institutions in the position of having to provide health insurance to pay for contraception as well as sterilization, which, agree or not, are against church teaching, Obama created the conversation.
Some church leaders support Obama's position, but not the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Nor do many religious institutions, including the University of Notre Dame, that have sued the Obama administration on First Amendment grounds.
Obama reasoned correctly that he had the majority with him, especially among women and youth, for many of whom these debates seem antiquated to not-applicable. Hence, a new Obama ad by the creator and star of HBO's "Girls," Lena Dunham, in which she compares voting for the first time (for a man who understands women) to, you know, "doing it" for the first time. It's . . . what it is: a message to young women that losing one's virginity is top of the bucket list, but first you gotta vote for the president who will give you free contraception.
The same ol' culture wars. But, of course, women have had access to birth control for decades, and no one is trying to take it away. Anyone who suggests otherwise may have been spending too much time with Big Bird.
kathleenparker@washpost.com
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The Washington Post
October 28, 2012 Sunday
Regional Edition
The stealth surrogate campaign
BYLINE: Dana Milbank
SECTION: EDITORIAL COPY; Pg. A15
LENGTH: 743 words
How to explain this budding "bromance," as first lady Michelle Obama puts it, between her husband and Bill Clinton?
The 44th president and the 42nd president are indeed having a whirlwind affair in the closing days of the campaign. President Obama takes Clinton on three campaign stops next this week, stopping in Orlando, Youngstown, Ohio, and Northern Virginia to kick off the last full week of the race.
An ad Clinton cut, defending Obama against all "the stuff some folks are saying," is set to run in those states and in Nevada, Colorado and Iowa. Since their embrace on the stage of the Democratic convention last month after the former president's rousing speech, Clinton has been stumping and fundraising across the land for the man he once accused of peddling a "fairy tale" to the American public.
Sen. John McCain floated a theory last week about the bromance. The Arizona Republican, in a conference call for the Romney campaign Tuesday, told reporters that there are "some that think this may have a lot to do with 2016 and the president's wife, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Of course, I would never suspicion such a thing, but there are some real jerks around who think that might be the case."
I am one of those jerks. I don't subscribe to the prevailing theory that Clinton's efforts to boost Obama are about solidifying his own legacy. Clinton is a shrewd strategist, and he surely must have grasped that it is highly unlikely that Hillary Clinton, or any other Democrat, will win in 2016 if Obama does not win in 2012.
This is, as Obama likes to say in another context, just a matter of math. By just about all accounts, the U.S. economy will be dramatically stronger in 2016 than it is today, and an economy growing at a healthy clip almost always means victory for the incumbent party - whichever party that is.
On Friday, the Commerce Department reported that gross domestic product in the third quarter grew at a 2 percent annual rate, up from 1.3 percent in the second quarter. That's still sluggish, but in four years, the economy should be well into its long-delayed expansion. The Office of Management and Budget projects the economy will be growing in 2016 at an annual rate of 4 percent after inflation (with unemployment at 6 percent and falling.) The Congressional Budget Office has forecast real GDP growth of 4 percent. The private-sector Blue Chip Consensus forecast has real GDP growing at 2.9 percent.
Mitt Romney's economists are evidently making similar assumptions. They argue that under the GOP challenger's proposals, the recovery "will align with the average gains of similar past recoveries," resulting in 12 million jobs created by the end of 2016. As The Post's Glenn Kessler has pointed out, private forecasters expect the economy to add that number of jobs with or without Romney's policies.
Of course, any number of unknowns - wars abroad or debt crises at home - could make 2016 look very different. But from here it appears that if the Democrats can squeak through this election, a hostile one for the incumbent party, they will have a much easier time of it in 2016. Alternatively, if Republicans win now, their policies will get credit for the economic expansion, and they will cruise to victory in 2016.
Hillary Clinton continues to deny interest in another run, but she is already inching away from a similar vow that she would not serve as secretary of state in a second Obama term. "A lot of people have talked to me about staying," she told the Wall Street Journal in a recent interview.
This could give her time to repair any damage to her reputation caused by security lapses that led to the death of the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans. Her longtime aide in charge of protecting her image, Philippe Reines, has engaged in a series of high-profile squabbles with media outlets recently, which is more suggestive of an aspiring candidate than of a retiring diplomat.
Her campaign theme is already being prepared by her husband, who is establishing that the expansion of the next four years will be attributable to Clintonian methods. "We created 22 million new jobs and turned deficits into surpluses," Clinton says in his new ad for Obama. "President Obama's got it right. We should invest in the middle class, education and innovation, and pay down our debt with spending restraint and asking the wealthy to pay a little more. Sound familiar?"
Suspiciously.
danamilbank@washpost.com
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The New York Times
October 27, 2012 Saturday
Late Edition - Final
4 Powerful Messages That Stand Out in a Sea of Advertisements
BYLINE: By JEREMY W. PETERS
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; THE AD CAMPAIGN; Pg. 14
LENGTH: 525 words
The number of presidential campaign ads that ran across the country in the last week was a staggering 80,000.
It's going to be like that -- and possibly much worse -- through Election Day. Given the overwhelming volume of political advertising, any single ad may leave little beyond a fleeting impression with voters.
And for smaller political action groups -- the not-so-super ''super PACs'' -- getting their message across can be downright impossible.
But these groups have created some of the election's most striking ads. Here are four that stand out.
''PRESIDENT OBAMA'S FORM LETTERS'' This advertisement from Veterans for a Strong America has run only in military-heavy Norfolk, Va., but it is one of the most emotionally charged of the campaign so far. It features the mother of a member of the Navy SEALs from the famed ''Team Six'' who was killed when his helicopter was shot down over Afghanistan.
She explains that after her son died, she received not a personal condolence letter from the president, but a ''form letter.'' Her voice indignant, she says, ''A family sacrifices their child, and you choose to send a form letter to them?''
''BERNIE'' The Republican Jewish Coalition produced this ad, which is running in battleground states. It features Bernie Marcus, the founder of Home Depot, who offers a harsh indictment of Mr. Obama and his vision for the economy.
Echoing a critique common among Republicans, Mr. Marcus complains that Mr. Obama has been hostile to businesses. And he does not mince words. ''I see what's going on today, and I'm frightened to death,'' he said. Referring to when he opened his first store, he says, ''If the environment were the same, the same kind of business environment, we couldn't get past six stores.''
''VOTE'' The liberal group MoveOn.org reached out to some of its most famous fans to produce this ad, which is running in battleground states. Three actresses -- Scarlett Johansson, Eva Longoria and Kerry Washington -- make their own appeal and attack Mitt Romney and other Republicans for their positions on women's issues.
The ad is simply produced, using just a white backdrop. ''Mitt Romney's for ending funding to Planned Parenthood,'' Ms. Longoria says. Ms. Washington: ''He said he'd overturn Roe v. Wade.'' Ms. Johansson: ''We have Republicans trying to redefine rape.'' She adds: ''Vote for Barack Obama.''
''COMMANDER IN CHIEF'' The Truman National Security Project, a left-leaning pro-military organization, interviewed several veterans who oppose Mr. Romney for this swing-state ad. They offer spirited and stinging objections to Mr. Romney's decision not to mention the troops in his acceptance speech at the Republican convention.
''Do you have any idea how dangerous this world is?'' one asks, addressing the Republican nominee. Another mocks Mr. Romney's trip abroad this summer, and his early statement on the attack on the United States mission in Libya, which were widely criticized. ''You've shown us from London to Libya that you're in over your head.''
Asks another, ''Trust you as commander in chief?'' The answer, given by two different veterans: ''I don't think so.''
JEREMY W. PETERS
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/27/us/politics/4-powerful-messages-that-stand-out-in-a-sea-of-advertisements.html
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The New York Times
October 27, 2012 Saturday
Late Edition - Final
Consumers Push Economic Output To a Gain of 2%
BYLINE: By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1117 words
More optimistic consumers are propelling the economy forward, even as businesses pull back.
The pickup in spending by consumers, along with a burst of defense orders and a stronger housing market, helped the economy expand at an annual rate of 2 percent in the third quarter, a slightly better pace than had been anticipated, according to government data released Friday. In the previous quarter, economic growth had dipped to a rate of just 1.3 percent.
While growing more confident that the housing market has stabilized, households have been buoyed by lower energy prices, until recently a rising stock market and a slight improvement in employment. After years of shedding debt, there are also signs that consumers are starting to borrow again.
''Consumers are feeling wealthier so they are still out there spending,'' said Joshua Dennerlein, an economist with Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
Still, the pace of economic activity is short of what's needed to substantially reduce the unemployment rate, now at 7.8 percent and also well below the level of growth typical in this stage of a recovery after a sharp downturn.
What's more, fears are growing that the economy could slow again in the fourth quarter. Companies are preparing for the possibility of steep tax increases and sharp spending cuts if Congress cannot agree on a deal to reduce the deficit after the election, a combination of factors frequently referred to as the fiscal cliff.
In fact, a series of disappointing earnings reports from the nation's biggest companies this week, along with a handful of layoff announcements from corporate bellwethers, suggest businesses have already begun to retrench.
With the presidential campaign entering the final, desperate dash to Election Day, there was plenty of fodder in Friday's report for both candidates to cite as they spar over the direction of the economy.
For President Obama, the best news was that consumer spending grew at an annual rate of 2 percent last quarter, up from 1.5 percent in the second quarter, while residential investment increased at an annual rate of 14.4 percent, compared with 8.5 percent in the second quarter.
The business snapshot was much dimmer. The report showed that business investment fell 1.3 percent, a reversal from the 3.6 percent increase recorded in the second quarter, and a sign businesses are indeed clamping down on spending ahead of the fiscal cliff.
Inventories also were a notable factor with the summer drought in the Midwest shaving overall growth 0.4 percentage point as farm inventories dropped.
In addition to the uncertainty about government policy, corporate performance has been hurt by a recession in parts of Europe and weaker demand from China. Some economists fear that all these factors will keep a lid on growth in the final quarter of 2012 and the first quarter of next year.
The Commerce Department data showed exports decreased by 1.6 percent in the latest quarter, compared with a 5.3 percent increase in the second quarter. It was the first time exports had fallen since the first quarter of 2009, when the global economy was reeling from the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the ensuing financial crisis in the United States.
At a campaign appearance in Iowa, Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential candidate, termed Friday's report ''discouraging,'' adding, ''slow economic growth means slow job growth and declining take-home pay.''
The new figure, released by the Commerce Department, is the government's first estimate of growth in the third quarter. Slightly better than the 1.8 percent increase economists had been forecasting, it showed the nation rebounding to the growth it had in the first quarter of the year after a spring slump.
''The report highlights the fact that businesses have already begun to react to the looming fiscal cliff while consumers march steadily ahead,'' said Mr. Dennerlein. Noting the jump in residential spending, he added that the slowly recovering housing sector is a bright spot.
Housing values and stock values certainly contribute to consumers' sense of financial well-being. And despite the hesitancy among businesses, optimism among consumers continues to rise. A separate survey released Friday showed consumer sentiment at its highest level in more than five years, with the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan index rising to 82.6 in October from 78.3 in September, though it was lower than a preliminary October reading of 83.1 that had been previously reported.
To be sure, the latest growth in consumer spending was still well below the rate of increase in the first half of the last decade, when easy credit and a boom in home prices fueled growth in the 3 percent range.
But it was a crucial antidote to gloom pervading the business sector, experts said. ''We'd really be in trouble if consumer attitudes were deteriorating like business attitudes,'' said Nigel Gault, chief United States economist for IHS Global Insight.
Mr. Gault warned, however, that the outlook among consumers could erode if political leaders in Washington cannot break the deadlock over tax and budget policy. ''Consumers are not so forward-looking as businesses,'' Mr. Gault said. ''So there are two ways this can go. Either we clear up the uncertainty, or consumers start focusing on the fiscal cliff and we see consumer spending hurt as well.''
In recent days, government data and a steady drumbeat of disappointing earnings reports from corporate bellwethers have underscored the threat to the job market posed by softness in sectors more dependent on exports, like manufacturing and chemicals.
Dow Chemical and DuPont announced job cuts earlier in the week, and that list grew Friday with Newell Rubbermaid, which makes commercial and consumer products like Calphalon and Paper Mate pens, announcing plans to cut more than 1,900 workers, or just over 10 percent of its work force. And Rockwell Collins, an aviation and defense giant, said it was considering eliminating up to 1,250 positions, equivalent to roughly 6 percent of its employees.
The latest data suggest a tug-of-war between countervailing economic forces that could shift at any time. For example, growth last quarter was unexpectedly bolstered by a 13 percent jump in military spending that few economists expect to be repeated in the fourth quarter.
Without the increase from military spending, the economy would have grown at an annual rate of 1.4 percent, said Steve Blitz, chief economist at ITG Investment Research.
''Going forward, consumers might be able to continue at the current pace of spending but they're not going to be able to drive the growth rate higher,'' said Mr. Blitz. ''And 2 percent isn't enough to get unemployment down.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/27/business/economy/us-economy-grew-at-2-rate-in-3rd-quarter.html
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GRAPHIC: PHOTO: Employees of General Dynamics in Lima, Ohio, work on an Abrams tank. Military spending rose 13 percent in the third quarter. (PHOTOGRAPH BY MATT SULLIVAN/REUTERS) (B6) CHART: Real Economic Growth: Annual rate of change in the gross domestic product, based on quarterly figures adjusted for inflation and seasonal fluctuations. (Source: Commerce Department) (B6)
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October 27, 2012 Saturday
Late Edition - Final
In Virginia, Romney Scours Coal Country for Edge Over Obama
BYLINE: By MICHAEL D. SHEAR
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1186 words
When Jay Swiney emerges from the night shift in the coal mines to assume his duties as mayor of Appalachia, Va., it is hard for him to miss the partisan forces rocking the heavily unionized Democratic hamlets in the mountains along the Tennessee border.
Billboards proclaim ''America or Obama -- You Can't Have Them Both!'' and ''Yes, Coal; No-bama.'' Out-of-work miners are sporting baseball caps that say ''Coal=Jobs'' and T-shirts with the sarcastic message: ''Make Coal Legal.'' Yard signs and TV ads for Mitt Romney are everywhere.
Mr. Romney's campaign is aggressively tapping into anger at President Obama's environmental policies throughout the Appalachian counties where the state's coal miners live, hoping that huge margins there will offset Mr. Obama's equally aggressive campaign to woo female voters in the suburbs of Northern Virginia, just outside Washington.
The battle playing out in Virginia has echoes across the battleground states, where the final days of the presidential campaign have become a test of geographical strategies and an all-important focus on motivation, intensity and turnout. Republicans are pushing hard in suburban Denver and central Florida to appeal to Hispanic small business owners. Mr. Obama's campaign is probing for white male voters around Toledo, where there are major auto plants that benefited from the auto bailout.
In Virginia, Republicans hope to keep the race razor-close in other parts of the state. If they do, aides believe Mr. Romney's appeal in the sparsely populated coal country could tip Virginia's 13 electoral votes into his column, a victory vital to his White House bid. With just 10 days left, few self-described hillbillies in southwest Virginia are undecided.
''I definitely will vote for Romney this time,'' Mr. Swiney, 43, who considered backing Mr. Obama four years ago before deciding on Senator John McCain, said in a telephone interview this week. ''Not just because of the devastation that's going on with coal now. I'm a firm believer in giving somebody a chance. We've given Obama a chance for the last four years.''
The mayor, whose post is nonpartisan, points to the men in the coal camps on the outskirts of the 2,800-person town, some of whom are losing their jobs as tougher environmental regulations make coal more expensive to mine. Plummeting natural gas prices are discouraging the use of coal to generate electricity. The region feels under siege and at war, he says, a sentiment that is also common in coal-mining regions of Ohio, another battleground.
''I personally blame him for it,'' Mr. Swiney said of the president.
Mr. Obama argues that he has been supportive of coal by pumping government money into clean-coal technologies. He regularly mocks Mr. Romney for presenting himself as a champion of the coal industry while conveniently forgetting his criticism of coal mines when he was governor of Massachusetts.
''If you say that you're a champion of the coal industry when, while you were governor, you stood in front of a coal plant and said, this plant will kill you, that's some Romnesia,'' Mr. Obama said at a rally in Fairfax, Va.
But the president, who lost much of that part of the state in 2008, seems at risk this time of losing by even larger margins. State Senator Phillip Puckett, the longtime Democrat from the region, says he will not support Mr. Obama's re-election because, telling a local television station last year, ''It's very clear to me that the administration does not support the coal industry.''
Strategists for Mr. Obama say coal miners and their families -- many of whom are elderly -- should be attracted to the president's position on Social Security and Medicare. The president's campaign is running ads in the region accusing Mr. Romney of wanting to turn Medicare into a voucher system. And surrogates are pressing the case.
''Romney is a political chameleon,'' says Richard L. Trumka, the president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., and a former head of the United Mine Workers. ''He will say anything that he thinks people want to hear. For him to say he's a friend of coal is absolutely ridiculous.''
But even longtime Democrats in the state concede that Mr. Romney is making a forceful push for votes in the Ninth Congressional District, which encompasses the state's half-dozen coal counties. One of Mr. Romney's ads, appearing frequently on television, begins with a coal miner saying, ''Obama is ruining the coal industry.'' Mr. Romney held a rally in Abingdon, Va., this month. His son Matt spoke to 7,500 people last week in Grundy, a town of just 996 people.
Dave Saunders, a veteran Democratic strategist who lives in the region, said: ''Three things are sacred in Southwest Virginia -- the Holy Bible, moonshine and coal. That's all I got to say. They will get big numbers in the Ninth. No question at all.''
The Republican effort to gather votes for Mr. Romney has been supplemented by an aggressive and mostly negative campaign by third-party groups backed by conservatives and energy interests. The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity has a television ad blasting ''heavy-handed E.P.A. regulations.'' A radio ad by the American Energy Alliance says the ''president and his Washington cronies have declared war on affordable energy.'' A TV ad by the same group urges miners to ''Vote no on Obama's failing energy policy.''
The president has cited reports that the coal miners in Mr. Romney's ad were coerced by their employers to be there, an accusation that some of the miners have denied. But even if some of the outrage at Mr. Obama is being exaggerated by outside groups, locals say that much of it is a genuine expression of the frustration at seeing jobs die in the region.
In September, several hundred coal miners were furloughed for at least two months because of rising costs and shrinking demand. The company, Consol, announced on Wednesday that some workers will remain idled even after mining resumes the first week of November.
Other plants have shut down for good, citing in part foreign competition. Larry Lambert, 61, is one of the unlucky miners who spent a day this week at a résumé-writing seminar, which was a requirement for picking up his unemployment check.
''The E.P.A. has put so many strangleholds on the power companies they can't burn the coal we are mining,'' Mr. Lambert said. He added that Mr. Obama seemed appealing four years ago, but has betrayed coal miners.
And yet, it is not clear that there are enough voters like Mr. Lambert to offset the president's strength in Northern Virginia. About 750,000 people live in southwest Virginia, less than a third of the number in the suburban counties near Washington.
Democratic strategists working on Mr. Obama's behalf said Mr. Romney would probably win 60 percent of the vote in the region. But they say the shift in the state's population means that the huge margins will not be worth as much for Mr. Romney's campaign.
''In the 12 years I've been in elected office, we continue to see pretty dramatic population shift,'' said Mark Warner, one of the state's two Democratic senators. ''The numbers just aren't there.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/27/us/politics/romney-seeks-virginia-coal-country-edge.html
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GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: Mayor Jay Swiney of Appalachia, Va., a coal miner, blames the president for the industry's troubles and will vote for Mitt Romney. (PHOTOGRAPH BY LUKE SHARRETT FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)
Mitt Romney held a rally in Abingdon, Va.
he campaigns heavily in the coal region. (PHOTOGRAPH BY JOSH HANER/THE NEW YORK TIMES) (A12)
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The New York Times
October 27, 2012 Saturday
Late Edition - Final
Talk About A Way With Words
BYLINE: By GAIL COLLINS
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Editorial Desk; OP-ED COLUMNIST; Pg. 23
LENGTH: 825 words
Rape is a big issue this election season. Not what we were expecting, but, these days, American voters are prepared to deal with pretty much anything.
This week, all eyes turned to a United States Senate debate in Indiana -- also something we were not really planning on doing. Richard Mourdock, the Republican candidate, caused a national stir when he defended his across-the-board opposition to abortion by saying that a pregnancy caused by rape ''is something that God intended to happen.''
When it comes to abortion, both Mourdock and his Democratic opponent, Representative Joe Donnelly, are anti-choice. But, unlike Mourdock, Donnelly makes an exception in the case of rape or incest. One of the truly disturbing parts of our current politics is that we have begun to identify people who want to impose their religious beliefs on millions of women who don't share them as moderates as long as they're O.K. with the rape exemption.
There are plenty of reasons that a sensible Hoosier would not want to have Mourdock as a senator. He's a Tea Party favorite who toppled the longtime incumbent, Senator Richard Lugar, in a primary, during which he said that his definition of bipartisanship was ''Democrats coming to the Republican point of view.'' As state treasurer, he sued to stop the Obama administration's rescue of Chrysler, a company that is directly or indirectly responsible for about 100,000 jobs in Indiana.
But let's just talk today about his comment on abortion. Mourdock was basically saying that everything that happens is part of God's plan. Did that mean God's plan included evil things like sexual assault? Or just pregnancies as a result of sexual assault? Theologians have been arguing these kinds of questions for more than a thousand years. I don't think we can expect to work them out in the Indiana Senate debate.
However, Mourdock's words reminded everyone of Representative Todd Akin, the United States Senate candidate in Missouri. He defended his opposition to abortion under any circumstance by claiming that it was virtually impossible to become pregnant from a ''legitimate'' rape. (Many Missourians were disturbed by the remark. Recently, Akin skillfully attempted to change the subject by comparing his opponent, Senator Claire McCaskill, to a dog.)
Big-name Republicans who had distanced themselves from Akin were once again shocked -- shocked! -- by the appearance of another anti-choice candidate whose use of language was so clumsy as to make it clear how really radical the entire party's position on women's reproductive rights has become. Senator Kelly Ayotte canceled a visit to Indiana. John McCain said he'd withdraw his support unless Mourdock apologized, then withdrew the withdrawal when Mourdock said despicable media minds had misinterpreted his words.
What about Mitt Romney? Mourdock is the only Senate candidate for whom Romney has appeared in a TV ad, although there are lots of beleaguered Republicans who could use his help: the guy in Montana who had a fire on his property and then sued the local fire department that worked to put it out; the guy in Florida who used to do promotional work for ''Hooters''; the woman who's running against Senator Kirsten Gillibrand in New York. She's against abortion even in cases of rape and incest, but, so far, very few New Yorkers know it because they have yet to learn more basic information, such as her name.
If Republicans lose Lugar's seat, it will totally quash their hopes of winning control of the Senate. So a Romney spokesman simply said Mitt ''disagrees'' with Mourdock's statement and let it go at that.
The real moral of the Mourdock flap isn't about giving rape victims special dispensation, or whether it's offensive to say that you believe even sexual assaults are part of God's plan. It's the one President Obama came up with: ''This is exactly why you don't want a bunch of politicians, mostly male, making decisions about women's health care.'' (It's amazing, at this stage, that the president can say something this pointed, given the way he's been run ragged through the swing states. Have you looked at the man lately? He resembles a losing contestant in ''The Hunger Games.'')
The idea of banning abortion except for rape and incest cases makes anti-choice politicians sound more evenhanded, but it doesn't actually make much sense. If you believe life begins at conception, then that's a life, and you should try to convince women not to terminate any pregnancy, no matter what the cause. Our difference of opinion is over whether you can impose your beliefs with the threat of cops and penitentiaries.
And if rape victims deserve exemptions because their situation is dire, what about other women with unwanted pregnancies and terrible stories? The real crime of people like Mourdock and Akin is that their inartful language throws a sudden stark light on a stance that sounds so unthreatening when a candidate simply says: ''I'm pro-life.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/27/opinion/talk-about-a-way-with-words.html
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Washingtonpost.com
October 27, 2012 Saturday 8:12 PM EST
Polls raise prospect Obama may win without popular vote
BYLINE: Karen Tumulty
SECTION: A section; Pg. A01
LENGTH: 1052 words
Most polls at this moment suggest GOP nominee Mitt Romney is in the lead nationally, but surveys in the nine or so swing states are registering a narrow advantage for President Obama.
So here's a prospect worth contemplating: What if Romney carries the popular vote, but Obama regains the presidency by winning 270 votes or more in the electoral college?
"I think it's a 50/50 possibility - or more," said Mark McKinnon, who was a political strategist for President George W. Bush.
"If the election were held tomorrow, it wouldn't just be a possibility, it would be actual," added William A. Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, who also served as a policy adviser to President Bill Clinton.
That kind of split decision between the electorate and the electoral college would mark the fifth time in American history - and the second time in a dozen years - that the person who occupies the White House was not the one who got the most votes on Election Day.
What has never happened before is an incumbent president being returned to office after the majority of the electorate voted to throw him out.
Every modern president to be reelected - Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard M. Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Clinton, George W. Bush - has gotten a bigger share of the vote in their second bid for office than their first, and with it, a chance to claim a mandate.
A win in the electoral college that is not accompanied by one in the popular vote casts a shadow over the president and his ability to govern.
If Obama is reelected that way, "the Republican base will be screaming that Romney should be president, and Obama doesn't represent the country," McKinnon predicted. "It's going to encourage more hyperpartisanship."
Veterans of the Bush White House understand that problem well. Bush was never able to shake the accusations of some Democrats that he had "stolen" the 2000 election in a recount of Florida votes that required a U.S. Supreme Court decision to determine the winner. Then-Vice President Al Gore had won the popular vote that year by 500,000 votes.
"A close election is a polarizing event, and a discrepancy between the popular outcome and the electoral vote only adds to the polarization," said Karen Hughes, who served as a counselor to Bush. "It rubs a raw nerve even rawer."
And that kind of split decision may well happen more often in the future, if the nation's political system remains both deeply and closely divided.
Polarization amplifies the quirkiness of the electoral college system by encouraging the candidates to ignore the nation's biggest population centers, except for fundraising purposes, and to devote their energies to winning over that narrow slice of voters who live in states where the Election Day outcome is in doubt.
The electoral college is an artifact of an era when the lack of organized political parties and the difficulties of travel and communication prevented candidates from waging a national campaign.
Given those impediments, the Founding Fathers were leery of a direct popular vote as a means of gauging the popular will. But they also did not want to give Congress the power to select a president. So they set up a process by which each state would be allocated a number of electors, equal to the total of its House members and senators.
If that system yet again produces a president who does not also win the popular vote, it will raise new questions about whether the electoral college should be abolished - something that would require a constitutional amendment.
For now, however, both campaigns are so fixated on winning the battleground states that they are not giving much thought to the prospect of an electoral college victory that is not accompanied by a popular-vote mandate.
Obama's strategists, for instance, say they have not conducted a single national poll and have had no conversations about how to deal with the political fallout from a split decision.
However, the Obama campaign this week began airing an ad in the battleground states reminding voters of the trauma of the 2000 Florida recount that awarded its electoral votes - and the presidency - to Bush.
Ironically, Gore's campaign had actually been bracing for the opposite outcome that year, recalled Tad Devine, who was a top strategist for the Gore campaign.
Bush had such a huge lead in his home state of Texas that Gore's team figured that state alone would add a percentage point to his popular vote - and potentially put him over the top in the popular vote without giving him the electoral college.
That might also have been the case four years later, had Democratic nominee John F. Kerry succeeded in carrying Ohio, a state that is once again at the center of electoral college calculations.
In either instance, Devine said, "we would have claimed victory and said, 'This is the Constitution.' We wouldn't have hesitated a second."
Hughes recalled that Bush spent much of his early presidency trying to bind the wounds of the disputed 2000 election.
After the Supreme Court declared him the president-elect, the then-governor of Texas made his first speech from the Democratic-controlled chamber of the state House in Austin.
Once in Washington, Bush made a point of inviting Democrats such as the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) to the White House for movie nights, and he celebrated the 100th day of his presidency by throwing a picnic on the White House lawn for members of Congress. One of his first big legislative initiatives was the No Child Left Behind education law, which won bipartisan support.
"We made those decisions very deliberately, as a sign of healing and to bring the country together," Hughes said.
If one candidate carries the popular vote, but the other wins the electoral college tally, the prospects for a drawn-out recount are high in swing states where the results are close.
But an even bigger problem would arise after that, as the new president - whoever he is - tries to govern and forge consensus on how to tackle a host of major problems.
An election in which the popular will is thwarted is "the worst of all possible outcomes," Galston said. "We are in a situation now where the government of the United States needs to regain its capacity to act after this election. We are facing some risks that are both serious and imminent."
tumultyk@washpost.com
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October 27, 2012 Saturday
Correction Appended
Met 2 Edition
Polls raise prospect Obama may win without popular vote
BYLINE: Karen Tumulty
SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A01
LENGTH: 1052 words
Most polls at this moment suggest GOP nominee Mitt Romney is in the lead nationally, but surveys in the nine or so swing states are registering a narrow advantage for President Obama.
So here's a prospect worth contemplating: What if Romney carries the popular vote, but Obama regains the presidency by winning 270 votes or more in the electoral college?
"I think it's a 50/50 possibility - or more," said Mark McKinnon, who was a political strategist for President George W. Bush.
"If the election were held tomorrow, it wouldn't just be a possibility, it would be actual," added William A. Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, who also served as a policy adviser to President Bill Clinton.
That kind of split decision between the electorate and the electoral college would mark the fifth time in American history - and the second time in a dozen years - that the person who occupies the White House was not the one who got the most votes on Election Day.
What has never happened before is an incumbent president being returned to office after the majority of the electorate voted to throw him out.
Every modern president to be reelected - Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard M. Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Clinton, George W. Bush - has gotten a bigger share of the vote in their second bid for office than their first, and with it, a chance to claim a mandate.
A win in the electoral college that is not accompanied by one in the popular vote casts a shadow over the president and his ability to govern.
If Obama is reelected that way, "the Republican base will be screaming that Romney should be president, and Obama doesn't represent the country," McKinnon predicted. "It's going to encourage more hyperpartisanship."
Veterans of the Bush White House understand that problem well. Bush was never able to shake the accusations of some Democrats that he had "stolen" the 2000 election in a recount of Florida votes that required a U.S. Supreme Court decision to determine the winner. Then-Vice President Al Gore had won the popular vote that year by 500,000 votes.
"A close election is a polarizing event, and a discrepancy between the popular outcome and the electoral vote only adds to the polarization," said Karen Hughes, who served as a counselor to Bush. "It rubs a raw nerve even rawer."
And that kind of split decision may well happen more often in the future, if the nation's political system remains both deeply and closely divided.
Polarization amplifies the quirkiness of the electoral college system by encouraging the candidates to ignore the nation's biggest population centers, except for fundraising purposes, and to devote their energies to winning over that narrow slice of voters who live in states where the Election Day outcome is in doubt.
The electoral college is an artifact of an era when the lack of organized political parties and the difficulties of travel and communication prevented candidates from waging a national campaign.
Given those impediments, the Founding Fathers were leery of a direct popular vote as a means of gauging the popular will. But they also did not want to give Congress the power to select a president. So they set up a process by which each state would be allocated a number of electors, equal to the total of its House members and senators.
If that system yet again produces a president who does not also win the popular vote, it will raise new questions about whether the electoral college should be abolished - something that would require a constitutional amendment.
For now, however, both campaigns are so fixated on winning the battleground states that they are not giving much thought to the prospect of an electoral college victory that is not accompanied by a popular-vote mandate.
Obama's strategists, for instance, say they have not conducted a single national poll and have had no conversations about how to deal with the political fallout from a split decision.
However, the Obama campaign this week began airing an ad in the battleground states reminding voters of the trauma of the 2000 Florida recount that awarded its electoral votes - and the presidency - to Bush.
Ironically, Gore's campaign had actually been bracing for the opposite outcome that year, recalled Tad Devine, who was a top strategist for the Gore campaign.
Bush had such a huge lead in his home state of Texas that Gore's team figured that state alone would add a percentage point to his popular vote - and potentially put him over the top in the popular vote without giving him the electoral college.
That might also have been the case four years later, had Democratic nominee John F. Kerry succeeded in carrying Ohio, a state that is once again at the center of electoral college calculations.
In either instance, Devine said, "we would have claimed victory and said, 'This is the Constitution.' We wouldn't have hesitated a second."
Hughes recalled that Bush spent much of his early presidency trying to bind the wounds of the disputed 2000 election.
After the Supreme Court declared him the president-elect, the then-governor of Texas made his first speech from the Democratic-controlled chamber of the state House in Austin.
Once in Washington, Bush made a point of inviting Democrats such as the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) to the White House for movie nights, and he celebrated the 100th day of his presidency by throwing a picnic on the White House lawn for members of Congress. One of his first big legislative initiatives was the No Child Left Behind education law, which won bipartisan support.
"We made those decisions very deliberately, as a sign of healing and to bring the country together," Hughes said.
If one candidate carries the popular vote, but the other wins the electoral college tally, the prospects for a drawn-out recount are high in swing states where the results are close.
But an even bigger problem would arise after that, as the new president - whoever he is - tries to govern and forge consensus on how to tackle a host of major problems.
An election in which the popular will is thwarted is "the worst of all possible outcomes," Galston said. "We are in a situation now where the government of the United States needs to regain its capacity to act after this election. We are facing some risks that are both serious and imminent."
tumultyk@washpost.com
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CORRECTION-DATE: October 31, 2012
CORRECTION: An Oct. 27 Page One article about the possibility that President Obama could win the election despite losing the popular vote to Mitt Romney incorrectly said that no president has been reelected after a majority of voters voted to oust him. Although Bill Clinton received more votes when he was reelected than when he was elected in 1992, he did not receive a majority of votes in the three-way 1996 race against Republican Robert J. Dole and independent Ross Perot.
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The New York Times
October 26, 2012 Friday
Late Edition - Final
Candidates Agree World Is Warming, but Talk Stops There
BYLINE: By JOHN M. BRODER
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; THE AGENDA; Pg. 18
LENGTH: 1487 words
WASHINGTON -- For all their disputes, President Obama and Mitt Romney agree that the world is warming and that humans are at least partly to blame. It remains wholly unclear what either of them plans to do about it.
Even after a year of record-smashing temperatures, drought and Arctic ice melt, none of the moderators of the four general-election debates asked about climate change, nor did either of the candidates broach the topic.
Throughout the campaign, Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney have seemed most intent on trying to outdo each other as lovers of coal, oil and natural gas -- the very fuels most responsible for rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Mr. Obama has supported broad climate change legislation, financed extensive clean energy projects and pushed new regulations to reduce global warming emissions from cars and power plants. But neither he nor Mr. Romney has laid out during the campaign a legislative or regulatory program to address the fundamental questions arising from one of the most vexing economic, environmental, political and humanitarian issues to face the planet. Should the United States cut its greenhouse gas emissions, and, if so, how far and how fast? Should fossil fuels be more heavily taxed? Should any form of clean energy be subsidized, and for how long? Should the United States lead international mitigation efforts? Should the nation pour billions of new dollars into basic energy research? Is the climate system so fraught with uncertainty that the rational response is to do nothing?
Many scientists and policy experts say the lack of a serious discussion of climate change in the presidential contest represents a lost opportunity to engage the public and to signal to the rest of the world American intentions for dealing with what is, by definition, a global problem that requires global cooperation.
''On climate change, the political discourse here is massively out of step with the rest of the world, but also with the citizens of this country,'' said Andrew Steer, the president of the World Resources Institute and a former special envoy for climate change at the World Bank. ''Polls show very clearly that two-thirds of Americans think this is a real problem and needs to be addressed.''
Mr. Steer noted that climate change was no longer a partisan issue in Europe and that China, Japan, Australia and South Korea had taken significant steps to reduce emissions and invest heavily in clean energy technology.
''The real question in this country,'' said Mr. Steer, a British citizen, ''is why politicians don't see it as in their interest to discuss it.''
The list of reasons is long.
Any serious effort to address climate change will require a transformation of the nation's system for producing and consuming energy and will, at least in the medium term, mean higher prices for fuel and electricity. Powerful incumbent industries -- coal, oil, utilities -- are threatened by such changes and have mounted a well-financed long-term campaign to sow doubt about climate change. The Koch brothers and others in the oil industry have underwritten advertising campaigns and grass-roots efforts to support like-minded candidates. And the Republican Party has essentially declared climate change a nonproblem.
The two most effective ways of reducing global warming pollution -- taxing it or regulating it -- are politically toxic in a year when economic problems are paramount. After a bill died in the Senate in 2010, Mr. Obama abandoned his support for cap and trade, a market-based method to limit greenhouse gas emissions, and he has given little hint of what regulatory policies he intends to pursue if he wins a second term. Aides said that he would not propose a carbon tax or other energy tax, but that he would consider supporting one as part of a larger budget and spending deal.
As governor of Massachusetts, Mr. Romney considered joining a regional cap-and-trade system, then abandoned it because of uncertainty over costs. He has opposed Mr. Obama's steps to regulate emissions from power plants and vehicles. He has said he would reverse Mr. Obama's air quality regulations and would renegotiate the auto efficiency standard of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025 that automakers agreed to this year.
The struggling economy has made it difficult for emerging clean energy companies to get the capital they need to reach commercial scale and compete with producers of traditional energy sources. Government programs to provide that seed money are highly controversial, as the fight over tax breaks for wind power companies and the recent failures of the solar panel maker Solyndra and the advanced battery manufacturer A123 Systems showed.
The Obama administration provided $90 billion in new financing from the 2009 stimulus for clean energy projects, but most of that money is gone.
Though there is little doubt that the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation have altered the earth's climate, some uncertainty remains about whether and when such changes will become unmanageable. Huge technological challenges persist in transforming the energy generation system. Both Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney refer to ''clean coal,'' shorthand for capturing the carbon dioxide emissions from coal-burning power plants, but the technology is still in its infancy.
International efforts to address climate change, which showed great promise when Mr. Obama took office, have sputtered in recent years because of fears that limiting carbon emissions means limiting economic growth. There is also considerable resistance to any plan that would require the United States and other wealthy countries to take stronger measures than those demanded of China, India and other fast-growing economies that are responsible for the bulk of the growth in global emissions.
Mr. Romney's chief domestic policy adviser, Oren Cass, said the nation should not take unilateral steps. ''What it is going to do is hurt our economy very seriously, and it's going to drive a lot of industrial activity from the United States to countries that are, frankly, much less efficient in their use of energy,'' he said at an energy debate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology this month.
Mr. Cass said Mr. Romney's answer was not to tax emissions, impose new regulations or subsidize clean energy ventures. His answer is technological innovation by private industry, without government's thumb on the scale.
''Governor Romney's view is that the private sector can do the best job, that basic research funding is the appropriate role for government and that more aggressive subsidization and investment by the government can, in fact, have a counterproductive effect on innovation in the private sector,'' Mr. Cass said.
Mr. Obama occasionally mentions climate change on the campaign trail, but he generally raises the issue to present a contrast with Mr. Romney.
Last week in Iowa, for example, Mr. Obama expressed support for wind power projects and federal tax breaks for them, which Mr. Romney opposes. He then reprised an applause line from his convention speech.
''His plan would end tax credits for wind energy producers,'' Mr. Obama said. ''My plan will keep these investments, and we'll keep reducing the carbon pollution that's also heating the planet, because climate change isn't a hoax. The droughts we've seen, the floods, the wildfires, those aren't a joke. They're a threat to our children's future. And we can do something about it.''
Joseph E. Aldy, a former top Obama adviser on climate and energy who is now at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, said that a centerpiece of Mr. Obama's approach to climate change was his clean energy standard, a proposal to produce as much as 80 percent of the nation's electricity using clean sources by 2035. About 30 states now have such a standard -- Texas under Gov. George W. Bush was among the first to adopt one -- requiring varying amounts of power to come from wind, solar, nuclear, hydro and other nonpolluting sources.
Mr. Aldy said these plans would spur innovation and provide a consistent market for renewable energy, which today is not competitive with fossil fuels in most parts of the country. They also would avoid taxes and direct regulation, he said, although they would be easy to abandon if energy prices rose as a result and voters became disenchanted.
Christiana Figueres, the United Nations' top climate change diplomat, expressed dismay and frustration with the political conversation in the United States.
''No matter who is elected on Nov. 6, whether they agree on climate or not, it doesn't change the science,'' she said at a forum in New York in September. ''The challenge for any administration that comes in is to take a serious look not only at the cost of climate change for everyone else on the planet, but the cost to this country. And they have to ask themselves, 'What is the cost of not doing enough?' ''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/26/us/politics/climate-change-nearly-absent-in-the-campaign.html
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GRAPHIC: PHOTO: Mitt Romney's sentiments aside, he and President Obama have seemed intent on trying to outdo each other as lovers of oil, coal and natural gas. (PHOTOGRAPH BY ERIC THAYER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)
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The New York Times
October 26, 2012 Friday
Late Edition - Final
Obama Campaign Endgame: Grunt Work and Cold Math
BYLINE: By JIM RUTENBERG; Peter Baker contributed reporting from Chicago, and Mark Landler and Jackie Calmes from Washington.
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; POLITICAL MEMO; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1224 words
CHICAGO -- This is what ''grinding it out'' looks like at President Obama's election headquarters: scores of young staff members intently clicking away at computer keyboards as they crunch gigabytes of data about which way undecided voters are leaning, where they can be reached, and when; strategists standing at whiteboards busily writing and erasing early voting numbers and turnout possibilities; a lonely Ping-Pong table.
The wave of passion and excitement that coursed through Mr. Obama's headquarters here in 2008 has been replaced with a methodical and workmanlike approach to manufacturing the winning coalition that came together more organically and enthusiastically for him the last time, a more arduous task with no guarantee of success.
As Washington and the cable news commentariat breathlessly discuss whether Mitt Romney's post-debate movement in the polls has peaked, Mr. Obama's campaign technicians -- and that's what many of them are -- are putting as much faith in the multimillion-dollar machine they built for just such a close race as in the president himself.
''We are exactly where I thought we would be, in a very close election with 12 days left with two things to do and two things only: persuade the undecided and turn our voters out,'' said Jim Messina, 43, the president's technocratic campaign manager, slightly paler and more hunched than he was when the campaign began. Pointing to the rows of personnel outside his office on Thursday, he added, ''Everything in that room has been focused on that.''
Four years ago, Mr. Obama's political team here was preparing one of its trademark showstoppers: a half-hour prime-time program extolling Mr. Obama's character and plans across four networks, culminating in a live feed from a boisterous rally in Florida.
There will be no such razzmatazz this time around. Any extra money in this tight final phase of the election is being wired to Nevada and Florida for more Spanish-language ads, to Iowa and Ohio for more on-the-ground staff members, and to Google and Facebook for more microtargeted messaging to complacent, maybe even demoralized, young supporters.
Mr. Obama emphasized the importance of their task during a stop at a phone bank here in Chicago on Thursday, telling volunteers, ''If we let up and our voters don't turn out, we could lose this election.'' He added quickly, ''The good news is, if our voters do turn out, we will definitely win the election.''
At the White House, it is clear that the action has moved to Chicago, with some staff members, who are legally prohibited from even wearing campaign buttons to work, pining to be on the trail and others whiling away the time preparing for the lame-duck Congressional wrangling on the budget impasse.
For Mr. Obama's campaign staff in a nondescript office tower here, the task now comes down to creating an electorate more favorable to Democrats than most major pollsters have assumed, with percentages of Obama-friendly black, Latino and young voters that rival those of 2008, at least enough to offset the large drop in support among other segments of the population, like independent men.
An ABC News/Washington Post tracking poll on Thursday had Mr. Romney with a 50-to-47-percent edge among likely voters nationwide, the first time the challenger had reached 50 percent in the poll. But Mr. Obama's aides here are at least projecting an air of confidence. They say their system, which they began building long before the Republican primaries, is exceeding expectations. Eleven days will tell whether they are bluffing.
After using their huge database to increase registration among favorable voting groups in crucial states, they are now pinpointing people who ordered absentee ballots and need a nudge to send them, or sporadic voters who indicated they would vote for the president but may need to be pushed to show up at their polling place.
''We made a strategic choice very early on that getting our supporters -- and the right types of supporters -- to the polls before Election Day was a big priority for us,'' said Mitch Stewart, the Obama campaign's battleground state director, who has been helping organize Mr. Obama's supporters since the 2008 election and started at the campaign some 19 months and, in his words, ''20 pounds ago.''
With a box of Tastykakes sitting on his desk in his spartan office, Mr. Stewart added, ''The electorate's going to look much more like 2008 than 2010.''
Some polls in recent weeks have shown Mr. Obama with an advantage among all registered voters, and Mr. Romney with an advantage or tied among likely voters. Mr. Obama's aides are contending that the pollsters are wrongly assuming that Mr. Obama's voters are less enthusiastic and that turnout among his key groups will be down, that is, he has fewer likely voters than he had four years ago.
A new Time magazine poll this week showed Mr. Obama ahead by a two-to-one ratio among those who voted early in Ohio.
His aides pointed to statistics showing that a slightly higher percentage of African-Americans had voted early in North Carolina compared with the percentage at this point four years ago, and that their percentages are up along with those of Hispanics in the early mail-in vote in Florida, which they attributed to their turnout operations.
Officials with Mr. Romney's campaign disagree, and they said that whatever gains Mr. Obama had would be unsustainable through Election Day, contending that he is succeeding only in getting those most likely to support him to show up early, an assessment that Mr. Obama's aides dispute.
''Every cycle, when someone is losing, they claim they are altering the electorate,'' said Rich Beeson, Mr. Romney's political director.
Of course, at this stage of the race, each campaign is engaged in a bit of bravado, aimed at giving supporters and undecided voters alike a sense that it is the winning team to be on.
There is little dispute that for Mr. Obama to at least come close enough to matching his 2008 coalition to win he will need to induce people to vote in a way he did not have to four years ago, before the full impact of the Great Recession was followed by intensive partisan wrangling.
Mr. Obama's aides here said they had prepared for the need to rebuild his coalition all along, and that is why they have kept careful tabs on his former supporters, and worked to identify potential new ones, since he took office, all the while perfecting ways to keep track of them, keep in touch with them, and, ultimately, persuade them to vote.
The campaign is refocusing its advertising to scare less motivated supporters to vote. One new ad presents a reminder of Al Gore's loss to George W. Bush in the Florida recount of 2000, which, the ad says, made ''the difference between what was, and what could have been.''
But ultimately, if Mr. Obama does win, it could come down to the huge room of technicians and data crunchers in a corporate office here, sitting on exercise balls or squeezing stress toys as they dispatch information to volunteers knocking on doors hundreds of miles away.
In interviews, Mr. Obama's aides wistfully recalled when the office had just opened, a vast, mostly empty space with a countdown of the days scrawled in Magic Marker -- then well into the hundreds. Now it is done with a digital clock, ticking off the very last minutes and seconds.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/26/us/politics/for-obama-aides-endgame-takes-grunt-work-and-math.html
LOAD-DATE: October 26, 2012
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GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: President Obama cast his early ballot Thursday in Chicago. (PHOTOGRAPH BY DAMON WINTER/THE NEW YORK TIMES) (A1)
At President Obama's campaign headquarters in downtown Chicago, 2012 is the focus, every second is counted, and even the Ping-Pong table carries a reminder of the re-election theme. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY NATHAN WEBER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES) (A23)
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(DealBook)
October 26, 2012 Friday
Wealth and Politics Converge in China
BYLINE: WILLIAM ALDEN
SECTION: BUSINESS
LENGTH: 1981 words
HIGHLIGHT: The family of China's prime minister has had remarkable business success in the years since he came to power. | The coup at Citigroup that toppled Vikram S. Pandit was meticulously planned over the last several months. | Xstrata has set up "a diabolical game of the prisoner's dilemma," the Deal Professor writes. | With the presidential election around the corner, business leaders are engaging in some political activism.
WEALTH AND POLITICS CONVERGE IN CHINA | The official story in China is that the prime minister, Wen Jiabao, came from humble roots. But his family has had remarkable business success in the years since he came to power, controlling assets worth at least $2.7 billion, according to an investigation by The New York Times. The records uncovered by The Times provide an "unusually detailed look at how politically connected people have profited from being at the intersection of government and business as state influence and private wealth converge in China's fast-growing economy." Mr. Wen, The Times report continues, "has broad authority over the major industries where his relatives have made their fortunes."
In one example, Mr. Wen's relatives made a fortune by investing in Ping An Insurance before its I.P.O. - and after a government body that Mr. Wen presides over exempted the company from certain rules. The holdings were worth as much as $2.2 billion in 2007, according to The Times. This world may be unfamiliar to deal makers on Wall Street, but in emerging markets, political connections offer "the quickest path for riches these days," wrote Steven M. Davidoff in the Deal Professor column earlier this year. (The Chinese government blocked access to The New York Times online after the article about Mr. Wen's family was posted.)
VIKRAM PANDIT'S FINAL DAYS | The coup at Citigroup that toppled Vikram S. Pandit was meticulously planned over the last several months, report Jessica Silver-Greenberg and Susanne Craig in The New York Times. The plan's author, Michael E. O'Neill, began private meetings with board members since becoming chairman in April, until Mr. Pandit, the chief executive, "had virtually no allies left," Ms. Silver-Greenberg and Ms. Craig write. This effort was said to culminate in an encounter early last week, when Mr. O'Neill told Mr. Pandit that "the board has lost confidence in you," prompting Mr. Pandit to resign immediately. He was replaced with Michael L. Corbat, who, The Times report says, was alerted by Mr. O'Neill a few weeks earlier that he might be asked to take the reins.
XSTRATA'S GAMESMANSHIP | Xstrata has set a date of Nov. 20 for shareholders of the mining company to vote on the merger with the trading house Glencore. As advertised, the structure of the vote allows shareholders to approve the merger while also rejecting $200 million in retention payments. But the reality isn't so clear-cut, writes Steven M. Davidoff in the Deal Professor column. Xstrata, Mr. Davidoff writes, has set up "a diabolical game of the prisoner's dilemma."
ON THE AGENDA | The chairwoman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Mary L. Schapiro, is speaking about the Dodd-Frank law at George Washington University Law School this morning. K.K.R. announces its quarterly results before the opening bell. Moody's, Comcast and Merck also report earnings before the market opens. Peter Orszag, Citigroup's vice chairman of global banking, is on CNBC at 7:30 a.m. Julian Robertson, the founder of Tiger Management, is on Bloomberg TV at 7:30 a.m. Laurence Fink of BlackRock is on CNBC at 8 a.m. The billionaire Kenneth G. Langone is on Bloomberg TV at 4 p.m. An estimate of third-quarter gross domestic product is being released at 8:30 a.m.
WALL STREET'S POLITICAL STREAK | With the presidential election around the corner, business leaders are engaging in some political activism. A group of more than 80 chief executives, called Fix the Debt, is pushing an agenda that doesn't fit neatly into either political party, writes Jackie Calmes of The New York Times. Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase, for example, recently hosted a Wall Street lunch with lawmakers to ask how Republicans could be persuaded to drop their opposition to higher taxes. Lloyd C. Blankfein of Goldman Sachs explained that while these executives are "willing to give more revenue," they "don't want to take on the moral hazard" of giving the government more money without a deal to cut the budget, according to Ms. Calmes.
For another Wall Street leader, Laurence Fink of BlackRock, the so-called fiscal cliff is a pressing concern. Speaking at a conference hosted by The Economist magazine on Thursday, Mr. Fink lamented that there was "not one question" in the presidential debates about the issue. Of course, it's not the only topic that's been absent from the debates. "Remember the euro crisis?" asks Floyd Norris of The New York Times. "In this week's foreign policy debate between President Obama and Mitt Romney, the euro never came up."
If Mr. Romney is elected, he may have a willing Treasury secretary in Glenn Hubbard, his chief economic adviser. Mr. Hubbard, the dean of Columbia University's business school, "would rather be Treasury secretary than Federal Reserve chairman," according to Bloomberg News, which cites unidentified people familiar with his thinking.
HEDGE FUND ROYALTY | Christopher O'Neill, a partner at the hedge fund Noster Capital, is engaged to be married to Princess Madeleine of Sweden. The pair met in New York.
| Contact: @williamalden | E-mail
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Man Group Attracts the Interest of a British Rival | The London-based hedge fund Odey Asset Management has built up a 5.15 percent stake in Man Group, the publicly traded hedge fund giant that has fallen on difficult times, Reuters reports.
REUTERS
David Einhorn Continues His Take Down of Fed Policy | The hedge fund manager says the central bank's loose-money policy is hindering economic growth, an argument he expanded on during a conference in New York on Thursday.
DealBook »
Jana Partners Plans a Drawn-Out Battle | Reuters reports: "From Agrium Inc's perspective, a campaign by Jana Partners LLC to break up the Canadian fertilizer company is effectively dead in the water. But the $3.5 billion activist hedge fund believes it is only getting started."
REUTERS
I.P.O./OFFERINGS »
A Closely Watched Clean Tech I.P.O. | Reuters writes: "The last thing the downtrodden clean tech industry needs is another start-up going up in flames, so it has a lot riding on the initial public offering of SolarCity."
REUTERS
Food Company Prices I.P.O. Above Expected Range | WhiteWave, a specialty food company splitting off from Dean Foods, priced its I.P.O. at $17 a share to raise $391 million, Dow Jones reports.
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Government to List Japan Post Holdings | The Japanese government plans to offer shares of Japan Post Holdings within three years, Reuters reports.
REUTERS
VENTURE CAPITAL »
Andreessen Horowitz Backs an Education Company | The venture capital firm led a $15 million investment round in Udacity, which aims to offer university-level education for free, TechCrunch reports.
TECHCRUNCH
LEGAL/REGULATORY »
Lawyer Denounces Wiretaps in Appeal of Galleon Case | A lawyer for the former hedge fund manager Raj Rajaratnam argued before appellate judges that the government's request to secretly record Mr. Rajaratnam's conversations was riddled with problems.
DealBook »
Lawmakers Seek Urgency in Volcker Rule | While regulators hope to finalize the Volcker Rule by the end of the year, Senators Carl Levin and Jeff Merkley argue in a letter that some agencies should publish the final rule even if all are not yet on board.
DealBook »
Why Did Freddie Mac Oppose Refinancing Mortgages? | Jesse Eisinger reports in ProPublica that Freddie Mac "made it harder for millions of Americans to refinance their high-interest-rate mortgages for fear it would cut into company profits." Mr. Eisinger adds that "two Republican-leaning board members and at least one executive resisted a mass refi policy for an additional reason, according to the interviews: They regarded it as a backdoor economic stimulus."
PROPUBLICA
The Shift Toward Law School Specialization | Instead of just offering the traditional, general legal education, law schools may want to considering playing matchmaker, guiding students toward specialties that are likely to endure, including tax or securities law, writes Victor Fleischer in the Standard Deduction column.
DealBook »
New Taxes on Global Reinsurers Would Hurt Response to Natural Disasters | A new tax under consideration aimed at reinsurers based outside the United States would be punitive and could reduce aid for natural disasters by billions of dollars, write J. David Cummins, a professor at Temple University's Fox School of Business, and Bradley Kading, the president of the Association of Bermuda Insurers and Reinsurers.
DealBook »
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October 26, 2012 Friday
Is Religious Freedom Really Primary?
BYLINE: PETER MANSEAU
SECTION: OPINION
LENGTH: 1761 words
HIGHLIGHT: There's been a lot of chatter this campaign season about how religious freedom is our 'first freedom.' That's not quite how the constitution puts it.
Of all the potentially explosive issues of 2012, none has fizzled quite like religion. Mitt Romney's Mormonism never mattered as much as expected, and questions about Barack Obama's faith remain relevant only to his most obdurate detractors. Yet there is one way in which religion has been a constant in this campaign, and, surprisingly, it concerns something on which the candidates claim to agree.
At last week's Alfred E. Smith Memorial Dinner in New York, while Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney used their attempts at stand-up comedy to throw punches disguised as punchlines, it fell to the event's host, Cardinal Timothy Michael Dolan, to offer words intended to bring both sides together. Addressing the bipartisan, religiously diverse crowd, Dolan greeted them collectively as "people of faith and loyal Americans, loving a country which considers religious liberty our first and most cherished freedom."
The suggestion that religious liberty is the nation's "first freedom" has become so commonplace that it seems churlish to question it. Indeed, similar notes have been struck by both sides during the campaign.
Earlier this month, Catholics for Romney released an online ad featuring Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan making an appeal to members of his church. "In America, we consider religious liberty our first freedom," he said. "That's because there's no constitutional guarantee more precious than our right to the free exercise of religion." Mr. Romney himself has used the term "first freedom" in this context throughout 2012, as he did in a February op-ed in which he claimed to be fighting on behalf of religious organizations "in their strenuous objection" to the Affordable Care Act. He later made it the central theme of a high-profile appeal to evangelicals during his May 12 commencement address at Liberty University. "From the beginning, this nation trusted in God, not man," he said. "Religious liberty is the first freedom in our Constitution. Religious freedom opens a door for Americans that is closed to too many others around the world."
Mr. Obama, though he is often depicted as an enemy of the "first freedom" by the Romney campaign, has sometimes hailed it in similar terms. On Aug. 10, welcoming members of Congess, diplomats, and foreign dignitaries to a Ramadan celebration at the White House, he said:
Of all the freedoms we cherish as Americans, of all the rights that we hold sacred, foremost among them is freedom of religion, the right to worship as we choose.
Hardly the first president to make such a declaration, Mr. Obama was just putting his own spin on a statement that now seems practically a requirement of the office. Bill Clinton added a rhetorical flourish to the phrase - "Religious freedom is literally our first freedom," he said - while George W. Bush went historical: "Because the Framers placed the guarantee of religious freedom before other cherished rights, religious liberty in America is often called the first freedom."
As both Mr. Clinton's and Mr. Bush's uses of the phrase suggest, the ostensible reason for ascribing primacy to religion among constitutionally protected freedoms is its place as the first mentioned in the Bill of Rights. Contrary to Mr. Romney's "first freedom" claim, the actual Constitution does not say anything about religious liberty except to state in Article 6 that no religious "test" will be required of officeholders. Nor does the document once use the word "God," an omission that some 18th-century Americans decried. ("A Papist, a Mohomotan, a Deist, yea an Atheist" might someday even become president, one critic warned.)
The First Amendment, adopted four years later in 1791, does protect "the free exercise" of religion - but only after barring government from "establishing" religion. Viewed strictly in terms of sequence, the First Amendement's "first freedom" might be seen as freedom from rather than freedom of religion.
Of course, the line between these has never been entirely clear. There were forces for and against religious liberty in the years following the American Revolution, and their respective motivations would find them strange bedfellows in today's political environment. Before the Constitution was drafted, a certain amount of religious involvement in the affairs of government was taken for granted by many.
In Virginia, the home state of the two foremost crafters of what we now call religious freedom, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, the longstanding colonial establishment of the Anglican Church came to an end with independence, but few imagined religious institutions should have no role in public life. Arguing that religion was essential for the morality of the young nation, Patrick Henry proposed a system of state support for multiple Christian denominations in 1784 (to diffuse the focus on Anglicanism). Henry's proposal was considered religiously tolerant in its day, but Madison and Jefferson thought it did not go far enough. They pushed for the state to remove itself entirely from the business of promoting religion of any kind.
It was this victory against 18th-century supporters of religion in Virginia that inspired the federal protections to which 21st century supporters of religion often appeal. When we also consider that the Constitution and the Bill of Rights intended to leave such questions to the states, some of which had officially established churches until well into the 19th century, the question of when exactly the national freedom of religion was secured becomes still more muddled.
Whatever pride of place religion may have enjoyed during the founding era, the assumption that the written order of the Bill of Rights alone makes religious freedom "first" or "foremost" in terms of significance has not been universally shared since that time. Americans have long been great list makers ("We hold these truths to be self evident "), but shifting national priorities through the years have reorganized our sense of how rights should be enumerated. For much of American history, "first freedom" was more likely to refer to freedom of the press or speech than religion. In the the middle of the 20th century, however, when the Jesuits John Courtney Murray and Wilfrid Parsons began articulating Catholic understandings of the role of religion in American public life, the phrase found forceful advocates of its current meaning.
Writing in the era of the landmark 1947 Supreme Court case Everson v. Board of Education, which put the issue of indirect state support for parochial schools in the national spotlight, Parsons and Murray used the "first freedom" to enlist history as a safeguard to Catholic practice in an overwhelmingly Protestant nation. In Murray's words:
In the U.S. there are a dozen major faiths, as well as hundreds of smaller sects. All are faiths held by those who are equally American citizens, and who are not to suffer inequalities in their citizenship by reason of their faith. In the face of this situation, there is no other course open to government than to regard the faiths of those who are equally its citizens as faiths equal in its eyes. Were it to do otherwise, it would instantly confuse religion with citizenship, bring religious consciences somehow under pressure, and thus violate the essential principle enshrined in the First Amendment.
Even so, "first freedom" in the postwar years was a phrase mostly resonant with a particular community rather than the universally accepted truism it has become. When Franklin Delano Roosevelt made his own list of freedoms that should be enjoyed everywhere in the world - in his famous "Four Freedoms Speech" delivered as the State of the Union address of 1941 - he counted "freedom of every person to worship God in his own way" second behind "freedom of speech and expression."
There have been other contenders for the "first freedom" mantle as well. The title of the National Rifle Association's monthly political magazine - America's First Freedom - implies a provocative question: Where would the freedoms of press, speech, and religion be without the bearing of arms that made such freedoms possible? No less an N.R.A. spokesman than Charlton Heston made this point in an address to the National Press Club in 1997:
I believe every good journalist needs to know why the Second Amendment must be considered more essential than the First Amendment.
Later in his speech he explained that he was concerned not only with his own firearms, but with those of the future gun-owners of America:
It is time they found out that the politically correct doctrine of today has misled them. And that when they reach legal age, if they do not break our laws, thay have a right to choose to own a gun - a handgun, a long gun, a small gun, a large gun, a black gun, a purple gun, a pretty gun, an ugly gun - and to use that gun to defend themselves and their loved ones or to engage in any lawful purpose they desire without apology or explanation to anyone, ever. This is their first freedom.
If even the man who played Moses counts our national commandments as he sees fit, is it any wonder that the "first freedom" remains a moving target? Religious liberty may currently be considered by many, including those aspiring to the highest office in the land, to be "our first and most cherished freedom," but it's worth remembering that calling anything "first" depends on where you start counting, and why.
As in the founding era, religious freedom today is anything but apolitical. Cardinal Dolan's seemingly anodyne expression of ecumenism last week was actually a pointed reference to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' "Statement on Religious Liberty" released in opposition to the Affordable Care Act's H.H.S. mandate; it was in fact a slightly altered version of the statement's title: "Our First, Most Cherished Liberty." Though the cardinal played the part of avuncular bridge between the two candidates, his choice of words suggested he was not above taking sides. In an election year, it seems, freedom's just another word for rallying the base.
Historically Corrected is a project of students and faculty at Washington College's C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience where Peter Manseau is a scholar in residence. Students of Washington College's Writing for Media seminar contributed research. To learn more about the Historically Corrected project, click here .
Other Stops: Let the Popular Vote Count
The Missing Debate
Debating Points, Global Edition
Google's Crystal Ball
Blunders and Binders
LOAD-DATE: October 26, 2012
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(The Caucus)
October 26, 2012 Friday
App Snapshot: Swing State Overview
BYLINE: SARAH WHEATON
SECTION: US; politics
LENGTH: 414 words
HIGHLIGHT: Mitt Romney's campaign bought ad time in Minnesota, but Democrats say that's just a red (or is it blue?) herring. That and other updates from the battlegrounds.
What's happening in the key areas of the swing states that will decide the election. Even The Times can't be everywhere, so we're collecting the best political coverage from around the Web in the Election 2012 app. Here is our collection of battleground updates:
BATTLEGROUNDS
Romney Plays Offense on Autos in Ohio
Mitt Romney warned that Jeep, a major employer in Ohio, was considering shipping automobile jobs overseas, but the Obama campaign quickly responded. (Politico)
Ohio Sees Enough Campaign Ads to Air Nonstop for 80 Days
Some 17 outside groups have added their voices to the presidential race in Ohio, often with offbeat ads like an anti-Obama jingle and a homespun warning about socialism delivered by a Hungarian-born billionaire. (Bloomberg)
Can Ohio's Better Days Help Obama?
The economy is bouncing back in what may be ground zero of the presidential campaign, but not everyone credits the president. (USA Today)
On One Ohio Street, Voters Weary of Election Promises
Conversations on a middle-class block suggest voters have made up their minds. But many fear neither candidate can end their worries over growing health care costs, stagnating incomes and the feeble job market. (Journal subscription required.) (The Wall Street Journal)
Battlegrounds: 'It's All About Northern Virginia'
In 2008, President Obama ended a streak of 10 consecutive Republican presidential wins in Virginia, and he did it by winning big in the Northern Virginia suburbs, within an hour or so drive from the nation's capital. (CNN)
Even Unfriendly Turf Vital to Obama in Colorado
Despite big Republican advantages, Obama supporters fight for votes in Southern Colorado among evangelicals and tens of thousands of active military personnel and retired veterans. (The Boston Globe)
Reid's Machine Powers Obama in Nevada Test
Senator Harry Reid's political machine could hold the key to a victory for Mr. Obama in the economically ravaged state, as both Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney seek coveted electoral votes. (The New York Times)
Early Voting 2012: A Snapshot of the Swing States
In 2008, about 30 percent of the national vote was cast via early or absentee ballots. This year, the expectation is that about 40 percent of Americans will cast a vote early, observers said. (ABC News)
Romney Places TV Ads in Minnesota
The Romney investment in Minnesota is described as a small buy that Democrats say is intended to draw media coverage and force the Obama campaign to spend there. (The Associated Press)
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(Campaign Stops)
October 26, 2012 Friday
Is Religious Freedom Really Primary?
BYLINE: PETER MANSEAU
SECTION: OPINION
LENGTH: 1761 words
HIGHLIGHT: There's been a lot of chatter this campaign season about how religious freedom is our 'first freedom.' That's not quite how the constitution puts it.
Of all the potentially explosive issues of 2012, none has fizzled quite like religion. Mitt Romney's Mormonism never mattered as much as expected, and questions about Barack Obama's faith remain relevant only to his most obdurate detractors. Yet there is one way in which religion has been a constant in this campaign, and, surprisingly, it concerns something on which the candidates claim to agree.
At last week's Alfred E. Smith Memorial Dinner in New York, while Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney used their attempts at stand-up comedy to throw punches disguised as punchlines, it fell to the event's host, Cardinal Timothy Michael Dolan, to offer words intended to bring both sides together. Addressing the bipartisan, religiously diverse crowd, Dolan greeted them collectively as "people of faith and loyal Americans, loving a country which considers religious liberty our first and most cherished freedom."
The suggestion that religious liberty is the nation's "first freedom" has become so commonplace that it seems churlish to question it. Indeed, similar notes have been struck by both sides during the campaign.
Earlier this month, Catholics for Romney released an online ad featuring Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan making an appeal to members of his church. "In America, we consider religious liberty our first freedom," he said. "That's because there's no constitutional guarantee more precious than our right to the free exercise of religion." Mr. Romney himself has used the term "first freedom" in this context throughout 2012, as he did in a February op-ed in which he claimed to be fighting on behalf of religious organizations "in their strenuous objection" to the Affordable Care Act. He later made it the central theme of a high-profile appeal to evangelicals during his May 12 commencement address at Liberty University. "From the beginning, this nation trusted in God, not man," he said. "Religious liberty is the first freedom in our Constitution. Religious freedom opens a door for Americans that is closed to too many others around the world."
Mr. Obama, though he is often depicted as an enemy of the "first freedom" by the Romney campaign, has sometimes hailed it in similar terms. On Aug. 10, welcoming members of Congess, diplomats, and foreign dignitaries to a Ramadan celebration at the White House, he said:
Of all the freedoms we cherish as Americans, of all the rights that we hold sacred, foremost among them is freedom of religion, the right to worship as we choose.
Hardly the first president to make such a declaration, Mr. Obama was just putting his own spin on a statement that now seems practically a requirement of the office. Bill Clinton added a rhetorical flourish to the phrase - "Religious freedom is literally our first freedom," he said - while George W. Bush went historical: "Because the Framers placed the guarantee of religious freedom before other cherished rights, religious liberty in America is often called the first freedom."
As both Mr. Clinton's and Mr. Bush's uses of the phrase suggest, the ostensible reason for ascribing primacy to religion among constitutionally protected freedoms is its place as the first mentioned in the Bill of Rights. Contrary to Mr. Romney's "first freedom" claim, the actual Constitution does not say anything about religious liberty except to state in Article 6 that no religious "test" will be required of officeholders. Nor does the document once use the word "God," an omission that some 18th-century Americans decried. ("A Papist, a Mohomotan, a Deist, yea an Atheist" might someday even become president, one critic warned.)
The First Amendment, adopted four years later in 1791, does protect "the free exercise" of religion - but only after barring government from "establishing" religion. Viewed strictly in terms of sequence, the First Amendement's "first freedom" might be seen as freedom from rather than freedom of religion.
Of course, the line between these has never been entirely clear. There were forces for and against religious liberty in the years following the American Revolution, and their respective motivations would find them strange bedfellows in today's political environment. Before the Constitution was drafted, a certain amount of religious involvement in the affairs of government was taken for granted by many.
In Virginia, the home state of the two foremost crafters of what we now call religious freedom, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, the longstanding colonial establishment of the Anglican Church came to an end with independence, but few imagined religious institutions should have no role in public life. Arguing that religion was essential for the morality of the young nation, Patrick Henry proposed a system of state support for multiple Christian denominations in 1784 (to diffuse the focus on Anglicanism). Henry's proposal was considered religiously tolerant in its day, but Madison and Jefferson thought it did not go far enough. They pushed for the state to remove itself entirely from the business of promoting religion of any kind.
It was this victory against 18th-century supporters of religion in Virginia that inspired the federal protections to which 21st century supporters of religion often appeal. When we also consider that the Constitution and the Bill of Rights intended to leave such questions to the states, some of which had officially established churches until well into the 19th century, the question of when exactly the national freedom of religion was secured becomes still more muddled.
Whatever pride of place religion may have enjoyed during the founding era, the assumption that the written order of the Bill of Rights alone makes religious freedom "first" or "foremost" in terms of significance has not been universally shared since that time. Americans have long been great list makers ("We hold these truths to be self evident "), but shifting national priorities through the years have reorganized our sense of how rights should be enumerated. For much of American history, "first freedom" was more likely to refer to freedom of the press or speech than religion. In the the middle of the 20th century, however, when the Jesuits John Courtney Murray and Wilfrid Parsons began articulating Catholic understandings of the role of religion in American public life, the phrase found forceful advocates of its current meaning.
Writing in the era of the landmark 1947 Supreme Court case Everson v. Board of Education, which put the issue of indirect state support for parochial schools in the national spotlight, Parsons and Murray used the "first freedom" to enlist history as a safeguard to Catholic practice in an overwhelmingly Protestant nation. In Murray's words:
In the U.S. there are a dozen major faiths, as well as hundreds of smaller sects. All are faiths held by those who are equally American citizens, and who are not to suffer inequalities in their citizenship by reason of their faith. In the face of this situation, there is no other course open to government than to regard the faiths of those who are equally its citizens as faiths equal in its eyes. Were it to do otherwise, it would instantly confuse religion with citizenship, bring religious consciences somehow under pressure, and thus violate the essential principle enshrined in the First Amendment.
Even so, "first freedom" in the postwar years was a phrase mostly resonant with a particular community rather than the universally accepted truism it has become. When Franklin Delano Roosevelt made his own list of freedoms that should be enjoyed everywhere in the world - in his famous "Four Freedoms Speech" delivered as the State of the Union address of 1941 - he counted "freedom of every person to worship God in his own way" second behind "freedom of speech and expression."
There have been other contenders for the "first freedom" mantle as well. The title of the National Rifle Association's monthly political magazine - America's First Freedom - implies a provocative question: Where would the freedoms of press, speech, and religion be without the bearing of arms that made such freedoms possible? No less an N.R.A. spokesman than Charlton Heston made this point in an address to the National Press Club in 1997:
I believe every good journalist needs to know why the Second Amendment must be considered more essential than the First Amendment.
Later in his speech he explained that he was concerned not only with his own firearms, but with those of the future gun-owners of America:
It is time they found out that the politically correct doctrine of today has misled them. And that when they reach legal age, if they do not break our laws, they have a right to choose to own a gun - a handgun, a long gun, a small gun, a large gun, a black gun, a purple gun, a pretty gun, an ugly gun - and to use that gun to defend themselves and their loved ones or to engage in any lawful purpose they desire without apology or explanation to anyone, ever. This is their first freedom.
If even the man who played Moses counts our national commandments as he sees fit, is it any wonder that the "first freedom" remains a moving target? Religious liberty may currently be considered by many, including those aspiring to the highest office in the land, to be "our first and most cherished freedom," but it's worth remembering that calling anything "first" depends on where you start counting, and why.
As in the founding era, religious freedom today is anything but apolitical. Cardinal Dolan's seemingly anodyne expression of ecumenism last week was actually a pointed reference to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' "Statement on Religious Liberty" released in opposition to the Affordable Care Act's H.H.S. mandate; it was in fact a slightly altered version of the statement's title: "Our First, Most Cherished Liberty." Though the cardinal played the part of avuncular bridge between the two candidates, his choice of words suggested he was not above taking sides. In an election year, it seems, freedom's just another word for rallying the base.
Historically Corrected is a project of students and faculty at Washington College's C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience where Peter Manseau is a scholar in residence. Students of Washington College's Writing for Media seminar contributed research. To learn more about the Historically Corrected project, click here .
Other Stops: Let the Popular Vote Count
The Missing Debate
Debating Points, Global Edition
Google's Crystal Ball
Blunders and Binders
LOAD-DATE: October 26, 2012
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DOCUMENT-TYPE: News
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog
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All Rights Reserved
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USA TODAY
October 26, 2012 Friday
FINAL EDITION
Obama calls 'other guy' an expletive
BYLINE: Martha T. Moore, @USATMoore, USA TODAY
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 4A
LENGTH: 205 words
Kids say the darnedest things -- and so do presidents. Chatting with journalists from Rolling Stone at the conclusion of an interview, President Obama said kids can tell that "the other guy" -- that would be Mitt Romney -- is "a bulls----er."
In the Rolling Stone article Thursday, Executive Editor Eric Bates tells Obama that his 6-year-old daughter wanted to tell him, "You can do it."
"Obama grinned," the article says. "'You know, kids have good instincts,' Obama offered. 'They look at the other guy and say, "Well, that's a bulls----er, I can tell."'"
Romney and Obama have called each other liars in their campaign ads, though the language has been more refined. An Obama ad said this month that Romney is "dishonest" for saying he is not in favor of a $5 trillion tax cut. In July, a Romney ad said Obama had been "dishonest" in ads about Romney's tenure at Bain Capital.
In the Rolling Stone interview, conducted by historian David Brinkley, Obama says he'll be "proud" if historians use the term "Obamacare" for the 2010 health care law. Obama predicts "people will say, 'This was the last piece of our basic social compact' -- providing people with some core security from the financial burdens of an illness or bad luck."
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Washington Post Blogs
She the People
October 26, 2012 Friday 10:40 PM EST
Rape shouldnt be used to score political points
BYLINE: Melinda Henneberger
LENGTH: 1327 words
Another day, another Republican candidate in trouble for talking about rape the wrong way. I dont want them to stop mentioning it, mind you, but wish they could do so with a little humility, and some acknowledgement of the seriousness of the crime itself. This close to an election, though, I wonder if political advisers out there arent begging clients to refer any questions about social policy to their Web sites, or to play it extra-safe, lay off using feminine pronouns altogether until after Nov. 6.
I tuned into the tail-end of the Indiana Senate debate the other night just in time to hear Richard Mourdock say he does not believe in abortion even following rape because I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended. It was shocking to hear him say it that way, of course, and my first reaction, too, was to say it wasnt nice to implicate God in mans crimes. But does anybody sincerely think he meant Jesus is on the side of the rapists? No.
Mourdock is by any standard a severely conservative guy. When his Democratic opponent, Congressman Joe Donnelly, describes the Indiana state treasurer as a tea party fave whos questioned the constitutionality of Medicare and Social Security, thats a pretty fair summary, even if Mourdock protests it now because he needs to win over those moderate Dick Lugar supporters he offended during the primary.
Donnelly, who was in a true toss-up of a race before this happened, just got more than a million-dollar boost from the Senate Democrats, in the form of an ad trying to tie Mourdocks rape comment to Romney, whos endorsed him. But as usual, its more complicated than that ad makes it seem: Donnelly, a lovely guy and my fellow Notre Dame grad, also describes his views as pro-life, and co-sponsored a House bill that would have nixed abortion funding for rape and incest victims and designated some attacks as forcible rape.The bill eventually dropped the offensive and redundant term forcible rape, which Donnelly says he didnt know was in there to begin with. Now, not surprisingly, Donnelly insists that Mourdock meant to indict God in crimes against women: The God I believe in and the God I know most Hoosiers believe in does not intend for rape to happen ever It is stunning that he would be so disrespectful to survivors of rape.
Thats politics, which as Mitt Romney has noted aint the beanbag. But its not an accurate representation of Mourdocks views, even if Obama and Romney both act like it is, with Obama obliquely referencing Mourdocks comment on the stump on Thursday, and Romney distancing himself from the statement, but not pulling his endorsement of the candidate.
Last spring, I spent a morning shadowing Mourdock as he went door-knocking in Evansville, then interviewed him at length over coffee. This fall, we spoke again, at a campaign event in Indianapolis, and when his aides finally pulled him out the door, he called me from his truck and stayed on the line until every last question had been answered. Hes an earnest and emotional guy, tearing up repeatedly as he spoke of Americas greatness and challenges. As Ive written before, one thing I appreciate about him and was pretty sure would get him into trouble is that he will answer any question hes asked, directly, fully, and the first time. If he were elected, Washington would have one more straight-talker, but theres a price for letting it roll, and hes paying it.
He is not, however and Ill say this if no one else will a Todd Akin, who not only thinks female superpowers include the ability to block conception under duress if only! but has compared his Democratic opponent, Senator Claire McCaskill, to a dog. Neither is he Sharron Angle, babbling about how a hypothetical pregnant 13-year-old survivor of rape or incest should make a lemon situation into lemonade. Nor is he Claytie Williams, who lost to Ann Richards after joking that bad weather is like rape theres nothing you can do about it, so might as well lay back and enjoy it.
What Mourdock says he meant is that life is always intended, though violence never is. By all means, Hoosiers, reject him because he thinks needed social programs are too expensive, because fiscal cliffs and debt ceilings dont scare him even a little bit, and because those comical my way or the highway Donnelly commercials contain more than a kernel of truth about his avowed contempt for compromise. But because he worships a God who likes to see women humiliated? Thats willful distortion, it seems to me.
Wednesday morning, an editor called me, wondering whether we could stop by a rape crisis center or something and find a rape victim to weigh in on Mourdocks comments. But with 200,000 women raped in this country every year, finding such a person was easier than he imagined.
The writer I probably agree with more often than any other, Amy Sullivan, now at the New Republic, wrote Thursday that I dont think that politicians like Mourdock oppose rape exceptions because they hate women or want to control women. I think theyre totally oblivious and insensitive and cant for a moment place themselves in the shoes of a woman who becomes pregnant from a rape. Just this once, even Amy and I part company, because I do understand those who oppose exceptions, though I myself dont.
Thats because opposition with no exceptions is the logical conclusion of believing that life begins at conception just as some have argued that post-birth abortion is the logical conclusion of believing that abortions fine at any point and for any reason. Thats why so many of us are in the messy, inconsistent middle, wary of the investigative nightmare that criminalization would set off, but also uncomprehending of the logic that its only a baby if and when we say it is.
I also have no trouble placing myself in the shoes of a woman who becomes pregnant from a rape because in college, I volunteered at a rape crisis hotline. After graduation, I worked for a year at a small social service agency in San Franciscos Mission District that helped women coming out of abusive relationships. And at 26, I myself was raped, by a man who called just before our dinner date to say darn, how embarrassing, his car was in the shop, and could I maybe pick him up at his house instead?
I knocked, was promptly thrown on the floor in the entryway, and after the attack, he laughed that no one would believe me, a junior nobody whod just hit town, over a good-looking, well-off guy like him, who obviously didnt have any trouble getting a date. Oh, and who is it whod showed up at whose house again? He didnt ruin my life, or anything close to that in fact, in one of those truth really is stranger than fiction twists, I saw my husband for the first time the next day.
I did, though, stop swimming at the pool I could afford because he went there, too, and would swim up under me, push me out of the water and taunt me about whether Id been down to the precinct to report him yet. Just a couple of years ago, he met some college friends of mine, told them what great pals we were, and asked them to tell me he missed me. The older Ive gotten, the worse Ive felt about deciding against reporting him and the more Ive worried about how many other women hes called since then to say darn, how embarrassing, my cars in the shop.
Why do I say all this now, half a lifetime later? First, because he could still be playing that trick; if you live in Dallas, Texas and have been thrown onto that same foyer floor, call me, and now I will testify. I say it now, too, because rape isnt a joke, and shouldnt ever be used to score political points; if you cant get it right, maybe you really shouldnt say anything at all.
Melinda Henneberger is a Post political writer and anchors the papers She the People blog. Follow her on Twitter at @MelindaDC.
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The Fix
October 26, 2012 Friday 10:22 PM EST
Senate Democratic and Republican campaign arms pulling out of Maine race
BYLINE: Sean Sullivan
LENGTH: 818 words
Make sure to sign up to receiveAfternoon Fixevery day in your e-mail inbox by 5(ish) p.m.!
EARLIER ON THE FIX:
GOP ahead of 2008 early vote pace, but still trailing
How Hurricane Sandy could test Obamas leadership
Democratic poll shows Mourdock trailing by seven
A premature obituary for the moderate senator
John Sununus not-so-greatest hits (VIDEO)
Post-ABC tracking poll: Romney 49, Obama 48 the power of campaign contacts
The Senate GOPs still-viable path to a majority
Michelle Obama wakes Jimmy Kimmel with a bullhorn and discusses campaign, parenting (VIDEO)
A status quo election? Could be.
WHAT YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED:
* Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.) was hospitalized after a crashinvolvingmultiple cars on Interstate 15 in Nevada on Friday. Reids office said in a statement:Senator Reid and his security detail were involved in a traffic accident today on Interstate 15 in Las Vegas. Senator Reid was taken to University Medical Center Hospital by his security detail as a precaution, and walked in on his own. Senator Reid was wearing his seatbelt at the time of the accident. He experienced rib and hip contusions and has been cleared for release by the doctors. Mrs. Reid was not in the car at the time of the accident. Some of Senator Reids detail and a staffer had minor injuries in the accident and were evaluated at UMC.
*PresidentObama responded to former New Hampshire governor John Sununus (R) comment Thursday night thatretired Gen. Colin Powell endorsed him because both men are black. I dont think that there are many people in America who would question Gen. Powells credibility, his patriotism, his willingness to tell it straight. So any suggestion that Gen. Powell would make such a profound statement in such an important election based on anything other than what he thought would be best for America doesnt make much sense, Obama said Friday. Sununu, a top surrogate to Mitt Romney, has since backed away from his statement.
* Both the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committeewill pull out of the Maine Senate race, which is good news for former governor Angus King (I), who both sides apparently believe will win. The NRSC has not advertised since Oct. 16, while the DSCC will run adsthroughOct. 30, then pull resources for the final week before Election Day. King has still not said which party hed caucus with if elected.
* Former attorney general Heidi Heitkamp (D) holds a slight 48 percent to 44percentlead over Rep. Rick Berg (R) in the North Dakota Senate race, according to a poll of 600 likely North Dakota voters conducted for Heitkamps campaign by the MellmanGroup from Oct. 21-24.
*Obamas campaign is up with a half-million-dollar ad buy in the Minneapolis-St. Paul media market, but the campaign insists its not worried about the state and that the ads are meant to reach western Wisconsin. Mitt Romneys campaign just placed its first buy in Minnesota, but the buy is just $30,000.
WHAT YOU SHOULDNT MISS:
* The League of Conservation Voters andMajorityPAClauncheda new$1.2 million ad buyhitting Rep. Jeff Flake (R) in the Arizona Senate race. How has Jeff Flake spent his career? As alobbyistfor a foreign-owneduranium mining company and as a congressman who takes campaign cash from the same types of companies, says the narrator of the ad.
* Romney hascanceleda planned rally in Virginia Beachon Sunday because of Hurricane Sandy. Romney had scheduled threerallies in Virginia on Sunday, but will now skip the final stop.
* The pro-Romney Ending Spending Fund super PAC will spearhead an effort to start gettingMittzines into newspapers in battleground states. The glassy-paged inserts will include positive stories from Romneys past intended to boost his image. One article is titled How Romneys Leadership Rescued a Missing Girl.
* Montana Hunters and Anglers, a group staffed by former aides to Democratic Sens. Jon Tester and and Max Baucus, is running a TV ad in the Montana Senate race that aims to boost Libertarian Senate candidate Dan Cox, in an apparent effort to peel away support from Rep. Denny Rehberg (R) and help Tester.
* Obama is not as good as he thinks he is at basketball, NBACommissionerDavid Stern said in an interview. Stern noted that he is a loyal Democrat, but added of Obamas hoop skills,Hes a lefty. He goes the same way every time.
* The South Florida Sun Sentinel newspaper, which backed Obama is 2008 is endorsing Romney this time around.
THE FIX MIX:
The pocket ukulele.
With Aaron Blake
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October 26, 2012 Friday 8:12 PM EST
He stoops, doesn't conquer
BYLINE: Charles Krauthammer
SECTION: Editorial; Pg. A23
LENGTH: 794 words
"L'etat, c'est moi."
- Louis XIV
"This nation. Me."
- Barack Obama,
third presidential debate
Okay, okay. I'll give you the context. Obama was talking about "when Tunisians began to protest, this nation, me, my administration, stood with them." Still. How many democratic leaders (de Gaulle excluded) would place the word "me" in such regal proximity to the word "nation"?
Obama would have made a very good Bourbon. He's certainly not a very good debater. He showed it again Monday night.
Obama lost. His tone was petty and small. Arguing about Iran's nuclear program, he actually said to Mitt Romney, "While we were coordinating an international coalition to make sure these sanctions were effective, you were still invested in a Chinese state oil company that was doing business with the Iranian oil sector." You can't get smaller than that. You'd expect this in a city council race. But only from the challenger. The sitting councilman would find such an ad hominem beneath him.
Throughout the debate, Obama kept it up, slashing, interjecting, interrupting, desperate to gain the upper hand by insult if necessary. That spirit led Obama into a major unforced error. When Romney made a perfectly reasonable case to rebuild a shrinking Navy, Obama condescended: "You mentioned . . . that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military's changed."
Such that naval vessels are as obsolete as horse cavalry?
Liberal pundits got a great guffaw out of this, but the underlying argument is quite stupid. As if the ships being retired are dinghies, skipjacks and three-masted schooners. As if an entire branch of the armed forces - the principal projector of American power abroad - is itself some kind of anachronism.
"We have these things called aircraft carriers," continued the schoolmaster, "where planes land on them."
This is Obama's case for fewer vessels? Does he think carriers patrol alone? He doesn't know that for every one carrier, 10 times as many ships sail in a phalanx of escorts?
Obama may blithely dismiss the need for more ships, but the Navy wants at least 310 and the latest Quadrennial Defense Review Independent Panel report says that defending America's vital interests requires 346 ships (vs. 287 today). Does anyone doubt that if we continue as we are headed, down to fewer than 230, the casualty will be entire carrier battle groups, precisely the kind of high-tech force multipliers that Obama pretends our national security requires?
Romney, for his part, showed himself to be fluent enough in foreign policy, although I could have done with a little less Mali (two references) and a lot less "tumult" (five).
But he did have the moment of the night when he took after Obama's post-inauguration world apology tour. Obama, falling back on his base, flailingly countered that "every fact checker and every reporter" says otherwise.
Oh yeah? What about Obama declaring that America had "dictated" to other nations?
"Mr. President," said Romney, "America has not dictated to other nations. We have freed other nations from dictators."
Obama, rattled, went off into a fog, beginning with "if we're going to talk about trips that we've taken," followed by a rambling travelogue of a 2008 visit to Israel. As if this is about trip-taking, rather than about defending - vs. denigrating - the honor of the United States while on foreign soil. Americans may care little about Syria and nothing about Mali. But they don't like presidents going abroad confirming the calumnies of tin-pot dictators.
The rest of Romney's debate performance was far more passive. He refused the obvious chance to pulverize Obama on Libya. I would've taken a baseball bat to Obama's second-debate claim that no one in his administration, including him, had misled the country on Benghazi. (The misleading is beyond dispute. The only question is whether it was intentional, i.e., deliberate deceit, or unintentional, i.e., scandalous incompetence.) Romney, however, calculated differently: Act presidential. Better use the night to assume a reassuring, non-contentious demeanor.
Romney's entire strategy in both the second and third debates was to reinforce the status he achieved in debate No. 1 as a plausible alternative president. He therefore went bipartisan, accommodating, above the fray and, above all, nonthreatening.
That's what Reagan did with Carter in their 1980 debate. If your opponent's record is dismal and the country quite prepared to toss him out - but not unless you pass the threshold test - what do you do?
Romney chose to do a Reagan: Don't quarrel. Speak softly. Meet the threshold.
We'll soon know whether steady-as-she-goes was the right choice.
letters@charleskrauthammer.com
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October 26, 2012 Friday 8:12 PM EST
'Fiscal cliff' already hurting economy, report says
BYLINE: Lori Montgomery
SECTION: A section; Pg. A01
LENGTH: 1200 words
The "fiscal cliff" is still two months off, but the scheduled blast of tax hikes and spending cuts is already reverberating through the U.S. economy, hampering growth and, according to a new study, wiping out nearly 1 million jobs this year alone.
The report, scheduled for release Friday by the National Association of Manufacturers, predicts that the economic damage would deepen considerably if Congress fails to avert the cliff, destroying nearly 6 million jobs through 2014 and sending the unemployment rate soaring to near 12 percent.
Across the nation, companies are bracing for the fallout by laying off workers, letting jobs go vacant and postponing major purchases. Commerce Department data released Thursday show business investment stalled in September, as orders for core capital goods such as machinery and equipment plateaued at $60.3 billion.
"The general consensus is things are going to get a lot worse as people expect this fiscal cliff to be on us," said Thomas Riordan, chief executive of Neenah Enterprises in Appleton, Wis., which makes cast-iron products such as truck axles and manhole covers.
The company has eliminated about 150 jobs over the past few months, and four of its six plants have begun operating on short workweeks. Like other business owners, Riordan expressed extreme frustration with Washington's failure to deal with the looming crisis, leaving momentous decisions about the economy until after the Nov. 6 election.
"Everyone is blaming everyone else as the country grinds to a halt," he said. "I don't think the political leadership in this country has an understanding of how long it could take to turn this boat around."
The term "fiscal cliff" is Washington shorthand for an array of policies set to take effect in January, sucking more than $500 billion out of the economy next year. That includes about $100 billion in automatic cuts to the military and federal agencies, adopted by Congress last year as part of a plan to reduce record budget deficits. It also includes about $400 billion in tax hikes, caused primarily by the expiration of a temporary payroll tax cut and other tax breaks adopted during the George W. Bush administration.
All told, the cliff amounts to the largest spurt of deficit reduction in more than 40 years. But it is also likely to push the fragile economy back into recession, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. The CBO predicts that a recession would be significant but brief, with unemployment peaking around 9 percent and economic growth recovering during the second half of 2013.
The projections in the NAM report - prepared by Jeff Werling, executive director of the Interindustry Forecasting Project at the University of Maryland - offer a substantially darker view of the consequences of inaction, joining others who have questioned CBO's relatively benign assessment.
Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics, projects that unemployment will peak at more than 9 percent in a forecast that closely tracks that of the CBO. But he said: "The risks are decidedly to the downside. Given the economy's extraordinary fragility and that the Federal Reserve is increasingly out of options, it isn't hard to construct scenarios in which recession would be deep enough to raise the unemployment rate into the double digits. Policymakers would be taking a big risk going over the fiscal cliff."
NAM is an advocacy organization and commissioned its report to persuade lawmakers to take action to avoid the cliff. Judging from the experience of NAM members and other data, Werling argues that anxiety about the cliff is already having an effect.
"We've probably already lost 0.5 percent of GDP growth in 2012, just from the fiscal cliff hovering over our heads," Werling said in an interview. "People are taking precautionary measures. Even if you think there's not much of a chance of this happening, businesses and consumers are still worried."
Anecdotal evidence abounds, particularly among companies associated with the defense industry. The Pentagon budget is set to take a hit of nearly $55 billion in the fiscal year that ends next September, on top of other scheduled reductions. Defense contractors are already hunkering down.
Preparing for the worst, Mike Kelly, president and chief executive of Ann Arbor-based Nanocerox, a supplier of advanced materials for laser systems, missile optics and radiation detection, said he embarked on an aggressive cost-containment strategy nine months ago. Kelly laid off four of his 22 employees and converted them to contract workers, froze salaries, renegotiated health benefits and tightened controls on spending.
Kelly said he's also trying to shift business away from the defense industry and into the commercial marketplace. But lenders and investors have no interest in financing his expansion.
"When you tell them you're an advanced materials company and your main client is the military, they run," Kelly said. "We started nine months ago envisioning that we'd be in a world of hurt right now. And unfortunately, we bet right."
Kellie Johnson, chief executive and owner of Ace Clearwater Enterprises in Torrance, Calif., said her business is also suffering. The maker of custom parts for the aerospace and power industries survived the recent recession on the strength of military orders from the U.S. government and abroad, Johnson said. She predicted 7 percent growth in revenue this year. But then this summer, "the orders just stopped."
"Now it looks like we'll be 4 percent less than last year," said Johnson, who has stopped filling open positions in her 192-person firm and canceled a $500,000 equipment order. Instead of doing readiness surveys to measure her capacity to ramp up production, she said, potential customers "this year are coming in and doing risk mitigation, asking, 'Hey, if these defense cuts go through, how are you diversifying? Are you going to be around in a couple years?'
"Honestly" she said, "this is the first time in my career that I have been so extremely concerned about the future of my company."
While concern about the cliff is rising, a consensus about how to handle it has been elusive. President Obama and other Democrats have threatened to block action on the cliff unless the Bush-era tax cuts are allowed to expire on income of more than $250,000 a year. Republicans, including presidential candidate Mitt Romney, want to maintain current tax rates for another year to give Congress time to tackle more far-reaching reforms - a position supported by the manufacturing association.
But on Thursday, a group of 80 high-profile chief executives said they are willing to accept higher taxes - accompanied by "significant spending restraint" - as part of a long-term plan to tame the $16.2 trillion national debt. Enacting such a deal, they said, would not only avert the cliff, but would also boost market confidence and perhaps spur economic growth.
"We can do this in a 10-year plan that doesn't damage the fragile recovery," Honeywell chief executive David Cote said during a news conference at the New York Stock Exchange just before the market's opening bell.
montgomeryl@washpost.com
Suzy Khimm contributed to this report.
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October 26, 2012 Friday 8:12 PM EST
Rape shouldn't be used to score political points
BYLINE: Melinda Henneberger
SECTION: A section; Pg. A02
LENGTH: 1346 words
Another day, another Republican candidate in trouble for talking about rape the wrong way. I don't want them to stop mentioning it, mind you, but I wish they could do so with a little humility, and some acknowledgment of the seriousness of the crime itself, rather than only speaking about it in the context of what happens later.
This close to an election, though, I wonder if political advisers out there are begging clients to refer any questions about social policy to their Web sites, or to play it extra-safe, lay off using feminine pronouns altogether until after Nov. 6.
I tuned into the tail end of the debate for the U.S. Senate seat in Indiana the other night just in time to hear Richard Mourdock say he does not believe in abortion even following rape because "I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended.'' It was shocking to hear him say it that way, of course, and my first reaction, too, was to say it wasn't nice to implicate God in man's crimes. But does anybody sincerely think he meant Jesus is on the side of the rapists? No.
Mourdock is by any standard a "severely conservative" guy. When his Democratic opponent, Rep. Joe Donnelly, describes the Indiana state treasurer as a tea party fave who's questioned the constitutionality of Medicare and Social Security, that's a pretty fair summary, even if Mourdock protests it now because he needs to win over those moderate Richard G. Lugar supporters he offended during the primary.
Donnelly, who was in a true tossup of a race before this happened, just got more than a million-dollar boost from the Senate Democrats, in the form of an ad tying Mourdock's rape comment to GOP presidential challenger Mitt Romney, who's endorsed him. But as usual, it's more complicated than that ad makes it seem: Donnelly, a lovely guy and my fellow Notre Dame grad, also describes his views as "pro-life," and he co-sponsored a House bill that would have nixed abortion funding for rape and incest victims and designated some attacks as "forcible rape." The bill eventually dropped the offensive and redundant term "forcible rape,'' which Donnelly says he didn't know was in there to begin with. Now, not surprisingly, Donnelly insists that Mourdock meant to indict God in crimes against women: "The God I believe in and the God I know most Hoosiers believe in does not intend for rape to happen - ever. . . . It is stunning that he would be so disrespectful to survivors of rape."
That's politics, which as Romney has noted "ain't the beanbag.'' But it's not an accurate representation of Mourdock's views, even if President Obama and Romney both act as if it is, with Obama obliquely referencing Mourdock's comment on the stump Thursday and Romney distancing himself from the statement but not pulling his endorsement of the candidate.
This spring, I spent a morning shadowing Mourdock as he went door-knocking in Evansville, then interviewed him at length over coffee. This fall, we spoke again, at a campaign event in Indianapolis, and when his aides finally pulled him out the door, he called me from his truck and stayed on the line until every last question had been answered. He's an earnest and emotional guy, tearing up repeatedly as he spoke of America's greatness and challenges. As I've written before, one thing I appreciate about him - and was pretty sure would get him into trouble - is that he will answer any question he's asked, directly, fully and the first time. If he were elected, Washington would have one more straight talker, but there's a price for letting it roll, and he's paying it.
He is not, however - and I'll say this if no one else will - a Todd Akin, who not only thinks female superpowers include the ability to block conception under duress - if only! - but has compared his Democratic opponent, Sen. Claire McCaskill, to a dog. Neither is he Sharron Angle, babbling about how a hypothetical pregnant 13-year-old survivor of rape or incest should "make a lemon situation into lemonade." Nor is he Clayton "Claytie" Williams, who lost to Ann Richards after "joking" that bad weather is like rape - there's nothing you can do about it, so might as well lay back and enjoy it.
What Mourdock says he meant is that life is always intended, though violence never is. By all means, Hoosiers, reject him because he thinks needed social programs are too expensive, because fiscal cliffs and debt ceilings don't scare him even a little bit, and because those comical "my way or the highway'' Donnelly commercials contain more than a kernel of truth about his avowed contempt for compromise. But because he worships a God who likes to see women humiliated? That's willful distortion, it seems to me.
Wednesday morning, an editor called me, wondering whether we could stop by a rape crisis center or something and find a real rape victim to interview; yup, I thought, with 200,000 women raped in this country every year, such a person should be easier to find than he imagined.
The writer I probably agree with more often than any other, Amy Sullivan, now at the New Republic, wrote Thursday that "I don't think that politicians like Mourdock oppose rape exceptions because they hate women or want to control women. I think they're totally oblivious and insensitive and can't for a moment place themselves in the shoes of a woman who becomes pregnant from a rape.'' Just this once, even Amy and I part company.
Because I do understand those who oppose exceptions, though I myself don't. That's because opposition with no exceptions is the logical conclusion of believing that life begins at conception - just as some have argued that post-birth abortion is the logical conclusion of believing that abortion's fine at any point and for any reason. That's why so many of us are in the messy, inconsistent middle, disapproving of the investigative nightmare that criminalization would set off, but also uncomprehending of the logic that it's a baby only if we say it is.
I also have no trouble placing myself in the shoes of a woman who becomes pregnant from a rape because, in college, I volunteered at a rape crisis hotline. After graduation, I worked for a year at a small social service agency in San Francisco's Mission District that helped women coming out of abusive relationships. And at 26, I myself was raped, by a man who called just before our dinner date to say darn, how embarrassing, his car was in the shop, and could I maybe pick him up at his house instead?
I knocked and was promptly thrown on the floor in the entryway and violated, after which he laughed that no one would believe me, a junior nobody who'd just hit town, over him, a handsome rich guy with friends in high places who didn't really have trouble getting a date, now did he? Oh, and who is it who'd showed up at whose house again? He didn't ruin my life, or anything close to that - in fact, in one of those "truth really is stranger than fiction" twists, I saw my husband for the first time the next day.
I did, though, stop swimming because he went to the same pool, and he would swim up under me, push me out of the water and taunt me about whether I'd been down to the precinct to report him yet. And just a couple of years ago, he got to know some college friends of mine, told them what close pals we were and asked them to tell me he missed me. The older I've gotten, the worse I've felt about deciding against reporting him - and the more I've worried about how many other women he's called since then to say darn, his car was in the shop.
Why do I say all this now, half a lifetime later? First, because that guy could still be playing that trick; if you live in Dallas and have been thrown onto that same foyer floor, call me, because now I will testify. And because rape isn't a joke and shouldn't be used to score political points, either; if you can't get it right, maybe you shouldn't say anything at all.
hennebergerm@washpost.com
Melinda Henneberger is a Post political writer and anchors the paper's She the People blog. Follow her on Twitter: @MelindaDC.
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October 26, 2012 Friday 8:12 PM EST
Some W.Va. Democrats separating from Obama
BYLINE: Michael Leahy
SECTION: A section; Pg. A01
LENGTH: 1852 words
BLUEFIELD, W.Va. - Among the millions of wavering voters in the presidential race, the most prominent might be West Virginia's Joe Manchin - a U.S. senator, a candidate for reelection and a lifelong Democrat who, less than two weeks out, is undecided about whether to support Barack Obama again.
"I don't feel compelled as I did in 2008," he says.
Manchin isn't alone among West Virginia Democrats attempting to separate themselves from the president. The governor, Earl Ray Tomblin, and a prominent congressman, Nick J. Rahall II - both facing reelection challenges - have also declined to publicly endorse Obama.
But the spurning of the president by the 65-year-old Manchin, a popular former governor and nowadays his state's chief political luminary, stands out - in part because of Manchin's intense criticism of the man whom he regularly and affectionately called "Barack" during the 2008 campaign. A federal "war on coal" has harmed West Virginia and united Democratic dissenters against the Obama administration, Manchin declared in an interview last week, observing of the president's electoral fate: "I think he knows he's not going to do well in our state. . . . And you know what? It's personal. When people lose their jobs, they look at you and ask, 'So, what am I to do?' And they blame him."
Four years ago, before the blaming started, Manchin praised Obama as a worthy partner for coal states, declaring in a CNBC interview, "That's why it's so imperative that Barack becomes the next president." Now Manchin talks about how the Obama administration doesn't reach out to him for discussions on coal issues, and how the president has never called him.
Manchin's supporters point out that elective politics is chiefly about personal survival, with loyalty to another politician always a fluid and fragile thing. Obama, who is thought to be trailing Republican Mitt Romney by more than 20 percentage points in West Virginia, is about as popular here as wind turbines. In 2008, John McCain beat him by 13 points in the state. During this year's West Virginia Democratic primary, a Texas prison inmate received about 41 percent against Obama in a protest vote, with Manchin carefully committing to no one. West Virginia Democratic leaders urging him to support Obama have had their entreaties rebuffed.
Meanwhile, Manchin is seeking to tweak a bit of history. When reminded that he endorsed Obama in 2008 after the eventual president secured the Democratic nomination, he is quick to disagree and clarify, disliking the word "endorsed." "Well, supported him," he says.
Manchin isn't the first senator to consider not supporting his party's nominee. In 2004, for instance, then-Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee (R-R.I.) announced that he wasn't planning to vote for President George W. Bush, while Zell Miller (Ga.) did not vote for fellow senator John F. Kerry (Mass.), the Democratic presidential nominee.
In West Virginia, Manchin has a comfortable lead in his race against Republican John Raese. Raese lost to Manchin by about 10 points in a 2010 special election, in which the Democrat captured the seat previously held by the state's late legend Robert C. Byrd. Manchin, who had trailed through much of the campaign, saw his standing soar after running a TV ad in which he aimed a rifle and viewers saw a bullet slicing through a mock-up of an Obama-favored cap-and-trade bill to regulate carbon emissions.
His track record has reflected his streaks of independence from the administration and his party, as well as his mercurial nature, all of it serving to safeguard his maverick image in West Virginia. After indicating support in early 2010 for the Affordable Care Act, which won passage before he entered the Senate, Manchin's perspective, in line with the state's burgeoning anti-Obama sentiment, swiftly evolved to the point where he charged that the law was "overreaching" and in need of reform.
But all other issues here pale next to the question of which candidates will best protect the coal industry. Raese - who has seized on the unpopularity of Obama here and several regulations from the administration's Environmental Protection Agency that affect the state's coal industry - speaks at every opportunity about the purported link between Manchin and the president. He hopes to benefit from anti-Obama TV ads running across the state that feature a 2008 recording of then-candidate Obama saying, "If somebody wants to build a coal power plant, they can; it's just that it will bankrupt them."
The dispute stretches beyond West Virginia. Coal has emerged as a fierce issue in parts of Ohio and Virginia, two battleground states with communities that are historically reliant on the industry, as well as in Pennsylvania, a state the Romney campaign hopes to keep in play by winning over disgruntled coal workers.
At a rally in Moon Township, Pa., last weekend, Republican vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan repeated that the Obama administration has waged a "war on coal," asserting that more than 100 coal plants had been scheduled to close, at a cost of thousands of jobs.
Data from the government and the coal industry suggest a complicated picture. Although there are more coal jobs now than when Obama took office, overall coal production has fallen slightly, according to industry statistics. Over the past year, a decline in demand for coal has led to layoffs in parts of Appalachia. In West Virginia, 1,300 coal jobs were lost during the past quarter, according to the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration.
Although some administration critics bitterly cite EPA regulations that restrict certain kinds of mining operations and increase operational costs, many industry analysts observe that coal's biggest problem at the moment is the competitive presence of natural gas, which has become a cheaper and increasingly attractive alternative. Technological advances have led some coal-fired plants to switch to natural gas.
In West Virginia, what matters most is whether a candidate can be trusted to fight vigilantly on behalf of coal. Raese argues that Manchin's old alliance with Obama ought to be viewed as disqualifying.
"He's on the wrong team," Raese said of Manchin, adding: "And it's puzzling and disturbing to many West Virginians that he won't even say who he's voting for. I'm for Governor Romney. Why won't Joe tell us whom he supports? . . . What does it mean?"
Asked those same questions, the Obama campaign declined to comment about the meaning and impact of Manchin's decision not to endorse the president. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the Democratic National Committee did not respond to requests for comment.
Although some polls place his advantage over Raese at about 30 points, Manchin is taking no chances, and is careful at nearly every stop to distinguish himself from Obama and what he calls "Washington Democrats." Last week, at a Chamber of Commerce "Meet the Candidates" breakfast in the southern West Virginia city of Beckley, Manchin told his audience that Washington is "discounting coal." Later that day, he repeated his differences with the Obama administration during an address before a group of veterans in Bluefield. "I respectfully disagree with the president on the lack of an energy policy," he said, before skewering EPA regulations and mocking what he considers the anti-coal emphasis of environmentalists. He elicited chuckles when he declared, "I found out that common sense is not too common in Washington."
'Stick together'
Among the veterans listening to him was 75-year-old Al Hancock, the lone African American in the room, reflective of a state whose population is only about 3 percent black. Hancock regards the senator as a family friend, appreciative of the advice and encouragement that Manchin has given over many years to Hancock's son, Phil, a Washington lawyer for Amtrak. But Hancock's gratitude has left him no less disappointed with Manchin's unwillingness to support Obama. "I'm on the president's side," Hancock said after the senator's remarks. "Democrats should stick together."
Hancock does sympathize with the political pressures on his friend. "People here hate President Obama, probably partially because of the way they see him on coal," he said. "If Joe had come out for President Obama, a lot of people in West Virginia would have held it against him, even though I still think Joe would win big. But even popular [candidates] aren't taking chances when it comes to the president."
Listening to Hancock, 71-year-old Pete Sternloff, a fellow Vietnam veteran and a Bluefield official, nodded. "Obama will be lucky to get within 30 points of Romney here, which helps me understand why Manchin isn't [supporting] him," said Sternloff, a staunch Obama supporter who has given up hope that the state's other uncommitted Democratic candidates will embrace the president in the campaign's final days. "Their [Republican] opponents would just love for them to endorse; it'd give them an issue."
Still, questions about Manchin's elusiveness persist. "When have you ever heard of a senator not saying if he's going to vote for a president?" Raese demanded. The doubts about Obama among local candidates transcend class and race in West Virginia, where virtually everyone knows someone involved in the coal industry. Nearly every political discussion begins and ends with a reference to the loss of coal jobs in the state during the president's term.
The office-seekers distancing themselves from Obama include Tony O. Martin, an African American candidate running in Beckley as an independent for the West Virginia House of Delegates. "I'm up in the air about the [presidential] election," says Martin, a Manchin supporter who echoes many of the senator's concerns with Obama. "The ramifications of the administration's EPA on costs and coal jobs still have me concerned. Probably leaning a little toward the president, but still up in the air."
Manchin, who earlier in the campaign indicated that he was considering both Romney and Obama, now says he won't vote for the Republican. But the suggestion that this leaves only Obama triggers a flurry of additional qualifiers from him. He swiftly adds that he is "having a hard time" envisioning that he might vote for the president.
"When I say, 'I'm having a hard time,' " he explains, "I gotta make my decision just like the American people, okay? . . . And it's hard right now [to support Obama] with where the country is and with where he's come from the last four years."
If the president gets trounced in coal states, Manchin thinks his old ally will have only himself to blame. "Basically, there's an awful lot of fault there for the overreaching of a government agency which is working against you, not with you," he says, referring to the EPA. "When you don't feel the government is your partner, but more your adversary and enemy . . . you got a problem."
So he won't be voting for Obama?
"I'm having a hard time," he repeats enigmatically.
This hangs there. He smiles. "With all respect, it is what it is."
leahym@washpost.com
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October 26, 2012 Friday 8:12 PM EST
Romney outraises Obama by $21 million in first half of October
BYLINE: Dan Eggen
SECTION: A section; Pg. A06
LENGTH: 595 words
Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney outraised President Obama by $21 million in the first half of October, taking advantage of a strong first debate and tightening polls to overtake the incumbent in the money race, officials said Thursday.
The influx of $111.8 million from Oct. 1 to Oct. 17 left Romney and the Republican National Committee with nearly $170 million in cash on hand, aides said. Obama and the Democratic National Committee said they raised $90.5 million during the same period and had $125 million in cash on hand.
The surge marks a turnabout for Romney, who had fallen behind the president in monthly fundraising since summer. Both sides have raised more than $1 billion each between the campaigns, political parties and super PACs, although Obama has brought in and spent far more through his campaign committee.
The hefty numbers suggest that neither side is likely to run into a cash crunch in the final 11 days of the race, as both campaigns continue to inundate swing states with broadcast ads, mailers and get-out-the-vote workers. The Obama team also reserved a $15 million line of credit.
The campaigns released the totals before a filing deadline of midnight Thursday at the Federal Election Commission.
Spencer Zwick, Romney's finance chairman, said in a statement that the Republican's economic plans "will bring much-needed change after the last four years and it is why we have seen such momentum and strong support from our donors."
The Obama team said that more than 1.2 million people had given to the campaign during the first half of the month, including 207,000 new donors. "We're making every effort to expand our donor base heading into the final stretch," spokesman Adam Fetcher said.
Romney, who relies more heavily on large-dollar donations than Obama does, has kept up a steady pace of major fundraisers in the final stretch of the race, including a series of events in solidly red states this week held by Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.), his vice presidential running mate. The GOP candidate's finance team also held a conference call with major donors on Thursday aimed at drumming up even more money.
Restore Our Future, a super PAC assisting Romney, told the FEC that it had $24 million on hand on Oct. 17. The group received a combined $10 million from Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and his wife, Miriam. The duo have given close to $50 million to Republican causes this year.
American Crossroads, a major conservative super PAC, brought in $11.6 million, including a $4 million donation from Dallas billionaire Harold Simmons, who has given more than $22 million to Republicans this cycle.
Priorities USA Action, a super PAC backing Obama, raised $13 million in early October, including seven million-dollar checks from donors including financier George Soros.
The figures show that Romney and the RNC have widened their cash edge over Democrats this month, although some of their money is devoted to congressional races. But Romney could be limited in using all the extra cash effectively because the swing-state airwaves are saturated.
Republicans have vastly outspent Democrats in presidential ads in October, but the Obama campaign has been able to run more commercials by using discounted rates and other tactics.
Both campaigns went well beyond the fundraising pace set four years ago by Obama's campaign, which together with the party raised $69 million in the first 17 days of October 2008. Obama and the Democrats raised just under $1 billion during the 2008 race, a record at the time.
eggend@washpost.com
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The Fix
October 26, 2012 Friday 6:40 PM EST
The Senate GOPs still-viable path to a majority
BYLINE: Aaron Blake
LENGTH: 1252 words
We wrote in the Morning Fix on Friday about the very real possibility that the 2012 battle for the Senate winds up a draw.
With six seats listed as toss-ups in the latest Fix rankings, a split of those seats would lead to the exact same 53-to-47 Democratic majority that we have today. And for a Republican Party that had designs on regaining the majority, that would certainly be a disappointment.
But with 11 days to go, Republicans also continue to have a very real shot at winning that majority. And thats because they have something that Democrats dont: Lots of opportunity.
While the map hasnt exactly trended in the GOPs favor in recent months when it comes to the top races (Indiana, Massachusetts and Missouri, in particular), Republicans continue to have plausible opportunities to win in a huge amount of seats that we currently rate as lean Democratic.
Recent polls have shown GOP candidates within striking distance though still trailing in a bunch of lean Democratic states: Connecticut, Florida, Maine, Massachusetts, Missouri, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Republicans can still get to a 50-50 tie in the Senate by winning all six toss-up races (in which case the vice president would cast tie-breaking votes), but the viable likely path to a majority for the GOP is to move some of those lean Democratic seats into the toss-up category and pull an upset against Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) or Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio).
The good news for Republicans is that there are a bunch of states where they could make that happen.
But if they cant put those seats in play over the next 11 days, the majority math is very tough.
Below, we look at the 10 seats that are most likely to change control on Nov. 6, with No. 1 being the most likelyand No. 10 being the least likely.
To the line!
Off the line: Connecticut
10. Arizona (Republican-controlled): Democrat Richard Carmona deserves credit for staying in the mix until the end in this red state. The former U.S. surgeon generals centrist credentials have propelled him to within a point of Rep. Jeff Flake (R), according to the Real Clear Politics average of polls in the race. The question is whether a rough recent ad from Flake alleging the Democrat has issues with anger and women, and an unadvisedquip by Carmona about Candy Crowley will damage the Democrats standing among women. This race leapfrogs Connecticut, with recent polls suggesting Republican Linda McMahon has lost some traction in that race. (Previous ranking: N/A)
9. Nevada (R): What looked to be a pretty pure toss-up at the start of the cycle is looking a little like appointed Sen. Dean Hellers (R) race to lose. Every recent independent nonpartisan poll has shown Heller leading by at least a few points, though hardly out of the danger zone. And with Nevada looking like it tilts toward President Obama, Heller will need plenty of crossover votes to win over Rep. Shelley Berkley (D).. (Previous ranking: 8)
8. Virginia (Democratic-controlled): The slim lead that former Democratic National Committee chairman Tim Kaine (D) had opened up over former senator George Allen earlier this fall appears to have disappeared, as Mitt Romney has moved into a statistical dead heat with President Obama at the top of the ballot. Even Republicans acknowledge that Allens fate is tied entirely to Romneys. If Romney wins the state, Allen will likely though not certainly win. If Obama carries Virginia, no one on either side of the aisle thinks Allen can get across the finish line first. (Previous ranking: 7)
7. Indiana (R): Richard Mourdock had a very bad week, and he admitted as much. His comments about rape and pregnancy will almost certainly hurt him at least a little bit. And given that he was in an already-tight race with Rep. Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.), that should give Democrats even more hope. The only reason we dont move this race up further is 1) we havent seen a poll since Mourdocks comments, and 2) Indiana is a Republican and socially conservative state that Mitt Romney is likely to carry by a significant margin. (Previous ranking: 9)
6.Wisconsin(D): The negative ad warhere has taken a toll on both candidates in this race. Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D) and former governor Tommy Thompson (R) each had underwaterfavorabilityratings in the most recent Marquette Law School poll. If the race for the White House stays tight in the Badger State, Thompsons crossover appeal will give Republicans confidence heading toward Nov. 6. But Baldwin has given herself a real shot at victory here. (Previous ranking: 6)
5. Montana (D): A judge this week ordered the release of a report on the investigation into a boat crash involving Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-Mont.) in 2009, and Democrats are giddy that they could reap a late game-changer out of it. That aside, the race remains maybe the truest toss-up on the map, with basically every poll within the margin of error and either side leading in about half of them. Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) may be a slight, slight underdog, given the states Republican lean. (Previous ranking: 4)
4. North Dakota (D): Give Democrats an enormous amount of credit in this race. There is no one we repeat NO ONE who thought that the North Dakota open seat would still be competitive 10 days before the election. But former state Attorney General Heidi Heitkamp (D) has shown remarkable staying power, and Rep. Rick Berg (R) has simply been unable to put any real distance between himself and his Democratic rival. While most polling suggests the race is basically tied, we still put a finger (pinky?) on the scale for Berg due to the states Republican lean. President Obama will struggle to get the 45 percent he won statewide in 2008, meaning that Heitkamp will have to over-perform the top of the ticket by somewhere between six and 10 points. Doable? Yes. Likely? Not quite. (Previous ranking: 3)
3. Massachusetts (R):Sen. Scott Brown (R) was looking in strong political shape this summer. Then the fall arrived. The Republicans attacks against Elizabeth Warrens (D) claims to Native American heritage have fallen flat, and the Democrat has done well in the three debates, propelling her to a slight lead in the polls. Perhaps most troubling for Brown: A recent poll shows hes lost his edge over Warren when it comes tofavorability, which was about the only reason he would win in such a blue state. Theres one debate left in this race next week. If Brown doesnt use it to move the needle, itsdifficultto see how he pulls ahead here, short of Warrencommittinga big error. (Previous ranking: 5)
2. Maine (R): National Republicans made former governor Angus King (I) sweat a bit when they barraged him over the airwaves, narrowing the gap between thefront-runnerand Republican Charlie Summers. But King got somereinforcementsfrom environmental groups and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and hasntrelinquished his advantage. (Previous ranking: 2)
1. Nebraska (D): Former senator Bob Kerreys (D-Neb.) campaign released a poll this week that showed him trailing state Sen. Deb Fischer (R) by just five points, but national Democrats have yet to run any independent expenditure ads trying to save this seat. Kerreys campaign may not believe this is a lost cause, but national Democrats sure seem to. (Previous ranking: 1)
Sean Sullivan and Chris Cillizza contributed to this report.
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Election 2012
October 26, 2012 Friday 3:58 PM EST
Ad watch: Obama touts unbreakable commitment to Israel
BYLINE: Rachel Weiner
LENGTH: 133 words
Obama for America, Unbreakable
What it says:I went to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum [in Israel] to remind myself the nature of evil and why our bond with Israel will be unbreakable. As long as Im president of the United States, Iran will not get a nuclear weapon.
What it means: Mitt Romney and his allies have repeatedly attacked Obama as weak on Iran, arguing that the president has not stood sufficiently close to Israel against that threat. This ad pushes back on that criticism, using Obamas pledge of commitment to Israel in the foreign policy debatealongside footage from his 2008 trip to the country.
Who will see it:Florida, where Republicans are aggressively targeting Jewish voters in hopes of peeling off some of Obamas support.
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Election 2012
October 26, 2012 Friday 3:24 PM EST
Romney to promise real change in economic speech
BYLINE: Rachel Weiner
LENGTH: 202 words
Mitt Romney is headed to Iowa to deliver what his campaign is billing as a major economic speech, a closing argument that makes clear the choice between him and President Obama.
Excerpts released in advance suggest that the speech continues the theme his campaign debuted this week contrasting Obamas promise of change with real, big change.
What this requires is change, change from the course of the last four years, Romney plans to say. It requires that we put aside the small and the petty, and demand the scale of change we deserve: we need real change, big change.Our campaign is about that kind of change confronting the problems that politicians have avoided for over a decade, revitalizing our competitive economy, modernizing our education, restoring our founding principles.
He describes the choice in the election: This election is a choice between the status quogoing forward with the same policies of the last four yearsor instead, choosing real change, change that offers promise, promise that the future will be better than the past.
In a July ad, The Choice, Obama gave his own version of the choice between two very different plans for our country, focused on the fight over tax cuts for the rich.
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The Fact Checker
October 26, 2012 Friday 1:33 PM EST
Obama ad takes Romney remarks on Iraq and Afghanistan out of context;
The new Obama campaign tries to spin a diplomatic failure into "mission accomplished."
BYLINE: Glenn Kessler
LENGTH: 905 words
"President Obama ended the Iraq War...Mitt Romney would have left thirty thousand troops there ... and called bringing them home 'tragic.' Obama's brought thirty thousand soldiers back from Afghanistan. And has a responsible plan to end the war. Romney calls it Obama's 'biggest mistake.'"
- Voiceover from a new Obama campaign television ad
On the eve of the final presidential debate - which focused on foreign policy - the Obama campaign released a new television ad that uses Mitt Romney's words to indict how he would have handled the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In fact, the president echoed some of those claims during the debate:
"What I would not have had done was left 10,000 troops in Iraq that would tie us down. And that certainly would not help us in the Middle East."
- Obama
"I'm sorry, there was an effort on the part of the president to have a status of forces agreement, and I concurred in that, and said that we should have some number of troops that stayed on. That was something I concurred with."
- Romney
But both campaigns have often taken their opponent's words out of context. Is that the case here as well?
The Facts
Ending the war in Iraq was a central Obama campaign promise in the 2008 election. But Romney is correct that the Obama administration tried to negotiate a "status of forces agreement" (SOFA) with the Iraqi government that would have allowed the U.S. to keep troops in Iraq after an earlier agreement reached by the Bush administration lapsed at the end of 2011.
The two sides could not reach agreement on immunity for U.S. troops, but up until the end, the administration was willing to keep 3,000 to 4,000 troops in Iraq. That's less than 10,000, but news reports at the time said that military commanders had wanted to keep 14,000 to 18,000 troops in Iraq. It's unclear how hard Obama pressed for a deal; he only had two conversations with the Iraqi president, leaving most of the negotiations to Vice President Biden.
When Obama announced he was withdrawing all U.S. troops after he failed to reach a new SOFA deal with the Iraqis, Romney criticized the outcome of the negotiations:
"It is my view that the withdrawal of all of our troops from Iraq by the end of this year is an enormous mistake, and failing by the Obama administration.The precipitous withdrawal is unfortunate -- it's more than unfortunate, I think it's tragic. It puts at risk many of the victories that were hard won by the men and women who served there."
In other words, the phrase "tragic" referred to the failure to not reach a deal - not bringing the troops home. Here's how Romney put it on Fox News Sunday on Dec. 18, 2011:
"We're, of course, very happy to see our troops come out. But I think you're going to see another lesson learned. I think we're going to find that this president by not putting in place a status in forces agreement with the Iraqi leadership has pulled our troops out in a precipitous way and we should have left 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 personnel there to help transition to the Iraqis' own military capabilities. I'm very concerned in this setting. I hope it works out. But I'm concerned."
That's where the "30,000 troops" comes from - it was an upper range figure. In other interviews, Romney also said he would have preferred to have left 10,000 to 30,000 troops in Iraq. The mid-range of that point, of course, is what military commanders wanted.
In other words, Obama has spun a diplomatic failure - an inability to reach a deal with Iraq - into a "mission accomplished" talking point.
During the debate, in fact, Obama made a dubious claim that having any troops in Iraq "would not help us in the Middle East."
Since the departure of U.S. troops, the United States has lost leverage in Iraq. For instance, Iran uses Iraqi airspace and convoys on the ground to ferry arms and military equipment to the beleaguered regime in Syria - a government that Obama says must fall.
As for Afghanistan, here again we have another out-of-context quote. The ad makes it appear as if Romney is criticizing the plan to withdraw U.S. forces by 2014, calling it Obama's "biggest mistake."
Actually, Romney in a pair of interviews referred to Obama's "biggest mistakes," which included announcing dates when the surge would end and when combat operations would end. Those are tactical questions. Critics say announcing a withdrawal date simply signals to insurgents how long they have to hang in there before the Americans leave; supporters say it motivates the Afghan government to improve its forces. But in any case it is not a criticism of ending the war.
Romney has at times been vague as to whether he would prefer fighting to continue past 2014, but in Monday's debate he said he agreed with the current plan: "We're going to be finished by 2014, and when I'm president, we'll make sure we bring our troops out by the end of 2014."
The Pinocchio Test
The Obama campaign frequently cries foul when it believes Romney has twisted Obama's words. But here the Obama campaign, in a negative way, gives as good as it gets.
Three Pinocchios
(About our rating scale)
Check out our candidate Pinocchio Tracker
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Track each presidential candidate's campaign ads
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October 26, 2012 Friday
Regional Edition
He stoops, doesn't conquer
BYLINE: Charles Krauthammer
SECTION: EDITORIAL COPY; Pg. A23
LENGTH: 793 words
"L'etat, c'est moi."
- Louis XIV
"This nation. Me."
- Barack Obama,
third presidential debate
Okay, okay. I'll give you the context. Obama was talking about "when Tunisians began to protest, this nation, me, my administration, stood with them." Still. How many democratic leaders (de Gaulle excluded) would place the word "me" in such regal proximity to the word "nation"?
Obama would have made a very good Bourbon. He's certainly not a very good debater. He showed it again Monday night.
Obama lost. His tone was petty and small. Arguing about Iran's nuclear program, he actually said to Mitt Romney, "While we were coordinating an international coalition to make sure these sanctions were effective, you were still invested in a Chinese state oil company that was doing business with the Iranian oil sector." You can't get smaller than that. You'd expect this in a city council race. But only from the challenger. The sitting councilman would find such an ad hominem beneath him.
Throughout the debate, Obama kept it up, slashing, interjecting, interrupting, desperate to gain the upper hand by insult if necessary. That spirit led Obama into a major unforced error. When Romney made a perfectly reasonable case to rebuild a shrinking Navy, Obama condescended: "You mentioned . . . that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military's changed."
Such that naval vessels are as obsolete as horse cavalry?
Liberal pundits got a great guffaw out of this, but the underlying argument is quite stupid. As if the ships being retired are dinghies, skipjacks and three-masted schooners. As if an entire branch of the armed forces - the principal projector of American power abroad - is itself some kind of anachronism.
"We have these things called aircraft carriers," continued the schoolmaster, "where planes land on them."
This is Obama's case for fewer vessels? Does he think carriers patrol alone? He doesn't know that for every one carrier, 10 times as many ships sail in a phalanx of escorts?
Obama may blithely dismiss the need for more ships, but the Navy wants at least 310 and the latest Quadrennial Defense Review Independent Panel report says that defending America's vital interests requires 346 ships (vs. 287 today). Does anyone doubt that if we continue as we are headed, down to fewer than 230, the casualty will be entire carrier battle groups, precisely the kind of high-tech force multipliers that Obama pretends our national security requires?
Romney, for his part, showed himself to be fluent enough in foreign policy, although I could have done with a little less Mali (two references) and a lot less "tumult" (five).
But he did have the moment of the night when he took after Obama's post-inauguration world apology tour. Obama, falling back on his base, flailingly countered that "every fact checker and every reporter" says otherwise.
Oh yeah? What about Obama declaring that America had "dictated" to other nations?
"Mr. President," said Romney, "America has not dictated to other nations. We have freed other nations from dictators."
Obama, rattled, went off into a fog, beginning with "if we're going to talk about trips that we've taken," followed by a rambling travelogue of a 2008 visit to Israel. As if this is about trip-taking, rather than about defending - vs. denigrating - the honor of the United States while on foreign soil. Americans may care little about Syria and nothing about Mali. But they don't like presidents going abroad confirming the calumnies of tin-pot dictators.
The rest of Romney's debate performance was far more passive. He refused the obvious chance to pulverize Obama on Libya. I would've taken a baseball bat to Obama's second-debate claim that no one in his administration, including him, had misled the country on Benghazi. (The misleading is beyond dispute. The only question is whether it was intentional, i.e., deliberate deceit, or unintentional, i.e., scandalous incompetence.) Romney, however, calculated differently: Act presidential. Better use the night to assume a reassuring, non-contentious demeanor.
Romney's entire strategy in both the second and third debates was to reinforce the status he achieved in debate No. 1 as a plausible alternative president. He therefore went bipartisan, accommodating, above the fray and, above all, nonthreatening.
That's what Reagan did with Carter in their 1980 debate. If your opponent's record is dismal and the country quite prepared to toss him out - but not unless you pass the threshold test - what do you do?
Romney chose to do a Reagan: Don't quarrel. Speak softly. Meet the threshold.
We'll soon know whether steady-as-she-goes was the right choice.
letters@charleskrauthammer.com
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October 26, 2012 Friday
Met 2 Edition
'Fiscal cliff' already hurting economy, report says
BYLINE: Lori Montgomery
SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A01
LENGTH: 1200 words
The "fiscal cliff" is still two months off, but the scheduled blast of tax hikes and spending cuts is already reverberating through the U.S. economy, hampering growth and, according to a new study, wiping out nearly 1 million jobs this year alone.
The report, scheduled for release Friday by the National Association of Manufacturers, predicts that the economic damage would deepen considerably if Congress fails to avert the cliff, destroying nearly 6 million jobs through 2014 and sending the unemployment rate soaring to near 12 percent.
Across the nation, companies are bracing for the fallout by laying off workers, letting jobs go vacant and postponing major purchases. Commerce Department data released Thursday show business investment stalled in September, as orders for core capital goods such as machinery and equipment plateaued at $60.3 billion.
"The general consensus is things are going to get a lot worse as people expect this fiscal cliff to be on us," said Thomas Riordan, chief executive of Neenah Enterprises in Appleton, Wis., which makes cast-iron products such as truck axles and manhole covers.
The company has eliminated about 150 jobs over the past few months, and four of its six plants have begun operating on short workweeks. Like other business owners, Riordan expressed extreme frustration with Washington's failure to deal with the looming crisis, leaving momentous decisions about the economy until after the Nov. 6 election.
"Everyone is blaming everyone else as the country grinds to a halt," he said. "I don't think the political leadership in this country has an understanding of how long it could take to turn this boat around."
The term "fiscal cliff" is Washington shorthand for an array of policies set to take effect in January, sucking more than $500 billion out of the economy next year. That includes about $100 billion in automatic cuts to the military and federal agencies, adopted by Congress last year as part of a plan to reduce record budget deficits. It also includes about $400 billion in tax hikes, caused primarily by the expiration of a temporary payroll tax cut and other tax breaks adopted during the George W. Bush administration.
All told, the cliff amounts to the largest spurt of deficit reduction in more than 40 years. But it is also likely to push the fragile economy back into recession, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. The CBO predicts that a recession would be significant but brief, with unemployment peaking around 9 percent and economic growth recovering during the second half of 2013.
The projections in the NAM report - prepared by Jeff Werling, executive director of the Interindustry Forecasting Project at the University of Maryland - offer a substantially darker view of the consequences of inaction, joining others who have questioned CBO's relatively benign assessment.
Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics, projects that unemployment will peak at more than 9 percent in a forecast that closely tracks that of the CBO. But he said: "The risks are decidedly to the downside. Given the economy's extraordinary fragility and that the Federal Reserve is increasingly out of options, it isn't hard to construct scenarios in which recession would be deep enough to raise the unemployment rate into the double digits. Policymakers would be taking a big risk going over the fiscal cliff."
NAM is an advocacy organization and commissioned its report to persuade lawmakers to take action to avoid the cliff. Judging from the experience of NAM members and other data, Werling argues that anxiety about the cliff is already having an effect.
"We've probably already lost 0.5 percent of GDP growth in 2012, just from the fiscal cliff hovering over our heads," Werling said in an interview. "People are taking precautionary measures. Even if you think there's not much of a chance of this happening, businesses and consumers are still worried."
Anecdotal evidence abounds, particularly among companies associated with the defense industry. The Pentagon budget is set to take a hit of nearly $55 billion in the fiscal year that ends next September, on top of other scheduled reductions. Defense contractors are already hunkering down.
Preparing for the worst, Mike Kelly, president and chief executive of Ann Arbor-based Nanocerox, a supplier of advanced materials for laser systems, missile optics and radiation detection, said he embarked on an aggressive cost-containment strategy nine months ago. Kelly laid off four of his 22 employees and converted them to contract workers, froze salaries, renegotiated health benefits and tightened controls on spending.
Kelly said he's also trying to shift business away from the defense industry and into the commercial marketplace. But lenders and investors have no interest in financing his expansion.
"When you tell them you're an advanced materials company and your main client is the military, they run," Kelly said. "We started nine months ago envisioning that we'd be in a world of hurt right now. And unfortunately, we bet right."
Kellie Johnson, chief executive and owner of Ace Clearwater Enterprises in Torrance, Calif., said her business is also suffering. The maker of custom parts for the aerospace and power industries survived the recent recession on the strength of military orders from the U.S. government and abroad, Johnson said. She predicted 7 percent growth in revenue this year. But then this summer, "the orders just stopped."
"Now it looks like we'll be 4 percent less than last year," said Johnson, who has stopped filling open positions in her 192-person firm and canceled a $500,000 equipment order. Instead of doing readiness surveys to measure her capacity to ramp up production, she said, potential customers "this year are coming in and doing risk mitigation, asking, 'Hey, if these defense cuts go through, how are you diversifying? Are you going to be around in a couple years?'
"Honestly" she said, "this is the first time in my career that I have been so extremely concerned about the future of my company."
While concern about the cliff is rising, a consensus about how to handle it has been elusive. President Obama and other Democrats have threatened to block action on the cliff unless the Bush-era tax cuts are allowed to expire on income of more than $250,000 a year. Republicans, including presidential candidate Mitt Romney, want to maintain current tax rates for another year to give Congress time to tackle more far-reaching reforms - a position supported by the manufacturing association.
But on Thursday, a group of 80 high-profile chief executives said they are willing to accept higher taxes - accompanied by "significant spending restraint" - as part of a long-term plan to tame the $16.2 trillion national debt. Enacting such a deal, they said, would not only avert the cliff, but would also boost market confidence and perhaps spur economic growth.
"We can do this in a 10-year plan that doesn't damage the fragile recovery," Honeywell chief executive David Cote said during a news conference at the New York Stock Exchange just before the market's opening bell.
montgomeryl@washpost.com
Suzy Khimm contributed to this report.
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October 26, 2012 Friday
Met 2 Edition
Rape shouldn't be used to score political points
BYLINE: Melinda Henneberger
SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A02
LENGTH: 1346 words
Another day, another Republican candidate in trouble for talking about rape the wrong way. I don't want them to stop mentioning it, mind you, but I wish they could do so with a little humility, and some acknowledgment of the seriousness of the crime itself, rather than only speaking about it in the context of what happens later.
This close to an election, though, I wonder if political advisers out there are begging clients to refer any questions about social policy to their Web sites, or to play it extra-safe, lay off using feminine pronouns altogether until after Nov. 6.
I tuned into the tail end of the debate for the U.S. Senate seat in Indiana the other night just in time to hear Richard Mourdock say he does not believe in abortion even following rape because "I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended.'' It was shocking to hear him say it that way, of course, and my first reaction, too, was to say it wasn't nice to implicate God in man's crimes. But does anybody sincerely think he meant Jesus is on the side of the rapists? No.
Mourdock is by any standard a "severely conservative" guy. When his Democratic opponent, Rep. Joe Donnelly, describes the Indiana state treasurer as a tea party fave who's questioned the constitutionality of Medicare and Social Security, that's a pretty fair summary, even if Mourdock protests it now because he needs to win over those moderate Richard G. Lugar supporters he offended during the primary.
Donnelly, who was in a true tossup of a race before this happened, just got more than a million-dollar boost from the Senate Democrats, in the form of an ad tying Mourdock's rape comment to GOP presidential challenger Mitt Romney, who's endorsed him. But as usual, it's more complicated than that ad makes it seem: Donnelly, a lovely guy and my fellow Notre Dame grad, also describes his views as "pro-life," and he co-sponsored a House bill that would have nixed abortion funding for rape and incest victims and designated some attacks as "forcible rape." The bill eventually dropped the offensive and redundant term "forcible rape,'' which Donnelly says he didn't know was in there to begin with. Now, not surprisingly, Donnelly insists that Mourdock meant to indict God in crimes against women: "The God I believe in and the God I know most Hoosiers believe in does not intend for rape to happen - ever. . . . It is stunning that he would be so disrespectful to survivors of rape."
That's politics, which as Romney has noted "ain't the beanbag.'' But it's not an accurate representation of Mourdock's views, even if President Obama and Romney both act as if it is, with Obama obliquely referencing Mourdock's comment on the stump Thursday and Romney distancing himself from the statement but not pulling his endorsement of the candidate.
This spring, I spent a morning shadowing Mourdock as he went door-knocking in Evansville, then interviewed him at length over coffee. This fall, we spoke again, at a campaign event in Indianapolis, and when his aides finally pulled him out the door, he called me from his truck and stayed on the line until every last question had been answered. He's an earnest and emotional guy, tearing up repeatedly as he spoke of America's greatness and challenges. As I've written before, one thing I appreciate about him - and was pretty sure would get him into trouble - is that he will answer any question he's asked, directly, fully and the first time. If he were elected, Washington would have one more straight talker, but there's a price for letting it roll, and he's paying it.
He is not, however - and I'll say this if no one else will - a Todd Akin, who not only thinks female superpowers include the ability to block conception under duress - if only! - but has compared his Democratic opponent, Sen. Claire McCaskill, to a dog. Neither is he Sharron Angle, babbling about how a hypothetical pregnant 13-year-old survivor of rape or incest should "make a lemon situation into lemonade." Nor is he Clayton "Claytie" Williams, who lost to Ann Richards after "joking" that bad weather is like rape - there's nothing you can do about it, so might as well lay back and enjoy it.
What Mourdock says he meant is that life is always intended, though violence never is. By all means, Hoosiers, reject him because he thinks needed social programs are too expensive, because fiscal cliffs and debt ceilings don't scare him even a little bit, and because those comical "my way or the highway'' Donnelly commercials contain more than a kernel of truth about his avowed contempt for compromise. But because he worships a God who likes to see women humiliated? That's willful distortion, it seems to me.
Wednesday morning, an editor called me, wondering whether we could stop by a rape crisis center or something and find a real rape victim to interview; yup, I thought, with 200,000 women raped in this country every year, such a person should be easier to find than he imagined.
The writer I probably agree with more often than any other, Amy Sullivan, now at the New Republic, wrote Thursday that "I don't think that politicians like Mourdock oppose rape exceptions because they hate women or want to control women. I think they're totally oblivious and insensitive and can't for a moment place themselves in the shoes of a woman who becomes pregnant from a rape.'' Just this once, even Amy and I part company.
Because I do understand those who oppose exceptions, though I myself don't. That's because opposition with no exceptions is the logical conclusion of believing that life begins at conception - just as some have argued that post-birth abortion is the logical conclusion of believing that abortion's fine at any point and for any reason. That's why so many of us are in the messy, inconsistent middle, disapproving of the investigative nightmare that criminalization would set off, but also uncomprehending of the logic that it's a baby only if we say it is.
I also have no trouble placing myself in the shoes of a woman who becomes pregnant from a rape because, in college, I volunteered at a rape crisis hotline. After graduation, I worked for a year at a small social service agency in San Francisco's Mission District that helped women coming out of abusive relationships. And at 26, I myself was raped, by a man who called just before our dinner date to say darn, how embarrassing, his car was in the shop, and could I maybe pick him up at his house instead?
I knocked and was promptly thrown on the floor in the entryway and violated, after which he laughed that no one would believe me, a junior nobody who'd just hit town, over him, a handsome rich guy with friends in high places who didn't really have trouble getting a date, now did he? Oh, and who is it who'd showed up at whose house again? He didn't ruin my life, or anything close to that - in fact, in one of those "truth really is stranger than fiction" twists, I saw my husband for the first time the next day.
I did, though, stop swimming because he went to the same pool, and he would swim up under me, push me out of the water and taunt me about whether I'd been down to the precinct to report him yet. And just a couple of years ago, he got to know some college friends of mine, told them what close pals we were and asked them to tell me he missed me. The older I've gotten, the worse I've felt about deciding against reporting him - and the more I've worried about how many other women he's called since then to say darn, his car was in the shop.
Why do I say all this now, half a lifetime later? First, because that guy could still be playing that trick; if you live in Dallas and have been thrown onto that same foyer floor, call me, because now I will testify. And because rape isn't a joke and shouldn't be used to score political points, either; if you can't get it right, maybe you shouldn't say anything at all.
hennebergerm@washpost.com
Melinda Henneberger is a Post political writer and anchors the paper's She the People blog. Follow her on Twitter: @MelindaDC.
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October 26, 2012 Friday
Met 2 Edition
Some W.Va. Democrats separating from Obama
BYLINE: Michael Leahy
SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A01
LENGTH: 1846 words
DATELINE: BLUEFIELD, W.VA.
BLUEFIELD, W.Va. - Among the millions of wavering voters in the presidential race, the most prominent might be West Virginia's Joe Manchin - a U.S. senator, a candidate for reelection and a lifelong Democrat who, less than two weeks out, is undecided about whether to support Barack Obama again.
"I don't feel compelled as I did in 2008," he says.
Manchin isn't alone among West Virginia Democrats attempting to separate themselves from the president. The governor, Earl Ray Tomblin, and a prominent congressman, Nick J. Rahall II - both facing reelection challenges - have also declined to publicly endorse Obama.
But the spurning of the president by the 65-year-old Manchin, a popular former governor and nowadays his state's chief political luminary, stands out - in part because of Manchin's intense criticism of the man whom he regularly and affectionately called "Barack" during the 2008 campaign. A federal "war on coal" has harmed West Virginia and united Democratic dissenters against the Obama administration, Manchin declared in an interview last week, observing of the president's electoral fate: "I think he knows he's not going to do well in our state. . . . And you know what? It's personal. When people lose their jobs, they look at you and ask, 'So, what am I to do?' And they blame him."
Four years ago, before the blaming started, Manchin praised Obama as a worthy partner for coal states, declaring in a CNBC interview, "That's why it's so imperative that Barack becomes the next president." Now Manchin talks about how the Obama administration doesn't reach out to him for discussions on coal issues, and how the president has never called him.
Manchin's supporters point out that elective politics is chiefly about personal survival, with loyalty to another politician always a fluid and fragile thing. Obama, who is thought to be trailing Republican Mitt Romney by more than 20 percentage points in West Virginia, is about as popular here as wind turbines. In 2008, John McCain beat him by 13 points in the state. During this year's West Virginia Democratic primary, a Texas prison inmate received about 41 percent against Obama in a protest vote, with Manchin carefully committing to no one. West Virginia Democratic leaders urging him to support Obama have had their entreaties rebuffed.
Meanwhile, Manchin is seeking to tweak a bit of history. When reminded that he endorsed Obama in 2008 after the eventual president secured the Democratic nomination, he is quick to disagree and clarify, disliking the word "endorsed." "Well, supported him," he says.
Manchin isn't the first senator to consider not supporting his party's nominee. In 2004, for instance, then-Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee (R-R.I.) announced that he wasn't planning to vote for President George W. Bush, while Zell Miller (Ga.) did not vote for fellow senator John F. Kerry (Mass.), the Democratic presidential nominee.
In West Virginia, Manchin has a comfortable lead in his race against Republican John Raese. Raese lost to Manchin by about 10 points in a 2010 special election, in which the Democrat captured the seat previously held by the state's late legend Robert C. Byrd. Manchin, who had trailed through much of the campaign, saw his standing soar after running a TV ad in which he aimed a rifle and viewers saw a bullet slicing through a mock-up of an Obama-favored cap-and-trade bill to regulate carbon emissions.
His track record has reflected his streaks of independence from the administration and his party, as well as his mercurial nature, all of it serving to safeguard his maverick image in West Virginia. After indicating support in early 2010 for the Affordable Care Act, which won passage before he entered the Senate, Manchin's perspective, in line with the state's burgeoning anti-Obama sentiment, swiftly evolved to the point where he charged that the law was "overreaching" and in need of reform.
But all other issues here pale next to the question of which candidates will best protect the coal industry. Raese - who has seized on the unpopularity of Obama here and several regulations from the administration's Environmental Protection Agency that affect the state's coal industry - speaks at every opportunity about the purported link between Manchin and the president. He hopes to benefit from anti-Obama TV ads running across the state that feature a 2008 recording of then-candidate Obama saying, "If somebody wants to build a coal power plant, they can; it's just that it will bankrupt them."
The dispute stretches beyond West Virginia. Coal has emerged as a fierce issue in parts of Ohio and Virginia, two battleground states with communities that are historically reliant on the industry, as well as in Pennsylvania, a state the Romney campaign hopes to keep in play by winning over disgruntled coal workers.
At a rally in Moon Township, Pa., last weekend, Republican vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan repeated that the Obama administration has waged a "war on coal," asserting that more than 100 coal plants had been scheduled to close, at a cost of thousands of jobs.
Data from the government and the coal industry suggest a complicated picture. Although there are more coal jobs now than when Obama took office, overall coal production has fallen slightly, according to industry statistics. Over the past year, a decline in demand for coal has led to layoffs in parts of Appalachia. In West Virginia, 1,300 coal jobs were lost during the past quarter, according to the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration.
Although some administration critics bitterly cite EPA regulations that restrict certain kinds of mining operations and increase operational costs, many industry analysts observe that coal's biggest problem at the moment is the competitive presence of natural gas, which has become a cheaper and increasingly attractive alternative. Technological advances have led some coal-fired plants to switch to natural gas.
In West Virginia, what matters most is whether a candidate can be trusted to fight vigilantly on behalf of coal. Raese argues that Manchin's old alliance with Obama ought to be viewed as disqualifying.
"He's on the wrong team," Raese said of Manchin, adding: "And it's puzzling and disturbing to many West Virginians that he won't even say who he's voting for. I'm for Governor Romney. Why won't Joe tell us whom he supports? . . . What does it mean?"
Asked those same questions, the Obama campaign declined to comment about the meaning and impact of Manchin's decision not to endorse the president. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the Democratic National Committee did not respond to requests for comment.
Although some polls place his advantage over Raese at about 30 points, Manchin is taking no chances, and is careful at nearly every stop to distinguish himself from Obama and what he calls "Washington Democrats." Last week, at a Chamber of Commerce "Meet the Candidates" breakfast in the southern West Virginia city of Beckley, Manchin told his audience that Washington is "discounting coal." Later that day, he repeated his differences with the Obama administration during an address before a group of veterans in Bluefield. "I respectfully disagree with the president on the lack of an energy policy," he said, before skewering EPA regulations and mocking what he considers the anti-coal emphasis of environmentalists. He elicited chuckles when he declared, "I found out that common sense is not too common in Washington."
'Stick together'
Among the veterans listening to him was 75-year-old Al Hancock, the lone African American in the room, reflective of a state whose population is only about 3 percent black. Hancock regards the senator as a family friend, appreciative of the advice and encouragement that Manchin has given over many years to Hancock's son, Phil, a Washington lawyer for Amtrak. But Hancock's gratitude has left him no less disappointed with Manchin's unwillingness to support Obama. "I'm on the president's side," Hancock said after the senator's remarks. "Democrats should stick together."
Hancock does sympathize with the political pressures on his friend. "People here hate President Obama, probably partially because of the way they see him on coal," he said. "If Joe had come out for President Obama, a lot of people in West Virginia would have held it against him, even though I still think Joe would win big. But even popular [candidates] aren't taking chances when it comes to the president."
Listening to Hancock, 71-year-old Pete Sternloff, a fellow Vietnam veteran and a Bluefield official, nodded. "Obama will be lucky to get within 30 points of Romney here, which helps me understand why Manchin isn't [supporting] him," said Sternloff, a staunch Obama supporter who has given up hope that the state's other uncommitted Democratic candidates will embrace the president in the campaign's final days. "Their [Republican] opponents would just love for them to endorse; it'd give them an issue."
Still, questions about Manchin's elusiveness persist. "When have you ever heard of a senator not saying if he's going to vote for a president?" Raese demanded. The doubts about Obama among local candidates transcend class and race in West Virginia, where virtually everyone knows someone involved in the coal industry. Nearly every political discussion begins and ends with a reference to the loss of coal jobs in the state during the president's term.
The office-seekers distancing themselves from Obama include Tony O. Martin, an African American candidate running in Beckley as an independent for the West Virginia House of Delegates. "I'm up in the air about the [presidential] election," says Martin, a Manchin supporter who echoes many of the senator's concerns with Obama. "The ramifications of the administration's EPA on costs and coal jobs still have me concerned. Probably leaning a little toward the president, but still up in the air."
Manchin, who earlier in the campaign indicated that he was considering both Romney and Obama, now says he won't vote for the Republican. But the suggestion that this leaves only Obama triggers a flurry of additional qualifiers from him. He swiftly adds that he is "having a hard time" envisioning that he might vote for the president.
"When I say, 'I'm having a hard time,' " he explains, "I gotta make my decision just like the American people, okay? . . . And it's hard right now [to support Obama] with where the country is and with where he's come from the last four years."
If the president gets trounced in coal states, Manchin thinks his old ally will have only himself to blame. "Basically, there's an awful lot of fault there for the overreaching of a government agency which is working against you, not with you," he says, referring to the EPA. "When you don't feel the government is your partner, but more your adversary and enemy . . . you got a problem."
So he won't be voting for Obama?
"I'm having a hard time," he repeats enigmatically.
This hangs there. He smiles. "With all respect, it is what it is."
leahym@washpost.com
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The Washington Post
October 26, 2012 Friday
Suburban Edition
Romney outraises Obama by $21 million in first half of October
BYLINE: Dan Eggen
SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A06
LENGTH: 593 words
Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney outraised President Obama by $21 million in the first half of October, taking advantage of a strong first debate and tightening polls to overtake the incumbent in the money race, officials said Thursday.
The influx of $111.8 million from Oct. 1 to Oct. 17 left Romney and the Republican National Committee with nearly $170 million in cash on hand, aides said. Obama and the Democratic National Committee said they raised $90.5 million during the same period and had $125 million in cash on hand.
The surge marks a turnabout for Romney, who had fallen behind the president in monthly fundraising since summer. Both sides have raised more than $1 billion each between the campaigns, political parties and super PACs, although Obama has brought in and spent far more through his campaign committee.
The hefty numbers suggest that neither side is likely to run into a cash crunch in the final 11 days of the race, as both campaigns continue to inundate swing states with broadcast ads, mailers and get-out-the-vote workers. The Obama team also reserved a $15 million line of credit.
The campaigns released the totals before a filing deadline of midnight Thursday at the Federal Election Commission.
Spencer Zwick, Romney's finance chairman, said in a statement that the Republican's economic plans "will bring much-needed change after the last four years and it is why we have seen such momentum and strong support from our donors."
The Obama team said that more than 1.2 million people had given to the campaign during the first half of the month, including 207,000 new donors. "We're making every effort to expand our donor base heading into the final stretch," spokesman Adam Fetcher said.
Romney, who relies more heavily on large-dollar donations than Obama does, has kept up a steady pace of major fundraisers in the final stretch of the race, including a series of events in solidly red states this week held by Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.), his vice presidential running mate. The GOP candidate's finance team also held a conference call with major donors on Thursday aimed at drumming up even more money.
Restore Our Future, a super PAC assisting Romney, told the FEC that it had $24 million on hand on Oct. 17. The group received a combined $10 million from Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and his wife, Miriam. The duo have given close to $50 million to Republican causes this year.
American Crossroads, a major conservative super PAC, brought in $11.6 million, including a $4 million donation from Dallas billionaire Harold Simmons, who has given more than $22 million to Republicans this cycle.
Priorities USA Action, a super PAC backing Obama, raised $13 million in early October, including seven million-dollar checks from donors including financier George Soros.
The figures show that Romney and the RNC have widened their cash edge over Democrats this month, although some of their money is devoted to congressional races. But Romney could be limited in using all the extra cash effectively because the swing-state airwaves are saturated.
Republicans have vastly outspent Democrats in presidential ads in October, but the Obama campaign has been able to run more commercials by using discounted rates and other tactics.
Both campaigns went well beyond the fundraising pace set four years ago by Obama's campaign, which together with the party raised $69 million in the first 17 days of October 2008. Obama and the Democrats raised just under $1 billion during the 2008 race, a record at the time.
eggend@washpost.com
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The New York Times
October 25, 2012 Thursday
Late Edition - Final
Boeing Posts Better-Than-Expected Profit and Raises Forecast for a 3rd Time
BYLINE: By CHRISTOPHER DREW
SECTION: Section B; Column 0; Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 3
LENGTH: 713 words
Boeing reported third-quarter profits on Wednesday that were better than analysts had expected because of sharp increases in aircraft deliveries. It also raised its earnings forecast for 2012 for the third time.
The company, based in Chicago, increased deliveries of both commercial and military airplanes, with the biggest revenue gains coming from the growing demand for new passenger planes.
Boeing's chief executive, W. James McNerney Jr., said advances in technology were helping the company's jetliner sales surge despite the lackluster economy. He said airlines and leasing companies were moving to replace older planes more quickly than normal to gain fuel savings from new engines and parts made from lightweight composite materials.
Boeing's military business also remained steady, and other large military contractors reported solid operating results despite a push to tighten defense budgets.
Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, which are both mainly military companies, also beat analyst expectations on Wednesday in reporting third-quarter profits.
Over all, Boeing's third-quarter sales increased by 13 percent to $20 billion from $17.7 billion a year earlier. Its net income dropped, as expected, because of higher pension expenses, but still exceeded analyst expectations.
Third-quarter net income totaled $1.03 billion, or $1.35 a share. That was 6 percent less than the $1.1 billion, or $1.46 a share, that Boeing reported a year earlier.
Analysts surveyed by Bloomberg had expected $1.12 a share.
Boeing said growing sales of its older 737 and 777 commercial models, as well as increasing deliveries of the new 787 and 747-8 jets, should help it earn $4.80 to $4.95 a share for all of 2012. It previously had forecast earnings of $4.40 to $4.60 a share for 2012.
About a year ago, Boeing began deliveries of the 787 Dreamliner, the first passenger jet to make substantial use of the composites, and the 747-8, an enlarged version of the classic 747. Both models were late and over budget. But Boeing is shipping 70 to 85 of the new planes to customers this year, and Robert Stallard, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets, wrote to clients on Wednesday that the company was ''getting pretty good'' at completing ''trouble-free'' quarters.
Boeing said it remained on track to deliver 585 to 600 commercial planes this year, which could enable it to reclaim the top spot in worldwide aircraft sales. Europe's Airbus, which passed Boeing in deliveries in 2003, has projected that it will supply 570 planes to customers in 2012.
Boeing has already started to update its best-selling 737 single-aisle planes, and Mr. McNerney said the company was now considering replacing the metal wings on the larger 777s with the lightweight composites and switching to more fuel-efficient engines on that model.
He said that even with just those changes, rather than a complete redesign, Boeing could deliver cost savings on the 777 that are ''pretty eye-watering.'' He said the company was still considering the options, but expected to start delivering a new version of the 777 by the early 2020s.
In terms of military business, both Boeing and Lockheed, the largest military contractor, said they had increased sales overseas to offset some of the reductions at the Pentagon.
Lockheed said Wednesday that its net earnings from continuing operations increased in the third quarter to $727 million, or $2.21 a share, from $665 million, or $1.99 a share, a year earlier. Its sales were $11.9 billion compared with $12.1 billion a year earlier.
Lockheed said it expected its sales to decline at a low single-digit rate in 2013. But it also expects its profit margins to remain above 11 percent as long as Congress can stave off sequestration, the plan to force large automatic spending cuts at the Pentagon. Both President Obama and his Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, have promised that they would stop the cuts if they win the November election.
Northrop Grumman's earnings also beat analyst expectations, though its quarterly profit fell 12 percent from last year's levels on a drop in net pension income. General Dynamics, another large arms company, missed the analyst consensus on its earnings. Its profits fell by 8 percent, partly because of a $25 million charge to revalue inventory.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/25/business/boeing-posts-better-than-expected-3rd-quarter-profits.html
LOAD-DATE: October 25, 2012
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GRAPHIC: PHOTO: Building engines at Boeing's plant in Renton, Wash. The company's third-quarter sales rose 13 percent to $20 billion as customers sought more fuel-efficient jets. (PHOTOGRAPH BY ANDY CLARK/REUTERS)
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The New York Times
October 25, 2012 Thursday
Late Edition - Final
Obama Begins Swing-State Blitz, Pushing Through 8 States in 2 Days
BYLINE: By HELENE COOPER
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; THE CAUCUS; Pg. 15
LENGTH: 561 words
DAVENPORT, Iowa - Air Force One landed at Quad Cities International Airport at 9 a.m. Central Time on Wednesday, to begin President Obama's two-day round-the-clock attack on swing states. The 747 is scheduled to touch down at Andrews Air Force Base just before midnight Eastern Time on Thursday.
During the 38 hours in between, Mr. Obama will hit a whopping eight states in a hard-charging opening burst to try to accelerate ahead of Mitt Romney in the last two weeks of this dead-heat campaign. So focused is Mr. Obama on gaining ground that he will be making calls to swing-state voters from the air, and he will spend Wednesday night not in a comfy hotel bed, but on his plane, on a red-eye flight to Florida.
It's too bad he doesn't drink coffee; he could surely use it.
"We're gonna pull an all-nighter!" a revved-up Mr. Obama told a crowd of 3,500 at the Mississippi Valley Fairgrounds here in Davenport. "No Sleep! We're starting in Iowa, then we're gonna go to Colorado, then Nevada, California, then we're gonna go to Florida, then Virginia, Ohio, and then we're going to Illinois to vote."
Whew.
Perhaps aware of his limited time in each place, Mr. Obama ended his speech in Davenport after a short 16 minutes, so he could get back to his jam-packed schedule.
The furious campaign is a sign of the tight race, which has shown very little sign of movement in the past three weeks. In the next 13 days, Mr. Obama is focusing almost exclusively on eight swing states, where both campaigns believe the race will be won or lost.
Of those, none is more important than Ohio, where Mr. Obama ended his day yesterday, in Dayton, and where he will be again tomorrow evening, in Cleveland. Campaign aides have been working on the Ohio ground game furiously, urging Obama supporters to the polls for early voting.
Speaking to reporters on the bus headed back to Quad Cities airport after Mr. Obama's first stop on Wednesday, David Plouffe, a senior adviser to Mr. Obama, said that the Obama campaign, despite a narrative he said has developed in the press about Mr. Romney gaining momentum, is feeling good about the swing states. Mr. Plouffe said the Romney campaign "is overstating their Electoral College situation."
But similar to what Mr. Obama did during the Democratic primaries in 2008 versus Hillary Clinton, Mr. Obama's campaign seemed very focused on the numbers, as they relate to the Electoral College. That means working on the ground game and get-out-the-vote effort among key Democratic constituencies, like African-Americans and Latinos.
For instance, Mr. Plouffe said, "there are hundreds of thousands more Latino and African-American voting than in 2008."
Mr. Obama did not personally wade into the brewing fight over remarks this week by Richard Mourdock, the Republican running for a Senate seat in Indiana, that God intended for women who got pregnant as a result of rape to have their babies.
But his spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, did, and promptly tied it to Mr. Romney, who has endorsed Mr. Mourdock. "The president felt those comments were outrageous and demeaning to women," she told reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Iowa. "This is an issue where Mitt Romney is starring in an ad" for Mr. Mourdock "and it is perplexing that he wouldn't demand to have that ad taken down."
This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.
URL: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/24/obama-kicks-off-nine-state-campaign-tour/
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GRAPHIC: PHOTO: President Obama posed for pictures with greeters under Air Force One on Wednesday after arriving in Moline, Ill., as part of a campaign swing. (PHOTOGRAPH BY DAMON WINTER/THE NEW YORK TIMES)
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October 25, 2012 Thursday
Late Edition - Final
Rape Remark Jolts a Senate Race, and the Presidential One, Too
BYLINE: By JONATHAN WEISMAN
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; Pg. 16
LENGTH: 738 words
WASHINGTON -- The incendiary topic of rape and abortion re-entered the 2012 campaign Wednesday and threatened to singe Mitt Romney after an Indiana Senate candidate's comments that pregnancies conceived by rape should not be aborted because ''God intended'' conception to happen.
Mr. Romney has been reaching out to female voters and has spent weeks trying to distance himself from the most uncompromising positions of many Republicans on abortion. But the comments by Richard E. Mourdock, the Indiana state treasurer and Tea Party-backed candidate, gave President Obama's campaign a new opening to tie Mr. Romney to his right flank on social issues.
In a Senate debate on Tuesday night, Mr. Mourdock tried to distinguish himself from two opponents who also oppose abortion by explaining that he does not support allowing abortions in the case of rape.
''I've struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize that life is that gift from God,'' he said. ''And even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.''
The comments put Mr. Romney in a difficult position. The Mourdock campaign had released an advertisement on Monday that featured Mr. Romney looking directly into the camera and endorsing Mr. Mourdock, a boon to the Republican in a race that has remained close in part because Senator Richard G. Lugar, whom he defeated in the Republican primary, has refused to campaign for him. Andrea Saul, a spokeswoman for the Romney campaign, said Mr. Romney disagrees with Mr. Mourdock, but the campaign did not ask him to remove the ad.
Other Republicans reacted more strongly. Representative Mike Pence, a Republican favored to be elected Indiana's governor, urged Mr. Mourdock to apologize. Aides to Senator Scott P. Brown of Massachusetts, who is locked in a difficult re-election campaign, said Mr. Mourdock's statements ''do not reflect his thinking at all.'' Senator Kelly Ayotte, Republican of New Hampshire, canceled her scheduled campaign appearances with him. Senator John McCain of Arizona, the 2008 presidential nominee, told CNN on Wednesday night his continued support of Mr. Mourdock depended on ''if he apologizes and says he misspoke and he was wrong and he asks the people to forgive him.''
The Obama campaign sought to exploit the opening, as did virtually every Democratic campaign for Senate, pressing a message that the Republican Party is out of step with female voters.
President Obama ''felt those comments were outrageous and demeaning to women,'' Jen Psaki, the president's campaign spokeswoman, told reporters on Wednesday morning. Ms. Psaki called it ''perplexing'' that Mr. Romney had not demanded that his ad be taken off television. He supports allowing abortion in the case of rape, incest and when the health of the mother is at risk.
At a news conference in Indiana, Representative Joe Donnelly, Mr. Mourdock's Democratic opponent, pressed his case that Mr. Mourdock is too extreme for the Senate.
''I am pro-life, but this controversy is not about pro-life,'' Mr. Donnelly said. ''It is about Mr. Mourdock's words and his continuation of extreme positions.''
Republicans in Washington hoped that the anti-abortion tilt of Indiana would insulate Mr. Mourdock from much political damage. But the controversy fed into the argument that Mr. Donnelly and other Democrats have been pressing ever since Mr. Mourdock's stunning victory over Mr. Lugar. The nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report moved the Indiana contest from one that leaned Republican to a pure tossup, a new headache for Republicans who once saw recapturing the Senate as a layup.
That easy path was lost months ago, when Representative Todd Akin, the Republican nominee for a Senate seat in Missouri, suggested that ''legitimate rape'' could not produce a pregnancy. Republicans pressured Mr. Akin to drop out of the race, and when he did not, they cut ties to him.
This time, with 13 days to go until Election Day, Republicans tried to protect Mr. Mourdock. Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the chairman of the party's senate committee, said that Mr. Mourdock's position was no different from that of Mr. Donnelly.
''Richard and I, along with millions of Americans -- including even Joe Donnelly -- believe that life is a gift from God. To try and construe his words as anything other than a restatement of that belief is irresponsible and ridiculous,'' Mr. Cornyn said.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/25/us/politics/using-mourdocks-rape-comment-against-romney.html
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GRAPHIC: PHOTO: Richard Mourdock's opposition to abortion in cases of rape has given Democrats an opening to paint Republicans as extremist. (PHOTOGRAPH BY MICHAEL CONROY/ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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October 25, 2012 Thursday
Late Edition - Final
Crucial Subset: Female Voters Still Deciding
BYLINE: By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1230 words
DERRY, N.H. -- Emmakate Paris was a one-woman tornado the other day, whipping through the racks at the thrift shop here, hunting for clothes for her children and one special item for herself: a green suit. For Halloween, she wants to dress up as Tippi Hedren in the Hitchcock movie ''The Birds.''
Halloween is a small indulgence in a life that Ms. Paris, 41, said was consumed by worries -- ''about the kids, insurance, vacation, school, taxes, the price of gas, everything.''
She voted for Barack Obama in 2008 but is now torn. Mr. Obama has not lived up to his promise, she said. ''My husband and I both have to work full time, and we're just getting by.''
But she is not thrilled with Mitt Romney either. She said he would set women back because he did not understand their needs.
''Women worked so hard to get where we are today and to take our rights away from us is -- no,'' she said, shaking her head.
Behold the coveted female swing voter of 2012. She has slipped a rung or two down the economic ladder from the soccer moms of the more prosperous 1990s, as indicated by her new nickname --waitress mom. Rather than ferrying children around the suburbs in minivans, she is spinning in the hamster wheel of a tight economy and not getting ahead.
The intense competition for the female vote was underscored Wednesday as both presidential campaigns seized on a remark by Richard E. Mourdock, the Republican Senate candidate in Indiana, in a Tuesday night debate that pregnancy is ''something that God intended to happen'' even if it is the result of rape.
Mr. Romney, who had just made an ad for Mr. Mourdock, quickly distanced himself from the statement, while the Obama campaign just as quickly suggested that it reflected the backward thinking of Republicans and said that if elected, they would pose a danger to women's health.
The quadrennial obsession with winning over female voters can sometimes lead to mythmaking. Pollsters now question the validity of soccer moms as a distinct voting bloc; the term came into vogue in the 1996 presidential election but vanished soon after, to be replaced by the equally dubious post-9/11 ''security moms.''
Whether or not the term ''waitress moms'' endures, it defines a distinct demographic: blue-collar white women who did not attend college. And they are getting a lot of attention from both campaigns as the presidential race barrels toward its conclusion because even at this late date, pollsters say, many waitress moms have not settled on a candidate. They feel no loyalty to one party or the other, though they tend to side with Republicans.
''Blue-collar women are most likely to be the remaining movable part of the electorate, which is precisely why both campaigns are going at them as hard as they are,'' said Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster, who is advising Priorities USA, a pro-Obama ''super PAC.''
About 9 percent of all voters in 2008 were white women without college degrees who had an annual household income of less than $50,000, according to exit polls.
So when the candidates talk about women, which they do a lot these days, the waitress moms are top of mind. Mr. Obama, for example, is now discussing abortion and birth control not as a matter of controlling one's own body but as ''a pocketbook issue for women and families,'' as he said in the recent town-hall-style debate, noting that many women rely on Planned Parenthood not just for contraceptives but for referrals and screenings.
A recent Romney ad featured a young woman telling her newborn: ''Dear Daughter. Welcome to America. Your share of Obama's debt is over $50,000.''
Clearly economic issues are front and center for women here in this blue-collar town in Rockingham County, which Mr. Obama won in 2008 by less than 1 percent of the vote.
Michelle Trulson, 39, actually is a waitress (not all waitress moms are waitresses, of course, nor are they all mothers). She works a second job too, as a lab technician. Fearing that Mr. Romney would undercut her efforts to provide for her family -- and end financing for Planned Parenthood -- she supports Mr. Obama.
''I'm a single mom,'' she said. ''I'm not on welfare. I do work. I don't collect food stamps. But my kids need insurance, so they're on Medicaid and I don't want that messed with.''
And the economy is the reason that Ashley Delpidio, 26, who works in customer service for a health insurance company, supports Mr. Romney -- despite his opposition to abortion rights and mixed statements on birth control.
''I'm a woman, so obviously I believe in woman's rights,'' she said but added that the economy was her overriding concern and Mr. Romney would do better at creating jobs.
While women in general have historically supported Democratic presidential candidates, working-class white women without college degrees are among their weakest links. Mr. Obama lost them to Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Democratic primaries in 2008, and to John McCain, the Republican, in the general election.
But Mr. Obama won women over all because black and Hispanic female voters turned out in greater numbers than usual and supported him overwhelmingly, as did white college-educated women. As he seeks to rebuild a winning coalition in battleground states like this one, analysts say, he needs to keep his losses among waitress moms to a minimum.
''Women are the volatile vote at the end, particularly independent, non-college-educated, married women,'' said Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster who has long specialized in women's voting patterns. Important as these women are to both campaigns, they are only one slice of the much sliced and diced female electorate. Pollsters tend to find women more interesting than men because women are more likely to be swing voters, while men usually make up their minds early.
Pollsters have found differences among women in all kinds of ways that seem to correlate with their voting habits. Unmarried women, for example, tend to vote Democratic, they say, while married women tend to vote Republican.
The multiple differences among women have created a kind of kaleidoscopic inter-gender gap, from which catchy labels sometimes emerge. Apart from waitress moms, there are now ''Walmart moms,'' a group defined by Public Opinion Strategies, a Republican polling firm -- and adopted by the retail giant -- as any woman who has shopped at a Walmart in the last 30 days. They differ from waitress moms in that many have college degrees and higher incomes.
Actually, there is nothing about Walmart that pegs its shoppers as swing voters, said Will Feltus, senior vice president of National Media, which buys advertising time. Citing data from Scarborough Research, a leading market research firm, he said that a higher percentage of independent female voters was likely to be found at Lord & Taylor, T.J. Maxx and Macy's.
The data yield other tidbits that could be useful to campaigns trying to reach independent women. Their taste in television programming, for example, runs to the daytime soaps, their preferred soft drink is Diet Sierra Mist, and their preference in wine is, fittingly, rosé.
''Groups of women simply don't resemble each other anymore, which is really fascinating,'' said Kellyanne Fitzpatrick Conway, a Republican pollster -- whereas, she added, the gender gap between men and women had become fairly predictable.
''Mars versus Venus,'' she said, ''is a yawner.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/25/us/politics/female-swing-voters-a-coveted-demographic.html
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GRAPHIC: PHOTO: Ashley Delpidio, 26, of Derry, N.H., supports Mitt Romney, believing that the economy is the biggest problem facing the nation. (PHOTOGRAPH BY CHERYL SENTER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES) (A16)
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October 25, 2012 Thursday
Late Edition - Final
Campaign Ads: Using 2000 Vote as a Warning
BYLINE: By JEREMY W. PETERS
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; THE CAUCUS; Pg. 16
LENGTH: 259 words
President Obama and his advisers are fond of reminding people just how close this election will be. Now they are putting those words into a new ad that reminds voters how the country could have taken a much different turn in 2000 had more of Al Gore's supporters turned up at the polls.
The ad is called "537," a reference to the number of votes that separated George W. Bush from Mr. Gore in Florida. Or, as the ad puts it in rather dramatic terms, 537 was "the difference between what was and what could have been."
It continues, "So this year if you're thinking that your vote doesn't count, that it won't matter, well back then there were probably at least 537 people who felt the same way. Make your voice heard. Vote."
"Vote" has become a refrain in Mr. Obama's stump speeches lately. When he mentions his opponents by name, eliciting the predictable boos from the crowd, he implores them: "Don't boo. Vote."
The ad also underscores a major hurdle for Democrats to overcome as they battle Mitt Romney. Enthusiasm among their base is not nearly as high as it was four years ago. And the Obama campaign, mindful that low turnout could cost it the election, has been making extensive efforts to get its voters to the polls - both on Election Day and through early voting.
With its heavy, almost defensive tone, the ad never mentions or shows a photograph of Mr. Gore. Instead, the ad seems intended to motivate the Democratic Party's base using a favorite boogeyman: Mr. Bush.
This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.
URL: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/24/obama-reminds-supporters-about-the-2000-election/
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October 25, 2012 Thursday
Mourdock's Comments Pose Dilemma for Romney
BYLINE: MICHAEL COOPER
SECTION: US; politics
LENGTH: 567 words
HIGHLIGHT: The charged anti-abortion comments made this week by Richard Mourdock place the Republican presidential candidate in a complicated position between two critical voting blocs: women and evangelicals.
The charged anti-abortion comments made this week by Richard Mourdock, a Republican Senate candidate in Indiana, pose something of a dilemma for Mitt Romney. If Mr. Romney, the Republican presidential candidate, does not distance himself enough from Mr. Mourdock, he could find it harder to narrow his deficit with women - but if he distances himself too much, he could turn off some of the evangelical voters whose turnout will be crucial if he is to carry swing states like Iowa and Ohio.
Mr. Mourdock's abortion comments came just as there were signs in some polls that Mr. Romney was beginning to narrow his gap with women, who have been an important source of support for President Obama. But if he denounces Mr. Mourdock too strongly Mr. Romney could alienate some of the evangelical voters who have viewed him warily in the past.
White evangelical Christian voters made up 26 percent of the vote in 2008, but they were an even bigger slice of the electorate in some crucial swing states: Exit polls suggested that evangelicals made up 30 percent of the vote in Ohio, 31 percent in Iowa, 44 percent in North Carolina and 28 percent in Virginia. And those states voted for President Obama in 2008.
Mr. Romney won the support of many evangelical leaders this year after a long primary season in which many had preferred other Republican candidates, including former Senator Rick Santorum. Now, motivated by an antipathy to President Obama and the desire to have a Republican president select the next Supreme Court justices, many evangelical leaders have rallied to Mr. Romney. The question is how motivated the rank and file will be, and what kinds of numbers they will turn out in.
In recent years the evangelical movement has evolved as the old guard, who helped lead conservative Christians into the Republican Party, has given way to a new generation of leaders who have often taken a less openly partisan approach.
This is where Mr. Mourdock's comments may prove complicated for Mr. Romney.
A growing number of Republicans - including Representative Mike Pence, a Republican favored to be elected Indiana's governor, and Senator John McCain of Arizona, the party's 2008 presidential nominee - have called on Mr. Mourdock to apologize for the comments he made. In a debate Monday, Mr. Mourdock, the Indiana state treasurer, explained why he does not believe abortion should be legal even in the case of rape. Mr. Mourdock said that "even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen."
The comments put Mr. Romney in a complicated position. The Mourdock campaign had released an advertisement on Monday that featured Mr. Romney endorsing Mr. Mourdock. While the Romney campaign said that Mr. Romney disagreed with Mr. Mourdock, the campaign did not ask him to remove the television ad. Taking a harder line could turn off already wary evangelical voters.
And there is another complication for Mr. Romney: he would no doubt like to see Republicans control the Senate, especially if he wins the presidency and needs their support to enact legislation. Taking a harder line against Mr. Mourdock could complicate that goal.
Obama Says He Was 'Too Polite' at Debate
Romney to Appear on 'Meet the Press'
On Medicare, Obama Plays Offense
For Romney, a New Running Mate May Mean a New, Less Elliptical, Workout, Too
Before Candidates Debate, Their Lawyers Do
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(Opinionator)
October 25, 2012 Thursday
The Morning After
BYLINE: TIMOTHY EGAN
SECTION: OPINION
LENGTH: 866 words
HIGHLIGHT: Mitt Romney has promised to accomplish 15 different tasks on Day 1 of his administration. Let's sort them by priority.
President-elect Willard M. Romney - congratulations! It's a Mormon miracle, when you think about it, even bigger than Brigham Young University's stunning upset of No. 1-ranked Miami in 1990.
Turns out, you really could write off 47 percent of Americans, the moochers and victims. All it took was a tough march through the suburbs of Florida, Virginia, Colorado and - ha, ha, Bruce Springsteen - Ohio.
But be careful crediting providence: it almost went the other way, after that Senate candidate in Indiana, Richard Mourdock, said it was part of God's plan for rape victims to carry their assailants' babies, one day after you cut an ad for him. Good golly, gobsmackers, that was close!
No, matter, the past is Etch A Sketchable, the whole of it, as you've just shown. From Severe Conservative to Milquetoast Mitt, it's all the same. Now on to governance.
But before you take the oath, don't forget the pledge - to Grover Norquist. You and Vice President-elect Paul Ryan both pledged fealty to the bearded, much-feared lobbyist. You will never, ever, under any circumstances, war or national emergency, raise taxes.
Next up, look at a map of the world. No matter how many times you said it, Syria is not Iran's route to the sea. A large coastline to the south, the Persian Gulf, isn't going anywhere.
You've promised to accomplish 15 different tasks on Day 1; let's sort them by priority. The Affordable Care Act is gone, even though you need Congress to act (a mere formality, by Ryan's assurance). All you 20-somethings on your parents' health plans, all you sickly types with pre-existing conditions that you expect the insurance companies to cover, no more Obamacare for you. The ride is over, even if it means leaving 72 million Americans without health insurance, as the Commonwealth Fund, a New York-based research foundation, calculated. Legacy, baby.
"You can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye." So you said, back in the early days of the one-termer you just defeated, should the car companies be rescued by the government. Something was miscalculated there. Let's pull all federal aid and try it again - the Bain way.
Latinos nearly cost you the election, especially in Florida, Colorado and Nevada. Well, those Mexicans, or whatever they are, can start self-deporting. It worked for your grandfather when he hightailed it out of Mexico in the face of official pressure. Just refuse to sign the Dream Act and make things uncomfortable!
On to China, and a trade war. You promised to declare our biggest creditor a currency manipulator on Day 1. Say it loud and clear, brother. But watch for the stock market to crash and the Chinese to retaliate, setting off a domino effect that would rattle a very fragile global economy. Well, heck, they started it.
Speaking of global tantrums, re: climate change, there will be no change from the prior administration. Just do nothing, and never bring it up.
And here comes a dirty part. You promised to import the messy tar sands oil of Canada through the Keystone XL pipeline, "if I have to build it myself to get it here." The problem is, lots of folks on the prairie don't want an oil pipeline next to the homestead. Maybe Tagg can channel some of that aggressive energy of his out in the flatland, threaten to take a swing at farmers who are afraid of a little industrial intrusion on the corn fields.
Supreme Court: at long last, here comes the revenge of Robert Bork, your top adviser on the Supremes. He's been stewing in bile for decades. Four of the justices are in their 70s, and that lib Ruth Bader Ginsburg, at 79, is a cancer survivor. The gays are this close from upsetting the sanctity of traditional marriage, especially with two states voting to approve of same-sex nuptials yesterday. You'll probably get to name two justices. They'll be in the mold of Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, as you vowed on your Web site. Bork has a list. But watch for libertarian types like Sandra Day O'Connor, an appointee of President Reagan who said she feared stepping down because "it's my party that's destroying the country."
And on this morning after, the morning-after pill itself is a target for elimination. It's in the party platform, for Pete's sake. But if it causes too much of a fuss to mess with women from the get-go, forget about the Taliban wing of the party. You can go both ways, or multiple choice, on the social issues, as always. What matters is that corporations continue to be treated as people, which means somebody ought to be able to marry one, somewhere, in this great land.
Math is not your strong point. You promised a tax cut of 20 percent, costing upward of $5 trillion, and an increase in defense spending of $2 trillion over the next decade, plus putting $716 billion back in Medicare from Obamacare savings - all while bringing the deficit under control. You can't just say, "Of course they add up!" again, and make the numbers whole. That only works on TV.
On top of all of the above, you promised Jeremy, the college kid from the second debate, a job by 2014. Time for another miracle.
The Many Moods of Mitt Romney
The Other Missing Man
Binders, Keepers
Getting Out the Veeps
Between the Acts
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October 25, 2012 Thursday
Big Last-Minute Donations Fuel Pro-Romney Super PAC
BYLINE: NICHOLAS CONFESSORE
SECTION: US; politics
LENGTH: 249 words
HIGHLIGHT: Sheldon Adelson and other big-money donors step up for the Republican cause.
A total of $10 million in contributions from the casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson and his wife helped a "super PAC" supporting Mitt Romney raise $20 million during the first 17 days of October, a faster pace than the group has set in any previous period, according to disclosures filed with the Federal Election Commission on Thursday.
The super PAC, Restore Our Future, has now raised about $150 million during the 2012 cycle, including money it spent to help Mr. Romney win the Republican presidential nomination. As of Oct. 17, the group had about $24.2 million in cash for the final three weeks of the election.
The money helped Restore last week make the largest ad buy in its history, a $12 million campaign that is covering nine battleground states.
The main super PAC backing President Obama, Priorities USA Action, raised about $13 million during the same period and began the final phase of the campaign with about $10 million in cash, less than half that of Restore.
Restore Our Future's other big donors in October included Kenneth Griffin, a Chicago hedge fund billionaire, who gave $500,000; Jerry Perenchio, the former chairman of Univision; the financier Julian Robertson; and the real estate developer Edward St. John, who each gave $1 million.
Large donors to Priorities USA Action included a new group of Silicon Valley donors, including the Zygna founder Mark Pincus; LinkedIn's founder Reid Garrett Hoffman; and the venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, who each gave $1 million.
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USA TODAY
October 25, 2012 Thursday
FINAL EDITION
We are changing faster than polls keep up;
A communications revolution from cellphones to e-mail is pushing polling from science closer to art
BYLINE: Philip Meyer
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 10A
LENGTH: 786 words
These are anxious days for presidential election pollsters.
It's becoming harder to get it right. The speed of modern communication makes campaigns more volatile. The great number of polls improves the chance that somebody will call the Obama-Romney outcome right on the money -- and somebody else will get it terribly wrong. But who?
Polling was easier when voters were more likely to hold still. You could base a sample on housing units or telephone numbers and give every voting-age person a known chance of being included.
But increasing mobility and the great variety of communication methods, especially cellphones, make it far more complicated. And yet the leading polls do about as well as they ever did. In 2008, the Gallup team missed Barack Obama's winning margin by only 2 percentage points. It called the 2000 and 2004 elections with even less error.
Today, there are signs of worry. Some midcourse tweaks were announced earlier this month by Gallup editor Frank Newport. The sample in the daily tracking poll now includes more cellphones. And a weight was added for the population density of the area where the respondent lives.
Looking for accuracy
As a jaded poll-watcher, I pay most attention in the current campaign to just two polling-related sources: Nate Silver's blog for The New York Times and the RAND Continuous Presidential Election Poll. Both have been showing a fragile advantage for Obama.
Silver, following the principles described in his book The Signal and the Noise, publishes daily reports of candidate standings. He expresses them as a probability of winning and estimates the electoral vote. Silver does no polls of his own but cranks others' results, including Gallup's, into his own statistical model. This model takes into account past reliability, sample sizes, historic trends, "house effects" and other factors.
House effects are the tendencies of certain pollsters to lean one way or the other that everybody knows about but no one can explain.
The RAND Corporation is a California-based non-profit set up after World War II to do policy-related research. It uses a large sample, about 3,500, and makes it a panel, interviewing the same people week after week.
This sample is drawn with more care than most and enjoys a high response rate. Interviewees answer online and are paid for their trouble. Those without Internet access when they were chosen were given the necessary equipment, an innovation tested in Holland in the 1990s.
Low response rates are a major issue with most modern polls, especially those that use automated interviews. Some voters don't like talking to machinery. Of course, those who hang up are replaced with more willing citizens, but there is no way to tell whether they are the same.
The RAND panel allows direct tracking of changes in candidate standings, but it comes at a cost. Participation in the panel arouses voter interest so panel members tend to pay more attention, possibly becoming less representative of the voting population.
One way to check on that is to keep pumping new people into the system so that experienced respondents can be compared with fresh ones. But the RAND people are not doing that for their election panel, according to Arie Kapteyn, who directs the project.
RAND's other interesting innovation is in its questions. Instead of being offered a direct choice, panel members are asked to estimate their probability of voting for either candidate plus the probability that they will vote at all.
How Gallup began
George Gallup's organization has the longest history of presidential election polls, and it has been embarrassed by only one presidential call. In 1948, its final pre-election poll had New York Gov. Thomas Dewey beating President Harry Truman. It understated Truman's vote total by 5 percentage points.
There were two other presidential elections where Gallup was off by 5 or more points, but nobody minded because the right winner was predicted. The most recent case was 1992, when Gallup overstated Bill Clinton's lead over George H.W. Bush by 5.7 points. Clinton still won handily.
In George Gallup's first national effort, in 1936, the poll overestimated Franklin D. Roosevelt's winning margin by 6.8 percentage points. That poll nevertheless made Gallup famous because the most prestigious poll of the time, by the Literary Digest, had called the election for Kansas Gov. Alfred M. Landon.
The Literary Digest, a weekly magazine with circulation of 1million, never recovered. It shut down in 1938.
And Gallup prospered. In this election, such a career-changing fate could strike somebody again.
Philip Meyer, author of Paper Route: Finding My Way to Precision Journalism, is a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors.
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October 25, 2012 Thursday
FINAL EDITION
Ticket-splitters targeted in Conn.;
If GOP Senate candidate Linda McMahon wants to defeat Democrat Rep. Chris Murphy, she will need to get a lot of President Obama's backer to vote for her, too
BYLINE: Martha T. Moore, @USATMoore, USA TODAY
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 4A
LENGTH: 846 words
An African-American woman wearing a clerical collar looks into the camera. "I'm voting for President Obama, and I'm voting for Linda McMahon," she says. "It's my choice."
Cross-party appeals don't get much more straightforward than this ad from McMahon, the Republican former wrestling executive on her second try for a Senate seat in Connecticut. But ticket-splitting on a big scale is what McMahon needs, after spending $80 million of her own money and three years of virtually non-stop campaigning to win in a state just about guaranteed to vote for President Obama by a large margin.
Obama enjoys a 14-point lead among Connecticut voters, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday. Not since 1988, when Lowell Weicker stepped down, has Connecticut sent a Republican to the Senate.
Two years ago, McMahon spent $50 million of her own money and lost a Senate race to Attorney General Richard Blumenthal by double digits. This year, she has spent about $30 million so far against Rep. Chris Murphy, a three-term Democrat from the northwest part of the state in a race that has featured harsh words in advertisements and in person. A new Quinnipiac poll, taken after the conclusion of a series of four debates between the candidates, now gives Murphy a lead of 49% to 43%.
Until now, with the help of her higher name recognition and her outsized advantage in money for advertising, McMahon has kept opinion surveys neck-and-neck, prompting outside Democratic groups to spend $3 million in the state to help Murphy, who has raised about $8 million himself.
Like Mitt Romney, whom she says she supports, McMahon has emphasized her business background as former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE). She calls herself a job creator and a champion of small business, and proposes a "middle- class tax cut" to a 15% rate for those in the 25% tax bracket.
"If you want someone who has been through the trials and tribulations of growing a business, been a little bit through the school of hard knocks, who has had the opportunity to come back from having lost everything and build a business and understand what it takes to do that, then vote for me," McMahon told a crowd Monday in Stamford.
"I have every confidence that she can get Connecticut working again," said Frances Slusarz, a Danbury lawyer who brought her daughter Ciara, 17, to see McMahon campaign with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie this week. The state is "so business hostile, you're just getting taxed to death."
Mindful of McMahon's gender gap in her first run, where she lost among female voters by 15 percentage points, both McMahon and Murphy have pushed hard to appeal to female voters.
Murphy campaigned this week with Democratic female senators and with Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood.
Murphy said in an interview that McMahon's strength lies entirely in her bank account. "I don't think a wrestling executive with Linda McMahon's history would be competitive in this state without $50 million."
McMahon worked to soften her image after her 2010 defeat, meeting with women's groups and touring endless small businesses. McMahon has run "a smarter campaign this time around," as Karen Fassuliotis, a Greenwich lawyer at a McMahon rally put it. "She's gone out and she's listened. The town meetings have helped tremendously. She's put her ear to the ground."
To her detractors, McMahon's attempts to change her image cut the other way: "She's reinvented herself," says Barbara Shore, a retired Hamden schoolteacher who attended a Murphy event with Richards Monday. As a result, when McMahon says she is pro-choice, "I don't believe her."
Like incumbent Republican Sen. Scott Brown in neighboring Massachusetts, McMahon must convince voters she is an independent-minded Republican who will work across the aisle -- while characterizing Murphy, as Christie did, as "Nancy Pelosi's butler.'
She says she supports abortion rights, although in an interview with the Hartford Courant editorial board, she said she believed Catholic hospitals should not have to offer emergency contraception to rape victims -- as is the law in the state. She later said women should have access to emergency contraception.
And Republicans accuse Murphy of being a rubber stamp for the Obama administration; Murphy says its simply that "my party has the right policies for this state."
With her support at 43% two weeks before the election, McMahon may have "hit her ceiling," Schwartz says.
McMahon's ticket-splitting television ad has baffled Republicans and Democrats alike. "I found that to be really weird," said Carmen Giudice, 57, a retired accountant and McMahon supporter who came to see her campaign with Christie on Monday. "I couldn't get my arms around it."
"If you're going to vote for Obama I don't know why you would vote for Linda. It just doesn't seem to be a complementary vote," said Ronald Wislocki, a tax manager from Waterbury who plans to vote for Murphy partly because he finds McMahon's self-funded campaign off-putting. "She'll be whatever you want her to be to get your vote."
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October 25, 2012 Thursday 10:03 PM EST
DSCC slams Mourdocks comments on rape and pregnancy in new TV ad
BYLINE: Sean Sullivan
LENGTH: 782 words
Make sure to sign up to receiveAfternoon Fixevery day in your e-mail inbox by 5(ish) p.m.!
FIRST ON THE FIX:
* The Democratic super PAC House Majority PAC raised $6.7 millionduringthe first half of October. During the entire month of September, the group raised about $6 million.
EARLIER ON THE FIX:
Post-ABC tracking poll: Romney 50 percent, Obama 47
Wonk|Fix on the week in politics (VIDEO)
Massachusetts Senate race moves to lean Democratic
Montana GOP governor hopeful in limbo after court freezes his cash
Colin Powell and the Fix Endorsement Hierarchy
What Richard Mourdock can learn from Chick-fil-A
2012 voters: The deepest racial split since 88
John Barrows one-of-a-kind ad campaign
5 things we learned from watching Obama on Leno
Stewart, Colbert analyze Donald Trumps October surprise (VIDEO)
Is Mitt Romneys momentum real or fake?
WHAT YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED:
* Mitt Romney raised nearly $112 million during the first half of October, and carried forward a healthy $169 million cash on hand between its various committees. Of the totals, the Republican National committee raised $19.8 million and finished with $67.6 million in the bank.
* In a new TV ad, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee slams Indiana Republican Senate nominee Richard Mourdock over his controversial comments about rape and pregnancy at a Tuesday debate. Even Mitt Romney and Mike Pence believe Richard Mourdock goes too far, and should apologize, says the narrator.
* Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) has released a round of contrast ads as part of her closing argument against Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.). In the spots, voters argue that McCaskill will protect Medicare, Social Security and the middle class, while Akin wont.
* While she called the possibility unlikely, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the first time left the door open to theprospect of staying on as the nations chief diplomat for more than a single term.A lot of people have talked to me about staying, said Clinton, who previously vowed to step down next year.
WHAT YOU SHOULDNT MISS:
* RNC Chairman Reince Preibus says he will help preserve Iowas first-in-the-nation status in 2016, despite the snags in this years caucuses. Romney was initiallydeclaredthe winner, but former senator Rick Santorum was later judged the victor after an updated tally.I will tell you where the RNC is at right now is that we are willing and we are ready to protect Iowas first-in-the-nation status, Priebus said. Given Iowas importance in the general electionpresidentialcampaign, there is incentive for Priebus to show deference to the Hawkeye State.
* Theconservative501(c)(4) Crossroads GPS is up with five new House ads as part of a previously announced $8.1 million buy. The ads target Democrats, includingJohn Hernandez in Californias new 21st District (against Republican David Valadao),Christie Vilsack (against GOP Rep. Steve King) in Iowas 4th District, Brendan Mullen in Indianas 2nd District (against Republican Jackie Walorski in the race to replace Democratic Rep. Joe Donnelly), Steven Horsford in Nevadas 4th District (against Republican Danny Takanian), and Rep. Tim Bishop in New Yorks 1st District (against Republican Randy Altschuler).
* American Commitment, a conservative 501(c)(4) nonprofit, is up with a new TV ad slamming former surgeon general Richard Carmona (D) in the Arizona Senate race. The ad goes after Carmonas stewardship of the Pima County health system and a Tucson hospital. Taxpayers bailed out Carmonas mess, says the narrator. The group is expanding its buy to $1.3 million.
* The South Dakota Republican Party contrasts the records of Rep. Kristi Noem (R) and Democratic challenger Matt Varileka in a recently releasedweb video. The video slams Varilek for hosting a raucous National Corn Dog Day Party in 2006 and defending his title as one of the few toachievea triple-double for his beer and corn dogconsumption, amongotherthings. In case youre wondering (we certainly did) what a triple-double is, its 10 corn dogs, 10 drinks (preferably Pabst Blue Ribbon beers or Jones sodas), and 100 tater tots, according to the National Corn Dog Day website.
THE FIX MIX:
Tom Hanks + Slam poetry + Full House = Three-and-a-half quality minutes
With Aaron Blake
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Election 2012
October 25, 2012 Thursday 9:26 PM EST
A third of campaign ads have yet to air
BYLINE: Rachel Weiner
LENGTH: 84 words
If you live in a swing state and youre sick of political ads, you havent seen anything yet. According to Ad Week, a third of the barrage is still to come. Some context:
More than 915,000 presidential ads have aired on broadcast and national cable through Oct. 21, a 44.5 percent jump from the 637,000 ads that aired in 2008, according to the Wesleyan Media Project.
The Post reported Wednesday that President Obama and his allies are airing more ads than Mitt Romney, even though Republicans are spending more.
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October 25, 2012 Thursday 8:16 PM EST
Is Mitt Romneys momentum real or fake?;
Republicans insist Romney is riding a wave of momentum. Democrats insist he's not. Who's right?
BYLINE: Chris Cillizza;Aaron Blake
LENGTH: 1438 words
Theres been an active debate over the last few days in the political class about whether former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney is genuinely the momentum candidate in the race, or whether he and his campaign are simply pulling the wool over gullible reporters eyes when it comes to the state of the race.
Video: The Washington Posts Ezra Klein and Chris Cillizza analyze the week in politics.
Alec MacGillis of The New Republic casts the idea of Romney momentum as borne more from reporters desire for a close race or at least a comeback story than a close inspection of the actual dynamics at work in the contest.
Wrote MacGillis regarding the aftermath of Romneys performance in the first presidential debate on Oct. 3:
The power of our story bore out across the land. Romney surged in the polls, ina post-debate bounce unlike any ever recorded. Never mind thatcloser inspectionsuggested that his rise had begun just before the debate, as Obamas prior bounce abated. As we like to say in private company, this story was too good to check. We had a comeback on our hands, and as the San Francisco Giants can tell you today, theres no better story than acomeback.
So, what does that closer inspection reveal? Does it show that Romney genuinely surged in the wake of the first debate or, to MacGilliss point, does it reveal a media who, like the computer opponent in Double Dribble, just likes to keep it close?
MacGillis is absolutely right to note that Obama had begun to fade from what even his staunchest allies acknowledged was an artificial high point in polling at the end of September. A Washington Post/ABC survey released just days before the debate showed the contest at 49 percent for Obama and 47 percent for Romney among likely voters, not exactly a blowout and a statistically insignificant difference from where the race stands 49 percent Romney, 48 percent Obama in the latest Post-ABC tracking poll.
But a look at polling in perhaps the three swingiest states in the country Florida, Ohio and Virginia suggest that between the first presidential debate and today, there has been a clear trend in Romneys favor.
In Florida, Romney went from behind by two points on Oct. 3 to ahead by 1.8 points on Wednesday in the Real Clear Politics poll of polls.
In Ohio, Romney went from down 5.5 points on Oct. 3 to down 1.7 points on Wednesday.
And in Virginia, Romney trailed Obama by 3.5 points on Oct. 3 and, as of Wednesday, the two candidates were deadlocked.
Viewed broadly and with a recognition that a poll of polls is not perfect science it appears that Romney gained roughly 3.5 points in each of that trio of states over the past 20 days.
That, at least in our book, would suggest that Romney has or at least had some genuine momentum built off of his strong first debate performance.
But, you could argue, isnt that momentum simply derived as MacGillis argues from the medias decision to flood the zone with coverage of a Romney comeback?
Its impossible to prove that idea wrong, but to believe in its rightness means that you think the media possesses considerably more power particularly among low information undecided voters and Republican base voters than we in fact do. (Thats not to discount the fact that the media does have some power to influence voter perceptions. And, as Jonathan Chait rightly notes in a piece in New York Magazine, the idea that Romney is suddenly and clearly winning the race and pulling out of North Carolina is a fallacy that should not be perpetuated by the media.)
But there is a difference between casting Romney as the frontrunner and simply giving Romney his due for a strong debate performance that energized his base and gave independents voters more to like. (In the latest Washington Post-ABC tracking poll released Wednesday, 40 percent of independents said they like Romney more after the debates. Just 10 percent said the same of Obama.)
Now, the question of whether Romney still has the momentum in the race or whether the momentum he enjoyed has subsided is a tough(er) one. Democrats insist Romney has ceased moving up in swing state polling but, even with that admission, they are tacitly acknowledging movement in his direction in recent weeks.
What we do know is that Romney and Obama are in a dead heat nationally and the once-clear edge the incumbent held in a series of swing states has narrowed considerably.
What we dont is whether Romney has peaked or not. But its tough to argue that there hasnt been real movement toward him in the past three weeks.
More Mourdock fallout: Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) says his continued support of Richard Mourdock depends on whether the Indiana Senate candidate comes clean and apologizes about the mistake he made in his comments about rape and pregnancy.
I think it depends on what he does. If he apologizes and says he misspoke, and he was wrong, and he asks people to forgive him, obviously Id be the first, McCaintold CNNs Anderson Cooper on Wednesday. As I said, Im not sure how big of mistakes that I have made, but you know, in the years that Ive been around, Ive made a few, and Ive asked for peoples understanding and forgiveness when I owned up to it. If you dont own up to it, people will not believe in you.
Mourdock on Wednesdayoffered a semi-apology, saying he was sorry if people misread his comments.
While the national GOP says it still supports Mourdock, Republicans including McCain, Mitt Romney and gubernatorial hopeful Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) continue to step lightly around the issue a tack that both has the potential to hurt Mourdock and reinforces the idea that what he said was beyond the pale.
GOP outside group launches $4.5 million in ads: The Republican-leaning outside groups American Action Network and the Congressional Leadership Fund are going up with $4.5 million more in advertising in 13 of the most important House races in the country.
Many of the investments are on top of existing buys from the groups. AAN is spending $300,000 more on Rep. Frank Guinta (R-N.H.), $80,000 more on Rep. Chip Cravaack (R-Minn.), $100,000 more on retiring Rep. Tim Johnsons (R-Ill.) seat, $450,000 more on Nevadas new 4th district and $160,000 on the new 26th district in California. CLF is spending $300,000 more on the matchup between Reps. Betty Sutton (D-Ohio) and Jim Renacci (R-Ohio), $100,000 more on Rep. Quico Canseco (R-Texas), $1.05 million on Rep. Bob Dold (R-Ill.), $820,000 on Rep. Sean Duffy (R-Wis.), $650,000 on Arizonas new 9th district, $195,000 more against Rep. Lois Capps (D-Calif.), $250,000 on Rep. Dan Benishek (R-Mich.), $215,000 against Rep. John Barrow (D-Ga.), and $40,000 for Rep. Dan Webster (R-Fla.).
The groups combined have now spent about $18 million in October across 22 districts to help Republicans retain the House something they appear very likely to do on Nov. 6. They have spent about $21 million including September.
AAN is a nonprofit issue advocacy group, while CLF is an affiliated super PAC.
Fixbits:
Obamatells NBC Newsthat he always thought his reelection race would be close.
A judge in Montana hasordered the releaseof an edited version of a report on the investigation into a 2009 boat crash involving Senate candidate Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-Mont.). Rehberg suffered severe injuries, and an aide was in a coma for 10 days. The boat trip involved drinking.
Anew poll shows a virtual tiein the open North Dakota Senate race.
Anew Linda McMahon (R) adin the Connecticut Senate race features dozens of facsimiles of Rep. Chris Murphy (D).
A new independentElway Research pollof the Washington governors race shows state Attorney General Rob McKenna (R) at 47 percent and former congressman Jay Inslee (D) at 45 percent.
The Florida Ethics Commission says it hasprobable cause that Rep. David Rivera (R-Fla.) violated the law 11 timeswhile serving in the state legislature.
Rep. Jim Renacci (R-Ohio), who faces Rep. Betty Sutton (D-Ohio) in a merged district, istaking down his broadcast adsand will only be on cable through Election Day.
Must-reads:
Obama maintains ad advantage despite being outspent by GOP Dan Eggen, Washington Post
Obamas Edge: The Ground Game That Could Put Him Over the Top Molly Ball, The Atlantic
Could the campaign ads benefit from the Mad Men touch? Ned Martel, Washington Post
When Obama Loved Private Equity Jonathan Karl, ABC News
As key Senate races get tighter, Republicans hopes rise Rosalind S. Helderman and Paul Kane, Washington Post
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October 25, 2012 Thursday 8:12 PM EST
Obama vows to refocus on debt
BYLINE: Lori Montgomery;Peter Wallsten
SECTION: A section; Pg. A01
LENGTH: 1133 words
President Obama, facing criticism that he has failed to offer a vision for a potential second term, has begun sketching out his agenda with greater specificity in recent days, including a pledge to solve the nation's intractable budget problems within "the first six months."
In an interview made public Wednesday, Obama said he would pursue a "grand bargain" with Republicans to tame the national debt and would quickly follow that with a push to overhaul the nation's immigration laws.
With less than two weeks until Election Day, Obama chose to highlight two issues that have bedeviled him during his presidency: the debt, which has soared past $16 trillion on his watch, and immigration legislation, which never got off the launching pad over the past three years. Both are politically significant, with the debt a concern among independent voters and immigration important to the Hispanics who could decide whether Obama carries swing states such as Colorado and Nevada.
The interview, conducted Tuesday with the editor and publisher of the Des Moines Register, the largest newspaper in Iowa, also marked an unusual moment in the president's dealings with the news media.
Obama had initially insisted that the exchange, which he conducted by phone from a stop in Florida, be off the record. Then on Wednesday, his campaign abruptly decided to release a transcript after the newspaper's editor, Rick Green, wrote a blog post calling the interview terms a "disservice" to voters. Obama is seeking the influential paper's endorsement.
The transcript gave a surprising glimpse of Obama as political pundit, gaming out timetables and calculations for his dealings with Capitol Hill Republicans. He predicted, for instance, that an expectedly poor showing by challenger Mitt Romney among Hispanics would put pressure on GOP lawmakers to ease their opposition to an immigration overhaul that offers a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.
"Since this is off the record, I will just be very blunt," Obama said at one point. "Should I win a second term, a big reason I will win a second term is because the Republican nominee and the Republican Party have so alienated the fastest-growing demographic group in the country, the Latino community."
With polls in battleground states showing the race tightening to a virtual dead heat, Obama appears to be shifting away from a strategy dominated by attacks on his opponent to one that includes a rationale for skeptical voters to send him back to the White House for another four years.
The Obama campaign is distributing glossy brochures that repackage his proposals to hire more teachers, promote manufacturing and raise taxes on the wealthy as "The New Economic Patriotism: A Plan for Jobs & Middle-Class Security."
Aides said the push to define the president's second term also includes direct mail and a new 60-second TV ad featuring Obama looking into the camera and laying out his views on manufacturing, energy and other issues. "Read my plan," he says.
At the top of the priority list: a promise to forge a bipartisan compromise that reduces rampant government borrowing and makes long-postponed decisions about taxes and spending. In the interview, Obama called a budget deal "one of the best things we can do for the economy."
"We're going to be in a position where I believe in the first six months we are going to solve that big piece of business," Obama said. "It will probably be messy. It won't be pleasant. But I am absolutely confident that we can get what is the equivalent of the grand bargain that essentially I've been offering to the Republicans for a very long time, which is $2.50 worth of cuts for every dollar in [taxes], and work to reduce the costs of our health-care programs."
Obama offered no details of how he would approach negotiations with congressional Republicans. But with Washington facing a January deadline to undo more than $500 billion in automatic tax hikes and spending cuts next year, Obama said, "There's going to be a forcing mechanism to deal with what is the central ideological argument in Washington right now, and that is: How much government do we have, and how do we pay for it?"
Republicans reacted with a yawn to the news that Obama is ready to reengage on a grand bargain if he wins the election. They noted that his proposal for a cuts-to-taxes ratio of $2.50 to $1, embodied in his most recent budget request, was roundly rejected in both the House and Senate.
"President Obama broke virtually every promise that candidate Obama made in 2008 - including his pledges to turn around our economy, fix our dysfunctional immigration system, cut the deficit and change politics as usual in Washington," Romney campaign spokesman Ryan Williams said. "Given his history of broken promises, nobody is taking the president's phony election-year commitments seriously - especially those that he thought were being made in secret to a newspaper editorial board."
Some Democrats and independent budget analysts were cheered by the new urgency Obama appears ready to place on the debt issue.
"I think the message is the president wants to get right to work putting together a plan to boost economic growth and reduce the long-term deficit in a predictable and credible way," said Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), the senior Democrat on the House Budget Committee.
But some Democrats were far less enthusiastic. Obama's pledge to push again for a grand bargain creates an uncomfortable dynamic for the campaign's final days, with liberal groups mobilizing to help turn out his voters while simultaneously planning a full-fledged national campaign after Election Day to oppose the kind of budget deal the president has long sought.
The AFL-CIO plans to keep its elaborate network of full-time organizers and union activists in place around the country to pressure lawmakers in both parties - as well as the White House - to steer clear of cuts to Medicare and Social Security, according to people familiar with the plans.
The same day Obama made his comments to the Iowa newspaper, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, a top supporter, published an op-ed in Politico blasting the notion of a grand bargain as "lower tax rates for rich people - paid for by benefit cuts for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. These are precisely the issues that are being debated so vigorously in the campaign, and voters do not want anything to do with such a deal."
Sen. Bernard Sanders (I-Vt.) said he had expressed concerns privately to the White House that Obama appeared to be avoiding firm promises to protect entitlement programs.
"Unlike four years ago," Sanders said, "the president has not been outspoken in saying he's not going to cut Social Security."
montgomeryl@washpost.com
wallstenp@washpost.com
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October 25, 2012 Thursday 8:12 PM EST
Focus intensifies on swing states and key groups
BYLINE: Nia-Malika Henderson
SECTION: A section; Pg. A04
LENGTH: 881 words
President Obama and Mitt Romney continued to refine their closing arguments to voters Wednesday with an eye toward the handful of swing states and key demographic groups that will decide the election next month.
Both campaigns took time out to spin perceptions about which side had the momentum down the stretch in a race that remains essentially tied.
According to the latest Washington Post-ABC News daily tracking poll, the contest remained unchanged from Tuesday, with 49 percent of likely voters nationally backing Romney and 48 percent supporting Obama.
Obama sat for an interview with Jay Leno and stumped in Iowa, Colorado and Nevada - states that have a combined 21 electoral votes - kicking off what he called a "48-hour fly-around marathon campaign extravaganza."
"We're going to pull an all-nighter," he said at a rally in Davenport, Iowa. "No sleep.''
Romney covered similar ground with large rallies in Nevada, Iowa and Ohio (30 combined electoral votes), claiming the label of front-runner, even though the path to 270 electoral votes still looks more challenging for the former Massachusetts governor than it does for Obama.
With the debates behind him, Romney is trying to build momentum this week, staging large and enthusiastic rallies while suggesting that the Obama campaign has stalled.
The Republican nominee, who lagged behind Obama for months this summer and into the fall, told some 2,500 supporters at a Reno arena that the debates were "propelling" his campaign.
"The Obama campaign is slipping and shrinking," Romney said. "The president can't seem to find an agenda to help America's families. Our campaign is a growing movement across this country where people recognize we're going to bring - build a brighter future for the American family, for every family in this great country."
Obama unveiled a glossy 20-page booklet Tuesday that details his agenda for a second term, which includes hiring 100,000 teachers and increasing manufacturing jobs.
The Obama team pushed back against the "Mittmentum" narrative, with top Obama strategist David Plouffe saying that the Romney team has "tried to take advantage of some of these national polls," some of which show Romney with a slight lead.
"I believe they are overstating their electoral college situation, whether that is consistent with their data and their data's flawed, I don't know," he said.
The Obama campaign touted a formidable ground game in Virginia, which has a relatively low unemployment rate and a demographic mix of African American, young and college-educated voters who favored Obama in 2008.
"We've never stopped building the grass-roots campaign that we started in 2008," said Jeremy Bird, Obama's national field director. "We all know, and we've said from the beginning, that this will be a close election, and our grass-roots organization is going to make the difference."
Polls show a narrow race in Florida, where Obama is set to campaign Thursday, and in Virginia, where GOP vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan was scheduled to appear the same day.
At Cleveland State University, Ryan delivered a speech Wednesay billed by the Romney campaign as a major policy speech on upward mobility. The university is in the heart of the city, which in turn anchors a Democrat-friendly industrial strip of Ohio along Lake Erie.
The speech marked an effort to cast Romney as more compassionate than he's given credit for, as polls show him trailing the president on the question of which candidate voters trust more to deal with the day-to-day economic concerns of middle-class voters.
Standing before a row of flags in the music building's plush auditorium, Ryan said, "We're still trying to measure compassion by how much government spends, not by how many people we help escape from poverty."
In his "Civil Society Speech," as it was labeled by the campaign, Ryan seemed to acknowledge that his party has not sufficiently conveyed its compassion for the poor or explained how it would help the disadvantaged.
"We don't always do a good job of laying out that vision. Mitt Romney and I want to change that," Ryan said.
Ryan's speech came as both campaigns were aggressively courting female voters, who outnumbered male voters by 10 million at the nation's polls in 2008, and as Romney projects a more moderate stance on a host of issues, including abortion, immigration and foreign policy.
Even as he was pivoting to the center, Romney had to contend Wednesday with remarks by Richard Mourdock, the Republican candidate for Senate in Indiana, who said in a debate that pregnancies resulting from rape are "something that God intended to happen."
Democrats seized on the comments. They cut a campaign ad highlighting Romney's recent endorsement of Mourdock, hoping to link Romney to the more conservative wing of his party.
The Romney campaign - like those of other top Republicans in tight races - distanced itself from the comments.
"Governor Romney disagrees with Richard Mourdock, and Mr. Mourdock's comments do not reflect Governor Romney's views," said Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul. "We disagree on the policy regarding exceptions for rape and incest but still support him."
hendersonn@washpost.com
Joel Achenbach, Amy Gardner, Jason Horowitz, Jerry Markon and Philip Rucker contributed to this report.
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October 25, 2012 Thursday 8:12 PM EST
Is campaigning in Spanish necessary?
BYLINE: Jason Horowitz
SECTION: Style; Pg. C05
LENGTH: 1066 words
MIAMI - Even before the presidential debate ended Monday night, the national media descended on the candidates' surrogates at Lynn University in Florida. Among the official boosters for President Obama was Fernando Amandi, a member of Miami's Defense Business Board, who was spinning away for a segment on Univision, the Spanish-language television network.
"Florida voters actually watch Spanish-speaking television," Amandi said. "Hispanic network television is one of the largest-growing audiences in the country, and for the working community, Spanish-speaking radio is huge."
But whether Spanish-language media is a must to reach the state's burgeoning and evolving Hispanic population is - like so much in the home stretch of this presidential race - a point of contention.
Mitt Romney's campaign, for instance, is airing some Spanish-language ads, especially on the radio. But it has argued that it can reach Florida's Spanish-speaking voters through other means.
"A lot of Hispanics get their news from English-language stations, too," said Marco Rubio, Florida's Cuban American senator and the Republican Party's poster boy for Hispanic outreach. "It's just a broader advertising platform. I mean, don't underestimate the amount of news and information an Hispanic voter gets from Fox News, MSNBC, CNN and ESPN."
Swing-state Florida, with its 29 electoral votes, remains a critical battleground in a contest that has grown closer as Election Day nears. Hispanic voters are likely to play a key role here, and the degree to which they turn out could determine the election. At the moment, the Obama campaign has a huge advantage: A poll released this week shows the president with a 70 percent level of support among Hispanic voters nationwide.
On Monday evening, though, the Romney campaign and its chief Hispanic surrogates did not seem particularly worried. They acknowledge that Florida's Hispanic community has expanded beyond traditionally right-leaning Cuban Americans and that many of the new and growing Hispanic communities in the state are more inclined toward Democrats. Yet even in some heavily Hispanic neighborhoods in Miami, it became clear that Spanish-language television isn't for everybody.
"The channels are for novelas [soap operas] and gossip," said Tatiana Pino, a 26-year-old Venezuelan who works at Jimmy'z Kitchen in Wynwood, a traditionally Puerto Rican neighborhood that has become home to a fashion district and art galleries. She said she "never, ever" watches Spanish-language television. "It's something the housekeeper or my mom watches when she gets bored."
Outside, some Cuban American friends shared a yuca mofongo. Mey-Ling Perez, a 29-year-old banker and registered independent who is leaning toward Obama, said her family often has a Spanish channel, either Univision or Telemundo, playing at home. The Obama ads are just as "nasty" as the ones in English, she said, but they are finding an audience.
"Everybody is not as fluent in English. Those who are focused on working and not learning the language are watching Univision," she said. To the possible chagrin of the Obama campaign, however, she doubted that all of them would vote.
"A lot of them don't have the right to vote or don't have the motivation or think it doesn't matter," she said. "They're listening, but I don't know if they are voting."
To her right, Natasha Valle, 30, a real estate broker, said she has perceived more of a Romney presence on radio and billboards than on Spanish-language television. The roads between Orlando and Miami are studded with billboards understandable in any language, such as one that pictures the president bowing deeply to an Arab sheik between two gasoline pumps that show the rise in gas prices since he has been in office.
An enthusiastic Obama supporter, Valle said she has had more contact with the Obama ground game than with ads, receiving an average of four calls a week from campaign workers reminding her to cast her ballot. "It's like, 'Guys! You got me!' " she said.
The Obama campaign has bet on an aggressive and "culturally sensitive" effort, as one campaign official put it, that embraces the teeming diversity of Florida's Hispanic community. It has Puerto Rican volunteers to recruit Puerto Ricans, and Cubans to recruit Cubans, and it has registered more voters and reaped more absentee ballots than in 2008, when Obama won the state. But the final push to get those absolutely necessary Latino voters to the polls, the campaign said, will not come just on the ground but in a sustained advertising effort on the airwaves, as a recent ad of the president speaking Spanish directly to the camera makes clear.
"We have had a year and half to build down here, so we are much more organized in the Cuban community, the Puerto Rican community, the Colombian community," said David Plouffe, a senior Obama strategist. Plouffe's hopes for keeping Florida come down to one basic point: "There are more Latino voters than last time."
Jen Psaki, an Obama spokeswoman, says the Romney campaign's purported strategy to reach Hispanics through traditional media outlets may reflect its unwillingness to devote resources to try to persuade a population that is overwhelmingly unsympathetic.
"When you don't have a strong record to stand on that Latino families can get behind, it may not make sense to spend money on advertising," Psaki said.
The Republican's campaign rebutted that assertion. "Mitt Romney understands the Hispanic community," said Yohana de la Torre, the national director of specialty media. "His father is Mexican, of Mexican origin."
Romney's father was born in Mexico after the family fled the United States at a time when law enforcement officials were cracking down on the Mormon practice of polygamy, which the church has since banned.
Anitere Flores, a Republican state senator from South Florida, said the Romney campaign has made sure that its views are well represented in Miami, Orlando and Tampa on the myriad and influential Spanish-language radio talk shows.
She and Rubio, who depend on Spanish-language media in part for their political livelihoods, were careful not to dismiss its influence. "There's a role to play for Spanish-language advertising, too," Rubio said. "I've been very pleased with the quality of the ads they have put on the air. I'm in one of them."
horowitzj@washpost.com
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October 25, 2012 Thursday 8:12 PM EST
Obama tops Romney with more ads in swing states
BYLINE: Dan Eggen
SECTION: A section; Pg. A04
LENGTH: 268 words
President Obama and his allies have aired more ads in battleground states this month despite being outspent by Republican nominee Mitt Romney and GOP groups, who are getting less for their money than the incumbent, according to a study released Wednesday.
The Obama campaign and its supporters spent $77 million on 112,730 advertisements from Oct. 1 to 21, according to the Wesleyan Media Project, which tracks and analyzes political ad spending. Romney and his allies, by contrast, spent more, $87 million, on 15,000 fewer spots.
The study also confirmed that 2012 has already shattered previous records for presidential ad spending, with 915,000 ads aired during the general-election campaign through Sunday, a 44.5 percent increase over the same period four years ago.
Obama has a key advantage over Romney by raising the bulk of his money through his campaign committee, which qualifies for discounted ad rates under federal election laws. That can allow Obama to pay much less for the same ads compared with conservative super PACs and other outside groups, which don't qualify for such rates.
Romney, by contrast, has less money under his direct control because he relies more heavily on wealthy donors who give to the Republican Party and on ad spending by well-funded independent groups.
Erika Franklin Fowler, co-director of the project, noted that although the volume of advertising in 2012 has exploded, it is directed at a much smaller number of swing states than in 2008. Las Vegas, Denver and Cleveland have been at the epicenter of presidential ad volume this year, the study found.
eggend@washpost.com
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October 25, 2012 Thursday 8:12 PM EST
Doing quite nicely, thank you
BYLINE: Fareed Zakaria
SECTION: Editorial; Pg. A19
LENGTH: 815 words
The International Monetary Fund's latest World Economic Outlook makes for gloomy reading. Growth projections have been revised downward almost everywhere, especially in Europe and the big emerging markets such as China. And yet, when looking out over the next four years - the next presidential term - the IMF projects that the United States will be the strongest of the world's rich economies. U.S. growth is forecast to average 3 percent, much stronger than that of Germany or France (1.2 percent) or even Canada (2.3 percent). Increasingly, the evidence suggests that the United States has come out of the financial crisis of 2008 in better shape than its peers - because of the actions of its government.
Perhaps the most important cause of America's relative health is the Federal Reserve. Ben Bernanke understood the depths of the problem early and responded energetically and creatively. The clearest vindication of his actions has been that the European Central Bank, after charting the opposite course for three years with disastrous results, has adopted policies similar to the Fed's - and averted a potential Lehman-like collapse in Europe. (Mitt Romney's two most prominent academic advisers, Glenn Hubbard and Gregory Mankiw, seem to recognize this, but Romney apparently doesn't. As recently as August the Republican presidential nominee repeated his criticisms of the Fed and promised to replace Bernanke at its helm.)
In addition to providing general liquidity, the Fed and the Treasury rescued the financial system but also forced it, through stress tests and new rules, to reform. The result is that U.S. banks are in much better shape than their European counterparts. Consumers have also been paying off debt, thanks to a series of tax cuts and other forms of relief.
A McKinsey & Co. study of crises in recent decades found that the United States is mirroring the pattern of countries with the strongest recoveries. It noted, "Debt in the financial sector relative to GDP has fallen back to levels last seen in 2000, before the credit bubble. U.S. households have reduced their debt relative to disposable income by 15 percentage points, more than in any other country; at this rate, they could reach sustainable debt levels in two years or so."
Kenneth Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart, the leading experts on financial crises, argue that the United States is performing better than most countries in similar circumstances. U.S. consumer confidence is at its highest levels since September 2007.
Every recovery since World War II has been led by housing, except this one. But finally, housing is back. Two weeks ago, Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, declared that housing had turned the corner and predicted that, as a consequence, economic growth in 2013 would be so strong the Fed would have to raise interest rates. Given his firm's vast mortgage portfolio, Dimon has a unique perspective on housing, and he is a smart man who knows that the Fed has promised to keep rates flat for three years. Last week, data on new housing starts confirmed Dimon's optimism.
U.S. corporations have also bounced back. Corporate profits are at an all-time high as a percentage of gross domestic product, and companies have $1.7 trillion in cash on their balance sheets. The key to long-term recoveries from recessions is reform and restructuring, and U.S. businesses have been quick to respond.
Government intervention assisted this process with banks, auto companies and even in housing. Romney is correct to point out that the Obama administration supervised a managed bankruptcy in Detroit - forcing the kind of reform a private-equity firm would have (though, crucially, providing the cash that a President Romney would not have). The Economist magazine, which initially opposed that bailout, reversed itself because of the manner in which General Motors and Chrysler were made to cut costs and become competitive.
And then there is America's energy revolution, which is also bringing back manufacturing. U.S. exports, which have climbed 45 percent in the past four years, are at their highest level ever as a percentage of GDP.
All these good signs come with caveats. Europe continues to weaken. The fiscal cliff looms ominously. But the fact remains that, compared with the rest of the industrialized world and the arc of previous post-bubble recoveries, the United States is ready for a robust revival. This is partly because of the dynamism of the U.S. economy but also because of the timely and intelligent actions of the Fed and the Obama administration.
The next president will reap the rewards of work already done. So it would be the ultimate irony if, having strongly criticized almost every measure that contributed to these positive trends, Mitt Romney ends up presiding over what he would surely call "the Romney recovery."
comments@fareedzakaria.com
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October 25, 2012 Thursday 8:12 PM EST
Mourdock brings social issues to fore again
BYLINE: Karen Tumulty
SECTION: A section; Pg. A05
LENGTH: 1039 words
An Indiana GOP Senate candidate's assertion that pregnancy resulting from rape is "something God intended to happen" ignited a controversy that spilled into the presidential race Wednesday as Democrats renewed the charge that Republicans are waging a "war on women."
Absent his assertion of divine intent, the comments by Richard Mourdock explaining his opposition to abortion even in cases of rape and incest were not that different from those made by others who believe in an absolute ban.
What kindled his words into a controversy was the political context of an election year in which gender-related issues have assumed a prominent place - even as most voters say their prime concern is the economy.
The timing also added fuel. Mourdock made his remarks in a debate that came just one day after his campaign began broadcasting a television spot featuring an endorsement by GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney. Mourdock is the only Senate candidate for whom Romney made such an advertisement.
In a year when both parties are scrambling for women's votes, Democrats have portrayed the GOP as a party that is captive to its extremists, particularly on issues such as contraception and abortion.
Republicans, meanwhile, have tried to send reassuring signals that social issues will take a back seat to economic ones if they recapture the White House and control of Capitol Hill.
Romney, who supports allowing abortion in cases of rape and incest, distanced himself from Mourdock's comments. But his campaign did not ask Mourdock's campaign to quit running the ad in which the former Massachusetts governor praises the U.S. Senate nominee.
"Governor Romney disagrees with Richard Mourdock, and Mr. Mourdock's comments do not reflect Governor Romney's views," said Romney campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul. "We disagree on the policy regarding exceptions for rape and incest but still support him."
Romney's running mate, Paul Ryan, has views that are similar to Mourdock's; he supports banning abortion even in cases of rape and incest. But the Wisconsin congressman has said that whatever his own beliefs, the policies of a Romney administration would be those of the presidential nominee.
Only 1 percent of all abortions are performed on victims of rape, and fewer than half that many result from incest, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research and advocacy organization whose statistics are relied upon by both sides in the abortion debate.
That an exclusion with so little practical effect has assumed such an oversize political one goes back to the 1976 passage of the Hyde Amendment. It banned federal funding of abortion, which at that time was provided to poor women under the Medicaid program.
The exceptions were a compromise rooted not in science or theology but in politics.
The federal funding ban originally passed with an exclusion only when the woman's life was threatened. Rape and incest exceptions were added in the late 1970s, along with an exclusion if the woman's health was seriously threatened, but disappeared again in 1981. The rape and incest language returned in 1993 after more abortion rights supporters were elected to Congress.
"Depending on who's in power, these exceptions have come and gone," said Maya Manian, a University of San Francisco law professor who researches access to reproductive health care.
President Obama's campaign quickly pounced on Mourdock's comment and sought to tie it to the GOP presidential nominee.
"This is an issue where Mitt Romney is starring in an ad for this [candidate], and it is perplexing that he wouldn't demand to have that ad taken down," said Obama campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki, predicting that female voters will be disturbed by the prospect that Romney and Mourdock might "have the opportunity to be partners, in the White House and the Senate."
Obama addressed the controversy in his appearance Wednesday on "The Tonight Show," saying "rape is rape" and "these various distinctions about rape . . . don't make any sense to me."
Mourdock, who defeated long-serving Sen. Richard G. Lugar in the primary and who is engaged in a tight race against Rep. Joe Donnelly (D), said Democrats were intentionally twisting the meaning of his assertion that "even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen."
After the debate, he tried to clarify it by issuing a statement: "God creates life, and that was my point. God does not want rape, and by no means was I suggesting that He does. Rape is a horrible thing, and for anyone to twist my words otherwise is absurd and sick."
Donnelly, his opponent, also opposes abortion.
It did not appear that Mourdock's remarks had turned him into a pariah with the GOP establishment, the way Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin's did when he said in August that "legitimate rape" rarely results in pregnancy.
Sen. John Cornyn (Tex.), head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, had unsuccessfully urged Akin to withdraw; after Mourdock's statement, Cornyn issued a statement saying those who seek to misconstrue the Indiana candidate's words are "irresponsible and ridiculous."
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who has campaigned for Mourdock, suggested that he could withdraw his support. "It depends on what he does," McCain told CNN. "If he apologizes and says he misspoke and he was wrong and he asks the people to forgive him. . . . It's when you don't own up to it that people will not believe in you."
Mourdock and Akin are far from the first to trip when trying to give a rationale for a position that puts them at odds with others who count themselves on the antiabortion side. In 2010, Nevada Republican Senate nominee Sharron Angle suggested that bearing children conceived by rape amounted to turning "a lemon situation into lemonade."
The real problem, said Susan Cohen, director of government relations for the Guttmacher Institute, is that the exclusion for rape and incest is inconsistent with a belief that life begins at and should be protected from the moment of conception.
"This is a purely political and cynical compromise that only politicians subscribe to," she added.
tumultyk@washpost.com
Philip Rucker and Alice Crites contributed to this report
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Election 2012
October 25, 2012 Thursday 6:50 PM EST
Ad watch: Romney hits Obama on economy in Spanish ad
BYLINE: Natalie Jennings
LENGTH: 182 words
Romney campaign: "Un Mejor Camino"
What it says: (In Spanish): Most Americans believe we are heading in the wrong direction. Higher deficits, chronic unemployment, a president who admits he can't work with Congress. Higher Deficits. Chronic Unemployment. Can't Change Washington ... [Obama] says he's only had four years. With four years, Mitt Romney turned things around in Massachusetts ... Leadership is finding the way to live up to your promises.
What it means: The ad matches the "change" theme Romney pressed in his Thursday morning rally and follows by one day a Spanish and subtitled ad released by the Obama campaign in key swing states.
Who will see it: The vast majority of Romney's Spanish-language television buys have been in Florida, with smaller buys in Colorado and Nevada.
Also see: Mad Money: Track campaign ads of the 2012 campaign Do Obama and Romney need to use Spanish-language media to reach Hispanic voters?
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The Fix
October 25, 2012 Thursday 5:51 PM EST
Colin Powell and the Fix Endorsement Hierarchy
BYLINE: Chris Cillizza
LENGTH: 822 words
Back when former Secretary of State and retired General Colin Powell endorsed then candidate Barack Obama for president in the 2008 campaign, we described it as a "symbolic endorsement" - the best sort of endorsement in our Fix Endorsement Hierarchy.
Video: Colin Powell says he is still a Republican even though he endorsed President Obama.
(Not familiar with the Fix Endorsement Hierarchy? For shame! Short answer: It's an attempt to rank every sort of endorsement based on its importance or lack thereof. Long answer: here. And scroll to the bottom of this post for a full list of the categories in the endorsement hierarchy.)
So, when we heard the news this morning that Powell was "sticking" with Obama in 2012, we - and the world - wondered: Is it still a symbolic endorsement?
Answer: No. It's a national endorsement - still potentially powerful but less meaningful than a symbolic endorsement.
Why?
First and foremost because there's no element of surprise here. In 2008 when Powell announced his support of Obama, it was the country's most beloved general (and a Republican to boot) saying he had confidence in the foreign policy judgment of this decidedly inexperienced Senator from Illinois. No one expected it from Powell and when it happened, the endorsement was widely regarded as of "final piece of the puzzle" moment.
As we wrote back in 2008:
"With polling - both in the key battleground states and nationally - showing that voters trust Obama more than John McCain to handle the current economic morass, one of McCain's last hopes is that the the election turns back somehow to a foreign policy focus. If Powell does endorse Obama, it would shore up the Illinois senator even if that eventuality occurred; it would be hard for McCain to slam Obama's approach on the war if the Democrat had a Powell endorsement sitting in his back pocket."
This time around, the element of surprise is gone. And, while the Obama team is already using the Powell endorsement as proof that there is only one real commander-in-chief in the race, it's hard to see the endorsement having the same sort of lift that it did four years ago.
That said, Powell's endorsement is not without meaning - particularly since he took time to not only support Obama but also bash former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.
"Not only am I not comfortable with what Governor Romney is proposing for his economic plan, I have concerns about his views on foreign policy," Powell said during an appearance on "CBS This Morning" - adding that the Republican nominee had "some very, very strong neo-conservative views" and describing Romney's foreign policy vision as a "moving target".
Our guess is that those quotes will find their way into an Obama ad in the very near future. And, as we noted in 2008, Powell remains among the most popular and trusted figures operating in American politics, which should give his words some heft. (A CNN poll in May 2009 showed that seven in ten people viewed Powell favorably while just 17 percent saw him in an unfavorable light.)
To be clear: Romney would have loved to win Powell's endorsement. (There is nothing so powerful in politics as a turnabout.) And Powell's endorsement of Obama could well firm up the incumbent's lead over Romney on the commander-in-chief question. But, Powell's 2012 endorsement simply doesn't carry the same weight that the 2008 version did.
The Fix Endorsement Hierarchy (ranked in order of importance)
* The Symbolic Endorsement: Former Florida governor Jeb Bush endorsing Mitt Romney for president.
* The National Endorsement: Former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty for Romney.
* The In-State Statewide Endorsement: Florida Gov. Charlie Crist throwing his support to Sen. John McCain just before the Sunshine State presidential primary in 2008.
* The Celebrity Endorsement: Chuck Norris for Mike Huckabee in 2008; Oprah for Obama.
* The Newspaper Endorsement: The Washington Post endorsing state Sen. Creigh Deeds in the 2009 Virginia Democratic gubernatorial primary.
* Out-of-State Statewide Endorsement: South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint endorsing former Florida state House Speaker Marco Rubio in the 2010 Senate primary.
* The What Goes Around Comes Around Endorsement: Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani endorsing Rubio.
* The Obligatory Endorsement: George W. Bush endorsing McCain's presidential bid in 2008.
* The "Me for Me" Endorsement: Former senator Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) endorsing Pennsylvania Rep. Joe Sestak's (D) 2010 Senate campaign.
* The Non-Endorsement Endorsement: Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) passing on an endorsement of Sen. David Vitter's (R) 2010 reelection bid.
* The Backfire Endorsement: Former Vice President Al Gore endorsing former Vermont governor Howard Dean in the 2004 presidential race.
* The Pariah Endorsement: Jailed former congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham backing Newt Gingrich.
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The Fact Checker
October 25, 2012 Thursday 4:19 PM EST
Romney doubling down on debate misstatements;
The Romney campaign rushes out two ads using 'facts' questioned by fact checkers.
BYLINE: Glenn Kessler
LENGTH: 1298 words
"Our Navy is smaller now than at any time since 1917."
- Mitt Romney, in a new television ad
"The president began an apology tour of going to various nations and criticizing America."
Mitt Romney, in another new television ad
When readers ask whether we get annoyed that politicians often ignore fact-checking criticism, our answer is always the same: We write for voters, not politicians. Politicians are not going to change their behavior unless voters begin to make choices based on adherence to the truth.
But this is an interesting case in which Mitt Romney has taken two moments from the third presidential debate - both of which were faulted by fact checkers - and turned them into television ads.
In both cases, Romney also misspoke, making his statements even less accurate. The campaign commercial for the "apology tour" selectively snips out Romney's errors, but apparently it was impossible to clean up Romney's error on the size of the Navy.
Let's examine these issues once again. We had earlier given Three Pinocchios for the Navy comment and Four Pinocchios for the "apology tour."
The Facts
The Navy
When Romney talks about the size of the Navy, he generally uses the year 1916. But in the last debate, he used "1917." (You can tell that Obama's response was precooked because Obama actually refers to the year 1916.)
The change from 1916 to 1917 makes a difference, factually. In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson signed into law the Naval Act of 1916, which put the United States on a crash course to build a world-class Navy. The United States also entered World War I in 1917. So the numbers shifted dramatically, from 245 ships in 1916 to 342 ships in 1917 (and then 774 ships in 1918).
Using the 342 figure as our low point, it turns out that the number of naval ships was lower than that many times since 1917 - including for seven years in the 1930s and then every year since 2000.
Moreover, as we noted before - and Obama echoed in the debate - the makeup of the Navy was so different that it's really a case of apples and oranges, or rather, comparing gunboats to aircraft carriers. As the current Secretary of the Navy, Ray Mabus, put it earlier this year: "It's like comparing the telegraph to the smart phone. They're just not comparable."
The Romney campaign defends the statement, both in a blog post by former secretary of the Navy John Lehman and in a telephone interview with a top campaign staff member.
In the blog post, Lehman acknowledged that "modern networks and precision guided munitions give today's fleet far more combat punch over greater distances than the WWI fleet" but said that fleet counts are still important:
"We reject this approach for one very important reason. That is, navies do more than fight wars. They must of course be prepared to fight and win, and our fleet will do that with certainty. But the fleet must do much more than just fight. The presence of a powerful fleet causes potential adversaries to think twice about aggression, while assuring friends and allies of our commitment to our interests and to their security. Put simply, what provides this deterrence and assurance is the visible presence of surface warships and embarked air wings, and the inferred presence of stealthy submarines. In this pursuit, numbers matter more than weapons and networks, and the Obama administration has failed to recognize this."
The campaign staff member said it was important to focus on the fact that the fleet count has been static for more than a decade and that there is a bipartisan consensus that it needs to grow. (The Obama administration's stated goal is 300 ships.) He acknowledged that "our Navy is bigger and more capable than other navies," but "we have greater responsibilities."
Those are certainly valid points, but we question why Romney would continue to seize on such a strange factoid - and the campaign would feature it in an ad - especially after we gave the claim Three Pinocchios, PolitiFact called it "Pants on Fire" and FactCheck.Org said it was "not true."
Romney would have been more accurate to have said "the size of the Navy has remained static for more than decade while the threats and responsibilities have grown." The reference to 1917 is simply straining.
The ad also asserts that Obama defense cuts total $1 trillion. As we have noted before, this includes some $500 billion in automatic defense cuts that were the product of a bipartisan agreement -neither party wants those to take place.
Apology Tour
We first awarded this claim Four Pinocchios back in early 2011, and readers are welcome to read the full column. Essentially, we concluded that Obama's so-called apologies were often taken out of context. PolitiFact also said this was a "Pants on Fire" claim and FactCheck.Org also concluded "the claim doesn't hold up when matched with Obama's actual words."
We realize some readers strongly disagree, including one of our colleagues, Jennifer Rubin. She offered a defense of the claim on her blog "Right Turn" earlier this week.
In any case, as we noted in our fact check of the third debate, Romney bungled his rebuttal of Obama's assertion that this was "the biggest whopper" of the campaign. Romney claimed that Obama had made his offending comments during trips to the Middle East and on Arabic television-which was not correct.
The speeches Romney referenced actually were made in France and Latin America. (Obama did use the word "dictating" during a 2009 interview with al Arabiya, but again, that was not an apology; he said he wanted his new Middle East peace envoy to "start by listening.")
How did the Romney campaign respond to this problem?
It selectively edited Romney's statements - much as both campaigns have done with their opponent's words. (A Romney spokesman declined to comment on why the excisions were made.)
Here are the relevant quotes, with the words that have been removed in bold type:
"And then the president began what I've called an apology tour of going to various nations in the Middle East and criticizing America. I think they looked at that and saw weakness."
"Mr. President , the reason I call it an apology tour is because you went to the Middle East and you flew to Egypt and to Saudi Arabia and to Turkey and Iraq. And, by the way, you skipped Israel, our closest friend in the region. But you went to the other nations. And by the way, they noticed that you skipped Israel. And then in those nations and on Arabic TV you said that America had been dismissive and derisive. You said that on occasion America had dictated to other nations. Mr. President, America has not dictated to other nations. We have freed other nations from dictators."
Pretty clever, right? The net effect is to suggest Obama made those supposed apologies to Arabs, without actually saying so, because that would be incorrect. But even careful editing still does not fix the basic problem in the first place - there was no apology tour.
This ad also repeats the criticism that Obama has never visited Israel. As we have noted, only four of the last 11 presidents visited Israel during their presidency - and only two visited in their first term.
The Pinocchio Test
For doubling down on claims that have been repeatedly called out by fact checkers, even to the point of editing out the candidate's misstatements, the Romney campaign earns Four Pinocchios.
Four Pinocchios
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The Washington Post
October 25, 2012 Thursday
Met 2 Edition
Obama vows to refocus on debt
BYLINE: Lori Montgomery;Peter Wallsten
SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A01
LENGTH: 1129 words
President Obama, facing criticism that he has failed to offer a vision for a potential second term, has begun sketching out his agenda with greater specificity in recent days, including a pledge to solve the nation's intractable budget problems within "the first six months."
In an interview made public Wednesday, Obama said he would pursue a "grand bargain" with Republicans to tame the national debt and would quickly follow that with a push to overhaul the nation's immigration laws.
With less than two weeks until Election Day, Obama chose to highlight two issues that have bedeviled him during his presidency: the debt, which has soared past $16 trillion on his watch, and immigration legislation, which never got off the launching pad over the past three years. Both are politically significant, with the debt a concern among independent voters and immigration important to the Hispanics who could decide whether Obama carries swing states such as Colorado and Nevada.
The interview, conducted Tuesday with the editor and publisher of the Des Moines Register, the largest newspaper in Iowa, also marked an unusual moment in the president's dealings with the news media.
Obama had initially insisted that the exchange, which he conducted by phone from a stop in Florida, be off the record. Then on Wednesday, his campaign abruptly decided to release a transcript after the newspaper's editor, Rick Green, wrote a blog post calling the interview terms a "disservice" to voters. Obama is seeking the influential paper's endorsement.
The transcript gave a surprising glimpse of Obama as political pundit, gaming out timetables and calculations for his dealings with Capitol Hill Republicans. He predicted, for instance, that an expectedly poor showing by challenger Mitt Romney among Hispanics would put pressure on GOP lawmakers to ease their opposition to an immigration overhaul that offers a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.
"Since this is off the record, I will just be very blunt," Obama said at one point. "Should I win a second term, a big reason I will win a second term is because the Republican nominee and the Republican Party have so alienated the fastest-growing demographic group in the country, the Latino community."
With polls in battleground states showing the race tightening to a virtual dead heat, Obama appears to be shifting away from a strategy dominated by attacks on his opponent to one that includes a rationale for skeptical voters to send him back to the White House for another four years.
The Obama campaign is distributing glossy brochures that repackage his proposals to hire more teachers, promote manufacturing and raise taxes on the wealthy as "The New Economic Patriotism: A Plan for Jobs & Middle-Class Security."
Aides said the push to define the president's second term also includes direct mail and a new 60-second TV ad featuring Obama looking into the camera and laying out his views on manufacturing, energy and other issues. "Read my plan," he says.
At the top of the priority list: a promise to forge a bipartisan compromise that reduces rampant government borrowing and makes long-postponed decisions about taxes and spending. In the interview, Obama called a budget deal "one of the best things we can do for the economy."
"We're going to be in a position where I believe in the first six months we are going to solve that big piece of business," Obama said. "It will probably be messy. It won't be pleasant. But I am absolutely confident that we can get what is the equivalent of the grand bargain that essentially I've been offering to the Republicans for a very long time, which is $2.50 worth of cuts for every dollar in [taxes], and work to reduce the costs of our health-care programs."
Obama offered no details of how he would approach negotiations with congressional Republicans. But with Washington facing a January deadline to undo more than $500 billion in automatic tax hikes and spending cuts next year, Obama said, "There's going to be a forcing mechanism to deal with what is the central ideological argument in Washington right now, and that is: How much government do we have, and how do we pay for it?"
Republicans reacted with a yawn to the news that Obama is ready to reengage on a grand bargain if he wins the election. They noted that his proposal for a cuts-to-taxes ratio of $2.50 to $1, embodied in his most recent budget request, was roundly rejected in both the House and Senate.
"President Obama broke virtually every promise that candidate Obama made in 2008 - including his pledges to turn around our economy, fix our dysfunctional immigration system, cut the deficit and change politics as usual in Washington," Romney campaign spokesman Ryan Williams said. "Given his history of broken promises, nobody is taking the president's phony election-year commitments seriously - especially those that he thought were being made in secret to a newspaper editorial board."
Some Democrats and independent budget analysts were cheered by the new urgency Obama appears ready to place on the debt issue.
"I think the message is the president wants to get right to work putting together a plan to boost economic growth and reduce the long-term deficit in a predictable and credible way," said Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), the senior Democrat on the House Budget Committee.
But some Democrats were far less enthusiastic. Obama's pledge to push again for a grand bargain creates an uncomfortable dynamic for the campaign's final days, with liberal groups mobilizing to help turn out his voters while simultaneously planning a full-fledged national campaign after Election Day to oppose the kind of budget deal the president has long sought.
The AFL-CIO plans to keep its elaborate network of full-time organizers and union activists in place around the country to pressure lawmakers in both parties - as well as the White House - to steer clear of cuts to Medicare and Social Security, according to people familiar with the plans.
The same day Obama made his comments to the Iowa newspaper, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, a top supporter, published an op-ed in Politico blasting the notion of a grand bargain as "lower tax rates for rich people - paid for by benefit cuts for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. These are precisely the issues that are being debated so vigorously in the campaign, and voters do not want anything to do with such a deal."
Sen. Bernard Sanders (I-Vt.) said he had expressed concerns privately to the White House that Obama appeared to be avoiding firm promises to protect entitlement programs.
"Unlike four years ago," Sanders said, "the president has not been outspoken in saying he's not going to cut Social Security."
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October 25, 2012 Thursday
Suburban Edition
Focus intensifies on swing states and key groups
BYLINE: Nia-Malika Henderson
SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A04
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President Obama and Mitt Romney continued to refine their closing arguments to voters Wednesday with an eye toward the handful of swing states and key demographic groups that will decide the election next month.
Both campaigns took time out to spin perceptions about which side had the momentum down the stretch in a race that remains essentially tied.
According to the latest Washington Post-ABC News daily tracking poll, the contest remained unchanged from Tuesday, with 49 percent of likely voters nationally backing Romney and 48 percent supporting Obama.
Obama sat for an interview with Jay Leno and stumped in Iowa, Colorado and Nevada - states that have a combined 21 electoral votes - kicking off what he called a "48-hour fly-around marathon campaign extravaganza."
"We're going to pull an all-nighter," he said at a rally in Davenport, Iowa. "No sleep.''
Romney covered similar ground with large rallies in Nevada, Iowa and Ohio (30 combined electoral votes), claiming the label of front-runner, even though the path to 270 electoral votes still looks more challenging for the former Massachusetts governor than it does for Obama.
With the debates behind him, Romney is trying to build momentum this week, staging large and enthusiastic rallies while suggesting that the Obama campaign has stalled.
The Republican nominee, who lagged behind Obama for months this summer and into the fall, told some 2,500 supporters at a Reno arena that the debates were "propelling" his campaign.
"The Obama campaign is slipping and shrinking," Romney said. "The president can't seem to find an agenda to help America's families. Our campaign is a growing movement across this country where people recognize we're going to bring - build a brighter future for the American family, for every family in this great country."
Obama unveiled a glossy 20-page booklet Tuesday that details his agenda for a second term, which includes hiring 100,000 teachers and increasing manufacturing jobs.
The Obama team pushed back against the "Mittmentum" narrative, with top Obama strategist David Plouffe saying that the Romney team has "tried to take advantage of some of these national polls," some of which show Romney with a slight lead.
"I believe they are overstating their electoral college situation, whether that is consistent with their data and their data's flawed, I don't know," he said.
The Obama campaign touted a formidable ground game in Virginia, which has a relatively low unemployment rate and a demographic mix of African American, young and college-educated voters who favored Obama in 2008.
"We've never stopped building the grass-roots campaign that we started in 2008," said Jeremy Bird, Obama's national field director. "We all know, and we've said from the beginning, that this will be a close election, and our grass-roots organization is going to make the difference."
Polls show a narrow race in Florida, where Obama is set to campaign Thursday, and in Virginia, where GOP vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan was scheduled to appear the same day.
At Cleveland State University, Ryan delivered a speech Wednesay billed by the Romney campaign as a major policy speech on upward mobility. The university is in the heart of the city, which in turn anchors a Democrat-friendly industrial strip of Ohio along Lake Erie.
The speech marked an effort to cast Romney as more compassionate than he's given credit for, as polls show him trailing the president on the question of which candidate voters trust more to deal with the day-to-day economic concerns of middle-class voters.
Standing before a row of flags in the music building's plush auditorium, Ryan said, "We're still trying to measure compassion by how much government spends, not by how many people we help escape from poverty."
In his "Civil Society Speech," as it was labeled by the campaign, Ryan seemed to acknowledge that his party has not sufficiently conveyed its compassion for the poor or explained how it would help the disadvantaged.
"We don't always do a good job of laying out that vision. Mitt Romney and I want to change that," Ryan said.
Ryan's speech came as both campaigns were aggressively courting female voters, who outnumbered male voters by 10 million at the nation's polls in 2008, and as Romney projects a more moderate stance on a host of issues, including abortion, immigration and foreign policy.
Even as he was pivoting to the center, Romney had to contend Wednesday with remarks by Richard Mourdock, the Republican candidate for Senate in Indiana, who said in a debate that pregnancies resulting from rape are "something that God intended to happen."
Democrats seized on the comments. They cut a campaign ad highlighting Romney's recent endorsement of Mourdock, hoping to link Romney to the more conservative wing of his party.
The Romney campaign - like those of other top Republicans in tight races - distanced itself from the comments.
"Governor Romney disagrees with Richard Mourdock, and Mr. Mourdock's comments do not reflect Governor Romney's views," said Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul. "We disagree on the policy regarding exceptions for rape and incest but still support him."
hendersonn@washpost.com
Joel Achenbach, Amy Gardner, Jason Horowitz, Jerry Markon and Philip Rucker contributed to this report.
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October 25, 2012 Thursday
Suburban Edition
Is campaigning in Spanish necessary?
BYLINE: Jason Horowitz
SECTION: STYLE; Pg. C05
LENGTH: 1061 words
DATELINE: MIAMI
MIAMI - Even before the presidential debate ended Monday night, the national media descended on the candidates' surrogates at Lynn University in Florida. Among the official boosters for President Obama was Fernando Amandi, a member of Miami's Defense Business Board, who was spinning away for a segment on Univision, the Spanish-language television network.
"Florida voters actually watch Spanish-speaking television," Amandi said. "Hispanic network television is one of the largest-growing audiences in the country, and for the working community, Spanish-speaking radio is huge."
But whether Spanish-language media is a must to reach the state's burgeoning and evolving Hispanic population is - like so much in the home stretch of this presidential race - a point of contention.
Mitt Romney's campaign, for instance, is airing some Spanish-language ads, especially on the radio. But it has argued that it can reach Florida's Spanish-speaking voters through other means.
"A lot of Hispanics get their news from English-language stations, too," said Marco Rubio, Florida's Cuban American senator and the Republican Party's poster boy for Hispanic outreach. "It's just a broader advertising platform. I mean, don't underestimate the amount of news and information an Hispanic voter gets from Fox News, MSNBC, CNN and ESPN."
Swing-state Florida, with its 29 electoral votes, remains a critical battleground in a contest that has grown closer as Election Day nears. Hispanic voters are likely to play a key role here, and the degree to which they turn out could determine the election. At the moment, the Obama campaign has a huge advantage: A poll released this week shows the president with a 70 percent level of support among Hispanic voters nationwide.
On Monday evening, though, the Romney campaign and its chief Hispanic surrogates did not seem particularly worried. They acknowledge that Florida's Hispanic community has expanded beyond traditionally right-leaning Cuban Americans and that many of the new and growing Hispanic communities in the state are more inclined toward Democrats. Yet even in some heavily Hispanic neighborhoods in Miami, it became clear that Spanish-language television isn't for everybody.
"The channels are for novelas [soap operas] and gossip," said Tatiana Pino, a 26-year-old Venezuelan who works at Jimmy'z Kitchen in Wynwood, a traditionally Puerto Rican neighborhood that has become home to a fashion district and art galleries. She said she "never, ever" watches Spanish-language television. "It's something the housekeeper or my mom watches when she gets bored."
Outside, some Cuban American friends shared a yuca mofongo. Mey-Ling Perez, a 29-year-old banker and registered independent who is leaning toward Obama, said her family often has a Spanish channel, either Univision or Telemundo, playing at home. The Obama ads are just as "nasty" as the ones in English, she said, but they are finding an audience.
"Everybody is not as fluent in English. Those who are focused on working and not learning the language are watching Univision," she said. To the possible chagrin of the Obama campaign, however, she doubted that all of them would vote.
"A lot of them don't have the right to vote or don't have the motivation or think it doesn't matter," she said. "They're listening, but I don't know if they are voting."
To her right, Natasha Valle, 30, a real estate broker, said she has perceived more of a Romney presence on radio and billboards than on Spanish-language television. The roads between Orlando and Miami are studded with billboards understandable in any language, such as one that pictures the president bowing deeply to an Arab sheik between two gasoline pumps that show the rise in gas prices since he has been in office.
An enthusiastic Obama supporter, Valle said she has had more contact with the Obama ground game than with ads, receiving an average of four calls a week from campaign workers reminding her to cast her ballot. "It's like, 'Guys! You got me!' " she said.
The Obama campaign has bet on an aggressive and "culturally sensitive" effort, as one campaign official put it, that embraces the teeming diversity of Florida's Hispanic community. It has Puerto Rican volunteers to recruit Puerto Ricans, and Cubans to recruit Cubans, and it has registered more voters and reaped more absentee ballots than in 2008, when Obama won the state. But the final push to get those absolutely necessary Latino voters to the polls, the campaign said, will not come just on the ground but in a sustained advertising effort on the airwaves, as a recent ad of the president speaking Spanish directly to the camera makes clear.
"We have had a year and half to build down here, so we are much more organized in the Cuban community, the Puerto Rican community, the Colombian community," said David Plouffe, a senior Obama strategist. Plouffe's hopes for keeping Florida come down to one basic point: "There are more Latino voters than last time."
Jen Psaki, an Obama spokeswoman, says the Romney campaign's purported strategy to reach Hispanics through traditional media outlets may reflect its unwillingness to devote resources to try to persuade a population that is overwhelmingly unsympathetic.
"When you don't have a strong record to stand on that Latino families can get behind, it may not make sense to spend money on advertising," Psaki said.
The Republican's campaign rebutted that assertion. "Mitt Romney understands the Hispanic community," said Yohana de la Torre, the national director of specialty media. "His father is Mexican, of Mexican origin."
Romney's father was born in Mexico after the family fled the United States at a time when law enforcement officials were cracking down on the Mormon practice of polygamy, which the church has since banned.
Anitere Flores, a Republican state senator from South Florida, said the Romney campaign has made sure that its views are well represented in Miami, Orlando and Tampa on the myriad and influential Spanish-language radio talk shows.
She and Rubio, who depend on Spanish-language media in part for their political livelihoods, were careful not to dismiss its influence. "There's a role to play for Spanish-language advertising, too," Rubio said. "I've been very pleased with the quality of the ads they have put on the air. I'm in one of them."
horowitzj@washpost.com
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The Washington Post
October 25, 2012 Thursday
Suburban Edition
Obama tops Romney with more ads in swing states
BYLINE: Dan Eggen
SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A04
LENGTH: 268 words
President Obama and his allies have aired more ads in battleground states this month despite being outspent by Republican nominee Mitt Romney and GOP groups, who are getting less for their money than the incumbent, according to a study released Wednesday.
The Obama campaign and its supporters spent $77 million on 112,730 advertisements from Oct. 1 to 21, according to the Wesleyan Media Project, which tracks and analyzes political ad spending. Romney and his allies, by contrast, spent more, $87 million, on 15,000 fewer spots.
The study also confirmed that 2012 has already shattered previous records for presidential ad spending, with 915,000 ads aired during the general-election campaign through Sunday, a 44.5 percent increase over the same period four years ago.
Obama has a key advantage over Romney by raising the bulk of his money through his campaign committee, which qualifies for discounted ad rates under federal election laws. That can allow Obama to pay much less for the same ads compared with conservative super PACs and other outside groups, which don't qualify for such rates.
Romney, by contrast, has less money under his direct control because he relies more heavily on wealthy donors who give to the Republican Party and on ad spending by well-funded independent groups.
Erika Franklin Fowler, co-director of the project, noted that although the volume of advertising in 2012 has exploded, it is directed at a much smaller number of swing states than in 2008. Las Vegas, Denver and Cleveland have been at the epicenter of presidential ad volume this year, the study found.
eggend@washpost.com
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The Washington Post
October 25, 2012 Thursday
Suburban Edition
Doing quite nicely, thank you
BYLINE: Fareed Zakaria
SECTION: EDITORIAL COPY; Pg. A19
LENGTH: 813 words
The International Monetary Fund's latest World Economic Outlook makes for gloomy reading. Growth projections have been revised downward almost everywhere, especially in Europe and the big emerging markets such as China. And yet, when looking out over the next four years - the next presidential term - the IMF projects that the United States will be the strongest of the world's rich economies. U.S. growth is forecast to average 3 percent, much stronger than that of Germany or France (1.2 percent) or even Canada (2.3 percent). Increasingly, the evidence suggests that the United States has come out of the financial crisis of 2008 in better shape than its peers - because of the actions of its government.
Perhaps the most important cause of America's relative health is the Federal Reserve. Ben Bernanke understood the depths of the problem early and responded energetically and creatively. The clearest vindication of his actions has been that the European Central Bank, after charting the opposite course for three years with disastrous results, has adopted policies similar to the Fed's - and averted a potential Lehman-like collapse in Europe. (Mitt Romney's two most prominent academic advisers, Glenn Hubbard and Gregory Mankiw, seem to recognize this, but Romney apparently doesn't. As recently as August the Republican presidential nominee repeated his criticisms of the Fed and promised to replace Bernanke at its helm.)
In addition to providing general liquidity, the Fed and the Treasury rescued the financial system but also forced it, through stress tests and new rules, to reform. The result is that U.S. banks are in much better shape than their European counterparts. Consumers have also been paying off debt, thanks to a series of tax cuts and other forms of relief.
A McKinsey & Co. study of crises in recent decades found that the United States is mirroring the pattern of countries with the strongest recoveries. It noted, "Debt in the financial sector relative to GDP has fallen back to levels last seen in 2000, before the credit bubble. U.S. households have reduced their debt relative to disposable income by 15 percentage points, more than in any other country; at this rate, they could reach sustainable debt levels in two years or so."
Kenneth Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart, the leading experts on financial crises, argue that the United States is performing better than most countries in similar circumstances. U.S. consumer confidence is at its highest levels since September 2007.
Every recovery since World War II has been led by housing, except this one. But finally, housing is back. Two weeks ago, Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, declared that housing had turned the corner and predicted that, as a consequence, economic growth in 2013 would be so strong the Fed would have to raise interest rates. Given his firm's vast mortgage portfolio, Dimon has a unique perspective on housing, and he is a smart man who knows that the Fed has promised to keep rates flat for three years. Last week, data on new housing starts confirmed Dimon's optimism.
U.S. corporations have also bounced back. Corporate profits are at an all-time high as a percentage of gross domestic product, and companies have $1.7 trillion in cash on their balance sheets. The key to long-term recoveries from recessions is reform and restructuring, and U.S. businesses have been quick to respond.
Government intervention assisted this process with banks, auto companies and even in housing. Romney is correct to point out that the Obama administration supervised a managed bankruptcy in Detroit - forcing the kind of reform a private-equity firm would have (though, crucially, providing the cash that a President Romney would not have). The Economist magazine, which initially opposed that bailout, reversed itself because of the manner in which General Motors and Chrysler were made to cut costs and become competitive.
And then there is America's energy revolution, which is also bringing back manufacturing. U.S. exports, which have climbed 45 percent in the past four years, are at their highest level ever as a percentage of GDP.
All these good signs come with caveats. Europe continues to weaken. The fiscal cliff looms ominously. But the fact remains that, compared with the rest of the industrialized world and the arc of previous post-bubble recoveries, the United States is ready for a robust revival. This is partly because of the dynamism of the U.S. economy but also because of the timely and intelligent actions of the Fed and the Obama administration.
The next president will reap the rewards of work already done. So it would be the ultimate irony if, having strongly criticized almost every measure that contributed to these positive trends, Mitt Romney ends up presiding over what he would surely call "the Romney recovery."
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The Washington Post
October 25, 2012 Thursday
Met 2 Edition
Mourdock brings social issues to fore again
BYLINE: Karen Tumulty
SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A05
LENGTH: 1037 words
An Indiana GOP Senate candidate's assertion that pregnancy resulting from rape is "something God intended to happen" ignited a controversy that spilled into the presidential race Wednesday as Democrats renewed the charge that Republicans are waging a "war on women."
Absent his assertion of divine intent, the comments by Richard Mourdock explaining his opposition to abortion even in cases of rape and incest were not that different from those made by others who believe in an absolute ban.
What kindled his words into a controversy was the political context of an election year in which gender-related issues have assumed a prominent place - even as most voters say their prime concern is the economy.
The timing also added fuel. Mourdock made his remarks in a debate that came just one day after his campaign began broadcasting a television spot featuring an endorsement by GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney. Mourdock is the only Senate candidate for whom Romney made such an advertisement.
In a year when both parties are scrambling for women's votes, Democrats have portrayed the GOP as a party that is captive to its extremists, particularly on issues such as contraception and abortion.
Republicans, meanwhile, have tried to send reassuring signals that social issues will take a back seat to economic ones if they recapture the White House and control of Capitol Hill.
Romney, who supports allowing abortion in cases of rape and incest, distanced himself from Mourdock's comments. But his campaign did not ask Mourdock's campaign to quit running the ad in which the former Massachusetts governor praises the U.S. Senate nominee.
"Governor Romney disagrees with Richard Mourdock, and Mr. Mourdock's comments do not reflect Governor Romney's views," said Romney campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul. "We disagree on the policy regarding exceptions for rape and incest but still support him."
Romney's running mate, Paul Ryan, has views that are similar to Mourdock's; he supports banning abortion even in cases of rape and incest. But the Wisconsin congressman has said that whatever his own beliefs, the policies of a Romney administration would be those of the presidential nominee.
Only 1 percent of all abortions are performed on victims of rape, and fewer than half that many result from incest, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research and advocacy organization whose statistics are relied upon by both sides in the abortion debate.
That an exclusion with so little practical effect has assumed such an oversize political one goes back to the 1976 passage of the Hyde Amendment. It banned federal funding of abortion, which at that time was provided to poor women under the Medicaid program.
The exceptions were a compromise rooted not in science or theology but in politics.
The federal funding ban originally passed with an exclusion only when the woman's life was threatened. Rape and incest exceptions were added in the late 1970s, along with an exclusion if the woman's health was seriously threatened, but disappeared again in 1981. The rape and incest language returned in 1993 after more abortion rights supporters were elected to Congress.
"Depending on who's in power, these exceptions have come and gone," said Maya Manian, a University of San Francisco law professor who researches access to reproductive health care.
President Obama's campaign quickly pounced on Mourdock's comment and sought to tie it to the GOP presidential nominee.
"This is an issue where Mitt Romney is starring in an ad for this [candidate], and it is perplexing that he wouldn't demand to have that ad taken down," said Obama campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki, predicting that female voters will be disturbed by the prospect that Romney and Mourdock might "have the opportunity to be partners, in the White House and the Senate."
Obama addressed the controversy in his appearance Wednesday on "The Tonight Show," saying "rape is rape" and "these various distinctions about rape . . . don't make any sense to me."
Mourdock, who defeated long-serving Sen. Richard G. Lugar in the primary and who is engaged in a tight race against Rep. Joe Donnelly (D), said Democrats were intentionally twisting the meaning of his assertion that "even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen."
After the debate, he tried to clarify it by issuing a statement: "God creates life, and that was my point. God does not want rape, and by no means was I suggesting that He does. Rape is a horrible thing, and for anyone to twist my words otherwise is absurd and sick."
Donnelly, his opponent, also opposes abortion.
It did not appear that Mourdock's remarks had turned him into a pariah with the GOP establishment, the way Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin's did when he said in August that "legitimate rape" rarely results in pregnancy.
Sen. John Cornyn (Tex.), head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, had unsuccessfully urged Akin to withdraw; after Mourdock's statement, Cornyn issued a statement saying those who seek to misconstrue the Indiana candidate's words are "irresponsible and ridiculous."
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who has campaigned for Mourdock, suggested that he could withdraw his support. "It depends on what he does," McCain told CNN. "If he apologizes and says he misspoke and he was wrong and he asks the people to forgive him. . . . It's when you don't own up to it that people will not believe in you."
Mourdock and Akin are far from the first to trip when trying to give a rationale for a position that puts them at odds with others who count themselves on the antiabortion side. In 2010, Nevada Republican Senate nominee Sharron Angle suggested that bearing children conceived by rape amounted to turning "a lemon situation into lemonade."
The real problem, said Susan Cohen, director of government relations for the Guttmacher Institute, is that the exclusion for rape and incest is inconsistent with a belief that life begins at and should be protected from the moment of conception.
"This is a purely political and cynical compromise that only politicians subscribe to," she added.
tumultyk@washpost.com
Philip Rucker and Alice Crites contributed to this report
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The New York Times
October 24, 2012 Wednesday
Late Edition - Final
Bigger Than Either of Them?
BYLINE: By CLIFFORD KRAUSS
SECTION: Section F; Column 0; Energy; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 2624 words
''DRILL, baby, drill.'' It is among the best-remembered lines of the 2008 presidential campaign, colorfully capturing the desire of many Americans for cheap, reliable energy produced at home rather than in unpredictable places like Iran or Venezuela.
No slogan in the current presidential campaign has emerged to match it, but energy has taken center stage again as an issue that encompasses concerns about the environment and national security, and now, even more pressingly, economic revival.
Presidential campaigns have a way of producing stark contrasts between candidates. In the presidential debates, President Obama and Mitt Romney clashed sharply on fossil fuels and renewable energy.
The Republican nominee accused the president of picking a lot of losers with $90 billion worth of government largess for Solyndra, the California solar company, and other green enterprises. ''And by the way, I like coal,'' he said in the first debate. Mr. Obama countered that the oil industry was the true recipient of ''corporate welfare'' in tax breaks: ''Does anybody think Exxon Mobil needs some extra money, when they're making money every time you go to the pump?''
But such differences may be more rhetorical than real; the marketplace, technological change and Middle East tensions are driving Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney to much the same place on the country's energy future.
Both candidates say they support nuclear power and biofuels, though neither is advocating strongly for either. Both say they want to encourage more oil drilling in places like North Dakota, Texas and Alaska to lower dependence on oil from the Middle East. Even while the current administration's Environmental Protection Agency has more aggressively regulated mining and drilling, Mr. Obama, like Mr. Romney, has celebrated the boom in domestic natural gas production and wants to spread its use for power production and even export.
In a twist few would have predicted when Mr. Obama first entered the White House and much as it may dismay him, fossil fuels have eclipsed renewable energy and climate change in the national discussion -- even as climate scientists warn that the droughts that scorch corn crops and the faster melting of Arctic ice and glaciers around the world are signs of things to come.
''Last time we were electing a president, it looked like we were running out of energy, and this time we're debating how to use what now seems to be ample resources for decades to come,'' said Daniel Yergin, the energy historian. ''The country needs to decide the pace and scale of domestic energy development as well as the mix among oil, natural gas, coal, renewable and nuclear we will use. But the marketplace itself will have a bigger role than the election campaign in what the mix eventually will be.''
The oil and shale gas drilling boom is reshaping the nation's energy map, and it is still difficult to predict the extent of its ramifications. With domestic oil production climbing rapidly since 2008, oil imports have been cut to just over 40 percent of domestic supplies, the lowest level in two decades, from 60 percent.
Over the same period, domestic natural gas production has risen by 15 percent, producing a glut that has forced down the gas price by nearly two-thirds. Plentiful, cheap natural gas has crowded out much of the expected growth of renewable energy like wind and solar power, but it has cut domestic consumption of dirtier coal even more sharply.
Electrical generation from wind, solar, geothermal and biomass have expanded to 5.8 percent of the country's electricity, from 3.1 percent, since Mr. Obama took office, partly because of tax incentives and other support from the administration's stimulus package. But the expansion of power driven by natural gas has arguably been even more impressive. Cheap natural gas fuels a bit more than 30 percent of American power production, up from just over 20 percent in 2008.
On the stump, Mr. Obama has not been shy in heralding the boom in domestic oil and gas drilling under his watch. Not to be outdone, Mr. Romney has put ''energy independence'' -- including the expansion of hydrocarbon exploration and production, building the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada and removing federal regulations on coal -- at the top of his five-point plan to produce millions of jobs.
Certainly the two have different energy visions. Mr. Romney's proposal to expand state regulatory control over drilling and mining on federal lands would represent a break from government policies dating back to Theodore Roosevelt, in the highly unlikely event that Congress could be coaxed to go along. And the two candidates are on opposite sides of a gaping divide over coal, with Mr. Obama pushing to phase out coal-fired electrical generation while Mr. Romney favors burning more coal to keep mine operations rolling.
But how much does the nation's energy future depend on who wins the race?
No doubt the nation has several important decisions to make in the next couple of years. Should it limit hydraulic fracturing, the contentious method of blasting water through tight rocks to gain access to oil and gas, with new regulations? Should the federal government aggressively open up more offshore drilling in Alaska's Arctic and off the coasts of Virginia and the Carolinas? Should it export vast amounts of its new bounty of natural gas, potentially jeopardizing the low price that is currently benefiting domestic consumers and manufacturers? Should the country allow construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would secure oil supplies from Canada, but also guarantee the spread of mining for oil sands, which has a higher carbon footprint than most conventional oils? Does coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel, have a future in America?
Either Mr. Obama or Mr. Romney will have to decide along with, of course, the new Congress and in many cases the states. The two candidates and their parties have different constituencies that are tugging them in opposite directions on these questions. But the election will probably matter only on the margins of energy policy. The same cannot necessarily be said, however, about the flip side of energy policy -- environmental policy -- where a Romney Environmental Protection Administration would probably look very different from Mr. Obama's.
''I think on oil and gas production, pipelines and natural gas exports the differences between the two are marginal,'' said David Goldwyn, formerly the State Department's coordinator for international energy affairs under Mr. Obama, ''but on greenhouse gas emissions issues the differences are significant.''
Mr. Romney has proposed excluding greenhouse gases from the Clean Air Act, reversing new mercury standards for coal and slowing the advent of automobile fuel efficiency standards, and he could be expected to use his executive and regulatory powers to make policy adjustments. Nevertheless, he would probably need support from Congress and the courts to veer radically off the established Obama course.
With the economy still weak and the federal government in financial crisis, new energy tax incentives, mandates and subsidies are pretty much off the table, no matter who is elected in November. Politicians of both parties have learned from the Solyndra fiasco about the risks, financial and political, of spending taxpayer money on solar and other renewables, given their continuing problems competing in the marketplace. Even the wind production tax credit, so crucial to the expansion of wind farms around the country, is about to expire, and wind power companies are letting workers go. Apparently Mr. Obama is not able to save the tax credit from Congressional budget-cutters, and as president, Mr. Romney would not want to save it.
Both a second Obama administration or a Romney administration would most likely support new exports of liquefied natural gas, given the domestic bounty and opportunity to reduce the trade deficit, although Democratic and Republican energy experts have suggested that regulatory approvals for proposed export terminals are not likely to happen quickly, to leave time to measure the impact exports might have on domestic gas prices.
The Obama administration opposed approval of the Keystone pipeline last January mainly because of Nebraska's concerns about its route over a sensitive aquifer. Now that Keystone has altered the route, many energy experts, including some Democrats, expect Mr. Obama to go along, to create jobs but also to replace oil shipments from the Persian Gulf and Venezuela.
To the dismay of environmentalists, the Obama administration is still pushing for oil drilling in the Alaskan Arctic, though the president seems less likely to approve drilling off the Carolina and Virginia coasts, where many experts doubt that there are large reserves to be found anyway.
It is true that Mr. Obama still talks up developing renewable energy sources and his concern over climate change, but the campaign rhetoric has clearly shifted from four years ago, when he and his Republican opponent at the time, Senator John McCain of Arizona, favored some form of carbon cap and trade legislation to combat global warming. Not even the Democrats mention reviving market-based emissions trading anymore, after that stalled in Congress nearly three years ago.
Instead, Mr. Obama, who originally ran as a champion of solar and wind power, has presided over the nation's greatest fossil fuel boom since the discovery of Alaska's giant Prudhoe Bay field more than four decades ago. After temporarily halting oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico after the disastrous 2010 BP spill, he reopened the gulf for drilling and then expanded offshore exploration to the Alaskan Arctic for the first time in decades. In their party platform at their convention this summer, Democrats advocated even greater production of domestic natural gas. The Obama administration established some new emissions standards for hydraulically fractured wells, but gave the oil and gas industry plenty of time to comply and otherwise tilted in their favor, and there is no sign a second Obama administration would be tougher. With the exception of New York State and a few other localities, little has been done through governmental authority to slow the boom in hydraulic fracturing.
Energy politics have shifted because a persistently sluggish economy with roughly 8 percent of American workers unemployed has made it a pocketbook issue. The oil and gas boom has produced one of the economy's few bright spots. Drilling and support jobs have increased by nearly 25 percent since the first half of 2008 to nearly 200,000 jobs, despite the financial collapse and recession. Those jobs pay about $34.50 an hour, nearly 50 percent higher than the national average. A refinery boom based on new domestic oil and gas production has made the United States a refined petroleum product net exporter for the first time since the Truman administration.
Several petrochemical plants are being planned or expanded on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, steel plants in the Midwest are adding shifts to build oil and gas pipelines, and many economists predict a manufacturing renaissance based on low prices of natural gas -- a key component for the manufacture of plastics, fertilizers and chemicals. To save on costs, municipal governments and companies are switching thousands of buses and trucks every year from diesel to natural gas fueling.
''Both candidates are trying to stay out of the way of the gas boom,'' said William K. Reilly, who was administrator of the E.P.A. under the elder President Bush. ''It's associated with thousands of jobs that are on everybody's mind right now. And beyond that, it's raising the possibility of a new industrial renaissance.''
According to the Dow Chemical Company, cheap domestic natural gas has allowed the industrial sector to add 500,000 jobs since 2010. The company has also assembled a list of 91 proposed plant investments announced by Dow and many other companies over the last 18 months because of the lower gas prices; they are valued at $70 billion and represent one to three million jobs for the production of steel, aluminum, tires, machinery and other products, Dow says.
The biggest difference between the candidates is over coal, but even there the ultimate policy differences may be a lot narrower than environmentalists or coal companies would want or expect. A Romney television commercial blanketing the airwaves in coal-producing states captures the urgency of the issue with a miner accusing the Obama administration of ''attacking my livelihood.''
Mr. Obama has worked to shut down older coal-fired power plants. He has pushed policies regulating mercury, hazardous air pollutants like sulfur dioxide and greenhouse gases. But concerns about lost coal mining jobs have slowed other environmental initiatives to control ozone emissions and coal ash, and few energy experts say they think a second Obama administration would apply many new regulatory controls until the economy picked up. Mr. Romney has pledged to repeal the Obama coal regulations, although that would require Congressional approval, which would be very difficult without a big Republican majority in the Senate. Even then, some regulatory reversals could be challenged in the courts. And finally, many states have adopted their own tough anti-coal regulations.
A Romney administration would most likely try to help the coal-mining companies by discontinuing the characterization of carbon dioxide as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act, which gave the E.P.A. powerful new authority to control greenhouse gases. Since the courts upheld the authority, it would take an amendment to the Clean Air Act to exclude the gas. That would require 60 votes in the Senate, which would be extremely difficult.
Whatever the Romney administration might try, coal appears to be on a steep downward slide. About a third of the nearly 600 coal plants in the United States are over 50 years old, and most energy experts say they believe all of those will be out of service over the next 20 years or so. While a few new coal plants may be built, for the most part the older plants will be replaced by gas-fueled plants, many of which can produce electricity for less than half of what it costs to run a coal-fired unit because of the gas glut and price collapse.
''Coal will regain a bit of market share as natural gas prices recover somewhat, but most coal-to-gas substitution will be permanent,'' according to a recent Moody's Investors Service report, which predicted that over the next decade, coal's share of domestic electricity mix would drop to a third from a current 40 percent. (Coal represented 48 percent of the mix in 2008.)
A Romney administration would probably try to encourage more coal exports to compensate for lower domestic demand. The coal industry is angling to build several export facilities in Washington and Oregon. But the proposed ports face a lengthy permitting process, and the two environmentally sensitive states remain responsible for resolving many of the issues no matter who is president.
''The future of coal as a fuel of choice for power plant operators appears to be on an irreversible decline regardless of who is elected, though who is elected will effect the rate of decline,'' said Michael Webber, associate director of the Center for International Energy and Environment Policy at the University of Texas at Austin. ''Obama would speed it up and Romney would slow it down, but it will happen regardless. Even the president, as powerful as he is, cannot overcome the fundamentals of the market, and the market says coal's days are numbered and the market sees gas as the rising star.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/24/business/energy-environment/us-energy-policy-caught-in-the-vise-of-economics-and-politics.html
LOAD-DATE: October 24, 2012
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GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: CONTRASTS ON THE STUMP: Mitt Romney, talking to coal miners in Ohio, would remove federal regulations on coal, and President Obama, at a solar project in Nevada, has supported alternative energy with tax incentives and other measures from the stimulus package. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY SHANNON STAPLETON/REUTERS
DOUG MILLS/THE NEW YORK TIMES) (F1)
OIL IN THE NORTH: Either administration would expand drilling in the Alaskan Arctic. Above, the Alaska pipeline. (PHOTOGRAPH BY RICK BOWMER/ASSOCIATED PRESS)
CONSENSUS: A well in North Dakota, where both presidential candidates say they want to see more drilling. (PHOTOGRAPH BY JIM WILSON/THE NEW YORK TIMES)
REOPENED: The Gulf of Mexico is open to drilling again after the spill there in 2010. Above, a Marathon Oil platform. (PHOTOGRAPH BY REUTERS) (F6)
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October 24, 2012 Wednesday
Late Edition - Final
Obama and Romney Offer Competing Visions in Dueling Ads
BYLINE: By TRIP GABRIEL
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; THE AD CAMPAIGN; Pg. 12
LENGTH: 546 words
With all three debates in the rearview mirror and two weeks to go until Election Day, each campaign turned on Tuesday to making its most persuasive case, in 60-second ads, for why its candidate deserves the presidency.
The names of the ads conveyed the different visions: ''The Clear Path'' from Mitt Romney, suggesting focus and an alternative to the status quo. President Obama released ''Determination,'' evoking steady progress and resolve.
ON SCREEN The ads have many stylistic similarities. Both use quiet piano music for a stirring effect. The candidates speak directly to the viewer, striking a tone of gravity and humility.
OBAMA'S MESSAGE ''It's an honor to be your president, and I'm asking for your vote,'' Mr. Obama says.
Mr. Obama's ad is the more highly produced, opening with a montage of a factory worker, a freight train and a young girl running into the arms of her father returning from war. The pictures are meant to reflect some of the president's accomplishments during his first four years.
''We're not there yet,'' he says, ''and the last thing we should do is turn back now.''
The ad then features Mr. Obama's direct remarks to the camera. ''Here's my plan for the next four years,'' he says, as text on the screen underlines his bullet points: ''Education & Training,'' ''Invest in American Energy'' and ''Wealthy Pay More,'' among others.
ROMNEY'S MESSAGE Mr. Romney says: ''I'll lead you in an open and honest way. And I ask for your vote.''
The Romney ad consists of two excerpts from his closing statement at Monday night's debate in Boca Raton, Fla. He begins by warning of the economic perils of a second Obama term, and then strikes a bipartisan chord. ''America's going to come back,'' he says. ''And for that to happen, we're going to have to have a president who can work across the aisle.''
SCORECARD Even though the two ads are similar in presentation, Mr. Romney is playing offense and the president defense. The Obama campaign, which said the ad would run in nine battleground states, is responding to what has become a chorus of Republican criticism that the president has nothing to offer in a second term.
The Obama campaign bristles at the suggestion that Mr. Obama has not laid out detailed plans for building on the recovery. The new ad directs viewers to the campaign's Web site, and on Tuesday the campaign also released a glossy 20-page booklet, ''The New Economic Patriotism,'' which it plans to distribute widely.
On offense, Mr. Romney's ad depicts a much different vision of the next four years should Mr. Obama be re-elected. He ticks off how a continuation of current trends would add trillions to the national debt, ''heading toward Greece,'' a further erosion of take-home pay, and high unemployment stranding 20 million people.
Soon after the ads were unveiled, each campaign went into familiar rapid-response mode, trying to undercut the other's claims.
The Republican National Committee dismissed Mr. Obama's booklet as ''more of the same repackaging efforts that he has tried.'' The Obama campaign retorted that Mr. Romney's proposed tax cuts benefit the wealthy at the expense of the middle class. It is a familiar charge that Mr. Romney has rejected, but without supplying enough details to lay the claim to rest. TRIP GABRIEL
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/24/us/politics/obama-and-romney-ads-offer-competing-visions.html
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October 24, 2012 Wednesday
Late Edition - Final
Debates Over, Race Reaches Fevered Pitch
BYLINE: By MICHAEL D. SHEAR and HELENE COOPER; Ashley Parker contributed reporting from Henderson, Nev., Jeff Zeleny from Columbus, Ohio, and Jim Rutenberg and Erik Eckholm from New York.
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1152 words
DAYTON, Ohio -- President Obama started making his closing argument for a second term on Tuesday, beginning a furious two-week effort to beat back a late surge by Mitt Romney and hang on to battleground states where voters are already casting ballots in large numbers.
At the beginning of what the campaign described as a round-the-clock blitz, and on the day after his final debate, Mr. Obama tried to address what polling has shown is a consistent question among voters: What kind of agenda does he have for a second term? He released a 20-page booklet encapsulating previously announced policies and contrasting his positions to those of Mr. Romney.
The document contains no new proposals, and was derided by a spokesman for Mr. Romney as a ''glossy panic button.'' But along with a new television advertisement that began running in nine battleground states, the president's aides predicted it would help counter the Romney assault plan for the next two weeks that aims to convince voters that Mr. Obama has no plans to fix the ailing economy.
Mr. Romney and his campaign spent Tuesday pounding away at points Mr. Romney made during the debate on Monday night, including accusing the president of apologizing for the United States and cutting military spending excessively. Mr. Romney flew from Florida to Nevada, where he mocked Mr. Obama's attacks on him as desperate moves by a losing candidate.
''You know, the truth is that attacks on me are not an agenda,'' Mr. Romney said to a crowd of about 6,000 people in Henderson, Nev. ''His is a status quo candidacy. His is a message of going forward with the same policies of the last four years, and that's why his campaign is slipping, and that's why ours is gaining so much steam.''
In the president's minute-long ad, and in appearances at the start of a frenetic week, Mr. Obama stepped up his effort to convince the nation that he had brought it back from the brink of economic collapse and that Mr. Romney would embrace the policies that caused the problems. Looking directly into the camera, the president asks voters to ''read my plan, compare it to Governor Romney's and decide which is better for you.''
But even as he sought to strike a positive note at the start of a three-day swing that is taking him through Ohio, Iowa, Colorado, Nevada, Florida and Virginia, Mr. Obama also enthusiastically stepped up his attacks. The Republican candidate, the president said at a rally in Florida, wants to ''turn back the clock 50 years for immigrants and gays and women'' and is pursuing a foreign policy that is ''all over the map.''
Appearing later with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. at a raucous rally before 9,500 people in Dayton, the president went into a spirited assault, using his new favorite attack word -- ''Romnesia'' -- to highlight his rival's position on the auto bailout, which the White House says was vital to saving jobs in Ohio and throughout the Midwest.
''Last night, Governor Romney looked me right in the eye, tried to pretend he never said, 'Let Detroit go bankrupt,' '' Mr. Obama said, one of many instances all day when he suggested Mr. Romney was not being honest about his positions as he seeks to appeal to a general-election audience after a Republican primary campaign in which he emphasized conservative stances.
With some polls suggesting that Mr. Romney is closing the gap, Mr. Obama's top strategists described twin approaches: to make final appeals to independents, moderates, women and minorities as they offer lacerating assessments of Mr. Romney's qualifications and credibility.
Still, Mr. Obama's schedule and the tenor of his campaign appearances made clear that his primary mission now was to energize his own supporters and get them to vote, preferably right away. In Florida, where he appeared in the morning, and later in Ohio,the constant refrain at his rallies was ''Vote! Vote! Vote!'' Early voting begins in Florida on Saturday and is already under way in Ohio.The terrain that Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney are covering this week illustrates a battleground within a battleground. The campaigns are advertising in nine states -- stretching from North Carolina to Nevada -- but are spending most of their most crucial resource -- their time -- in the Midwest.
Mr. Romney is scheduled to zip back and forth on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday between Ohio and Iowa. Winning those states is the most efficient way for him to block Mr. Obama from returning to the White House or for Mr. Obama to lock down a path to 270 electoral votes.
In a sign of the closeness of the race, a ''super PAC'' supporting Mr. Romney, Restore Our Future, reserved television time in Maine, traditionally a Democratic state. Maine allocates its electoral votes by Congressional district, and Mr. Romney's supporters hope they may be able to pick off the single electoral vote available from the state's more conservative Second District.
In the final two weeks Mr. Romney has the challenge of maintaining a strategy of presenting himself as more reasonable and pragmatic than the image the White House built of him over the summer: that of an out-of-touch, job-killing plutocrat. But to the degree that strategy involves emphasizing more moderate positions than he stressed during the Republican primary campaign, it creates the potential for him to face renewed questions among conservatives on his ideological commitment.
Conversations with a half-dozen conservative activists on Tuesday suggested that many were cutting Mr. Romney some slack. ''There's a caricature of Romney that the Obama campaign has put out, and when he doesn't fit the caricature he is accused of changing his view,'' said Gary L. Bauer, president of the Christian advocacy group American Values.
In the final weeks, Mr. Romney's campaign has been discussing ways to build on gains that have shown him closing Mr. Obama's lead in polls in states like Ohio. Mr. Romney plans to deliver what the campaign describes as a major jobs and debt speech on Thursday in Cincinnati, the third in a series of policy addresses laying out how he would govern.
A new ad released Tuesday night shows Mr. Romney's closing statement from the last debate, arguing that voters have a choice between ''two very different paths'' for the country. ''The president's path means 20 million people out of work, struggling for a good job,'' he says. ''I'll get people back to work with 12 million new jobs.''
The campaign is also mulling whether to expand distribution of the 10-minute biographical video it first showed to rave reviews at the Republican National Convention, or to buy time for a similar biographical commercial in swing states, said two senior strategists, who had participated in those internal deliberations.
Democrats monitoring Republican ad spending said the Romney campaign had begun asking individual television stations about the possibility of buying time for a long commercial.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/24/us/politics/a-tight-focus-on-battleground-states-as-campaigning-time-dwindles.html
LOAD-DATE: October 24, 2012
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GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: President Obama kept up attacks on Mitt Romney in Delray Beach, Fla., on Tuesday, a drive that Mr. Romney called desperate. (PHOTOGRAPH BY DAMON WINTER/THE NEW YORK TIMES) (A1)
Mitt Romney, above, appeared with Representative Paul D. Ryan in Henderson, Nev., on Tuesday. He mocked the president's criticism, saying that ''attacks on me are not an agenda.'' At left, a large and spirited crowd gathered in Dayton, Ohio, for President Obama and the vice president. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY STEPHEN CROWLEY/THE NEW YORK TIMES
DAMON WINTER/THE NEW YORK TIMES) (A14)
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October 24, 2012 Wednesday
Late Edition - Final
Rape Comment Draws Attention in Indiana
BYLINE: By JONATHAN WEISMAN
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; THE CAUCUS; Pg. 12
LENGTH: 587 words
The delicate issue of pregnancies resulting from rape rattled another campaign for the Senate Tuesday when Indiana's Republican Senate nominee, Richard Mourdock, said a life conceived by rape "is something that God intended to happen" and must be protected.
The comments came during a debate with Mr. Mourdock, the state treasurer; the Libertarian candidate Andrew Horning; and Representative Joe Donnelly, the Democrat locked in an unexpectedly tight contest for the seat now held by the Republican Senator Richard Lugar. All three were trying to distinguish themselves, since they all are identified as opposing abortion.
"I've struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize that life is that gift from God," Mr. Mourdock said. "And even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen."
The comments echoed back to the Republican Senate nominee Todd Akin's defense of his position opposing abortion in all instances. Mr. Akin, a Congressman from Missouri, said, "If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down." That comment set off a firestorm, with Republicans and Democrats alike castigating Mr. Akin and Republicans pressuring him to leave his race against the Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill. Mr. Akin refused, and a seat once widely expected to go to the Republicans in November now could stay with the Democrats.
Democrats, who have waged a fierce campaign against Mr. Mourdock, labeling him a Tea Party extremist, hoped lightning had struck twice.
"I think rape is a heinous and violent crime in every instance," Mr. Donnnelly said in a statement after the debate. "The God I believe in and the God I know most Hoosiers believe in, does not intend for rape to happen -- ever. What Mr. Mourdock said is shocking, and it is stunning that he would be so disrespectful to survivors of rape."
Mr. Donnelly, a Catholic, is also opposed to abortion. But the response forced Mr. Mourdock to backpedal.
"God creates life, and that was my point," Mr. Mourdock said. "God does not want rape, and by no means was I suggesting that he does."
The back and forth comes as Democrats -- from President Obama on down -- have tried to widen their advantage with female voters and play up the abortion issue. The Indiana Senate race is considered to be leaning Republican, but the state, which voted for Mr. Obama in 2008, is not in play this year. That was expected to give a slight edge to Mr. Mourdock, who defeated Mr. Lugar in a heated Republican primary.
Democrats quickly moved to capitalize on the controversy. The Democratic National Committee pointed to an advertisement that Mitt Romney cut for Mr. Mourdock, and asked whether the Republican presidential nominee would repudiate his endorsement.
"Richard Mourdock's rape comments are outrageous and demeaning to women," said Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee. "Unfortunately, they've become part and parcel of the modern Republican Party's platform toward women's health, as Congressional Republicans like Paul Ryan have worked to outlaw all abortions and even narrow the definition of rape. As Mourdock's most prominent booster and the star of Mourdock's current campaign ads, Mitt Romney should immediately denounce these comments and request that the ad featuring him speaking directly to camera on Mourdock's behalf be taken off the air."
This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.
URL: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/23/indiana-senate-candidate-draws-fire-for-rape-comments/
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October 24, 2012 Wednesday
Late Edition - Final
Eastwood Is Back, but Scripted
BYLINE: By JEREMY W. PETERS
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; CAMPAIGN ADS; Pg. 12
LENGTH: 289 words
Clint Eastwood is back on the Republican stage. But this time there's a script, a 30-second time limit and none of the potential tripwires of live television.
Mr. Eastwood, whose monologue at the Republican National Convention in August left many ardent Republicans cheering but others dumbfounded, is the star of a new commercial from the ''super PAC'' American Crossroads that will be shown in seven states beginning Wednesday.
But if he was all jokes in Tampa, Mr. Eastwood is nothing but sober and serious in the new advertisement, in which he indicts President Obama's first term as a failure and urges people to vote for Mitt Romney.
Steven Law, the president of American Crossroads, said he had heard before the convention that Mr. Eastwood might be interested in starring in an ad. But he said he did not pursue the acclaimed director and actor until after his performance in Tampa.
''I think what struck us in Tampa was not so much what the media talked about,'' Mr. Law said. ''But in his remarks, he delivered some really powerful lines about democracy, things like: 'You own this country. The politicians work for you.' ''
After some testing, American Crossroads found that potential audiences, who are often wary of celebrity endorsements, still appreciated Mr. Eastwood as an American icon and liked the idea of his appearance in the ad as long as it did not seem overdone.
Mr. Eastwood, in a statement, explained his motives. ''I did the ad because I'm concerned for our country,'' he said. ''I really believe Mitt Romney is the kind of leader we need right now. He's an experienced businessman, and he knows how to work with people to fix problems. It's time to give someone else a chance to fix our country.'' JEREMY W. PETERS
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October 24, 2012 Wednesday
Late Edition - Final
Eastwood Is Back, but Scripted
BYLINE: By JEREMY W. PETERS
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; THE CAUCUS; Pg. 12
LENGTH: 370 words
Clint Eastwood is back on the Republican stage. But this time there's a script, a 30-second time limit and none of the potential tripwires of live television.
Mr. Eastwood, whose long and sometimes incoherent monologue at the Republican National Convention in August left many ardent Republicans cheering but others dumbfounded, is the star of a new commercial from the "super PAC" American Crossroads.
But if he was all jokes in Tampa, Fla., Mr. Eastwood is nothing but serious in this new advertisement, in which he indicts President Obama's term as a failure and urges people to vote for Mitt Romney.
"Obama's second term would be a rerun of the first, and our country just couldn't survive that," he says. "We need someone who could turn it around fast, and that man is Mitt Romney. There's not much time left, and the future of our country is at stake."
Steven Law, the president of American Crossroads, said he had heard before the convention that Mr. Eastwood might be interested in starring in an ad. But he said he did not actually pursue the acclaimed director and actor until after his performance in Tampa.
"I think what struck us in Tampa was not so much what the media talked about," Mr. Law said. "But in his remarks, he delivered some really powerful lines about democracy, things like: 'You own this country. The politicians work for you.' "
After some testing, Crossroads found that potential audiences, who are often wary of celebrity endorsements, still appreciated Mr. Eastwood as an American icon and liked the idea of his appearance in the ad as long as it did not seem overdone. So while Mr. Eastwood narrates the entire ad, he appears on camera only at the very end.
Mr. Eastwood, in an e-mailed statement, explained his motives. "I did the ad because I'm concerned for our country," he said. "I really believe Mitt Romney is the kind of leader we need right now. He's an experienced businessman, and he knows how to work with people to fix problems. It's time to give someone else a chance to fix our country."
The ad starts running Wednesday in seven states: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio and Virginia.
This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.
URL: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/24/eastwood-is-back-in-a-campaign-ad-for-romney/
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October 24, 2012 Wednesday
Eastwood Is Back in a Campaign Ad for Romney
BYLINE: JEREMY W. PETERS
SECTION: US; politics
LENGTH: 358 words
HIGHLIGHT: Clint Eastwood is back on the Republican stage. But this time there's a script, a 30-second time limit and none of the potential tripwires of live television.
Clint Eastwood is back on the Republican stage. But this time there's a script, a 30-second time limit and none of the potential tripwires of live television.
Mr. Eastwood, whose long and sometimes incoherent monologue at the Republican National Convention in August left many ardent Republicans cheering but others dumbfounded, is the star of a new commercial from the "super PAC" American Crossroads.
But if he was all jokes in Tampa, Fla., Mr. Eastwood is nothing but serious in this new advertisement, in which he indicts President Obama's term as a failure and urges people to vote for Mitt Romney.
"Obama's second term would be a rerun of the first, and our country just couldn't survive that," he says. "We need someone who could turn it around fast, and that man is Mitt Romney. There's not much time left, and the future of our country is at stake."
Steven Law, the president of American Crossroads, said he had heard before the convention that Mr. Eastwood might be interested in starring in an ad. But he said he did not actually pursue the acclaimed director and actor until after his performance in Tampa.
"I think what struck us in Tampa was not so much what the media talked about," Mr. Law said. "But in his remarks, he delivered some really powerful lines about democracy, things like: 'You own this country. The politicians work for you.' "
After some testing, Crossroads found that potential audiences, who are often wary of celebrity endorsements, still appreciated Mr. Eastwood as an American icon and liked the idea of his appearance in the ad as long as it did not seem overdone. So while Mr. Eastwood narrates the entire ad, he appears on camera only at the very end.
Mr. Eastwood, in an e-mailed statement, explained his motives. "I did the ad because I'm concerned for our country," he said. "I really believe Mitt Romney is the kind of leader we need right now. He's an experienced businessman, and he knows how to work with people to fix problems. It's time to give someone else a chance to fix our country."
The ad starts running Wednesday in seven states: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio and Virginia.
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October 24, 2012 Wednesday
Obama Camp Seizes on Republican's Abortion Comments
BYLINE: JONATHAN WEISMAN
SECTION: US; politics
LENGTH: 845 words
HIGHLIGHT: Republicans struggled to prevent their Indiana Senate candidate's comments on rape from brewing into an Akin-like firestorm, pushing back on any suggestion that Richard Mourdock had condoned rape in a debate.
The Obama campaign on Wednesday quickly seized on abortion and rape comments made by the Indiana Republican Senate candidate in an attempt to entangle the Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, in a politically charged issue threatening to brew into a firestorm like the one that followed comments by Representative Todd Akin.
In a Senate debate Tuesday night, Richard Mourdock, the Indiana state treasurer, tried to distinguish himself from two opponents who also oppose abortion, explaining why he does not accept an exception for pregnancies conceived by rape.
"I've struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize that life is that gift from God," Mr. Mourdock said. "And even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen."
On Wednesday morning, continuing to press a Democratic narrative that depicts the Republican Party as out of step with women, the Obama campaign sharply criticized the remarks.
President Obama "felt those comments were outrageous and demeaning to women," Jen Psaki, the president's campaign spokeswoman, told reporters Wednesday morning. "It is clear that Mitt Romney, that many Republicans who are running for office including him, including Mr. Mourdock, have very extreme positions on issues that women care deeply about," she said, warning that women should be concerned if Republicans win both the White House and Senate.
Mr. Mourdock's statements could singe Mr. Romney, who cut a television advertisement, released on Monday, endorsing Mr. Mourdock.
During her briefing with reporters, Ms. Psaki called it "perplexing" that Mr. Romney had not demanded that his endorsement ad be taken down from Indiana television. Mr. Romney supports abortion in the case of rape, incest and when the health of the mother is at risk.
The Democratic National Committee has tried to draw attention to the endorsement with a new video featuring a montage of debate footage.
Republicans had already tried to contain the fallout, strongly pushing back on the suggestion that Mr. Mourdock condoned rape.
Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, claimed that Mr. Mourdock's position was no different from that of Representative Joe Donnelly, the Democratic candidate in the unexpectedly tight contest.
"Richard and I, along with millions of Americans - including even Joe Donnelly - believe that life is a gift from God. To try and construe his words as anything other than a restatement of that belief is irresponsible and ridiculous," Mr. Cornyn said in a statement. "In fact, rather than condemning him for his position, as some in his party have when it's come to Republicans, I commend Congressman Donnelly for his support of life."
But the rape-and-abortion theme is threatening to push the close Indiana Senate race into the realm of the Missouri Senate race, another campaign that was supposed to favor Republicans before the Republican candidate, Todd Akin, defended his opposition to abortion in cases of rape and threw the contest off kilter. The incumbent Democrat in Missouri, Senator Claire McCaskill, is now expected to hold her seat.
During the Indiana debate, Mr. Mourdock's comment did not yield much of a response from Mr. Donnelly, but other Democrats pounced. And Mr. Mourdock released a statement to clarify, "God creates life, and that was my point. God does not want rape, and by no means was I suggesting that he does. Rape is a horrible thing, and for anyone to twist my words otherwise is absurd and sick."
Republicans noted that Mr. Donnelly, an Irish Catholic whose base is in South Bend, the home to University of Notre Dame, co-sponsored controversial legislation in 2011 that would have changed the federal ban on abortion funding to exempt conceptions from "forcible" rape, not just rape. The Mourdock campaign said this backing showed Mr. Donnelly believes pregnancies from statutory rape or incest should have to be carried to term.
Mr. Donnelly had said, earlier this year, that he was not aware that Republican authors of the bill had added the "forcible" language and was glad when an outcry forced them to remove it.
Mr. Cornyn tried Wednesday to change the subject.
"This election is about big ideas and the reality that our country is going in the wrong direction," he said in a statement. "If you support Obamacare, government bailouts, reckless spending and higher taxes than you should vote for Joe Donnelly. But if you believe, as I do, that our government is too big, our taxes are too high, and we are passing an irresponsible debt onto future generations, than Richard Mourdock is your candidate to help get our country back on track."
Mr. Mourdock beat Senator Richard Lugar, a six-term moderate, in the Republican primary in May.
Indiana Treasurer to Challenge Lugar in 2012
Fallout From '47 Percent' Comment Hits Senate Campaigns
For a Virginia Republican, a Comeback and a Tough Fight Ahead
Lugar Behind in Indiana Senate Race, Poll Shows
In Virginia, Kaine Jumps to Substantial Fund-Raising Lead
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October 24, 2012 Wednesday
Obama Kicks Off Eight-State Campaign Tour
BYLINE: HELENE COOPER
SECTION: US; politics
LENGTH: 573 words
HIGHLIGHT: The president begins a final burst of campaigning to try to win re-election.
DAVENPORT, Iowa - Air Force One landed at Quad Cities International Airport at 9 a.m. Central Time on Wednesday, to begin President Obama's two-day round-the-clock attack on swing states. The 747 is scheduled to touch down at Andrews Air Force Base just before midnight Eastern Time on Thursday.
During the 38 hours in between, Mr. Obama will hit a whopping eight states in a hard-charging opening burst to try to accelerate ahead of Mitt Romney in the last two weeks of this dead-heat campaign. So focused is Mr. Obama on gaining ground that he will be making calls to swing-state voters from the air, and he will spend Wednesday night not in a comfy hotel bed, but on his plane, on a red-eye flight to Florida.
It's too bad he doesn't drink coffee; he could surely use it.
"We're gonna pull an all-nighter!" a revved-up Mr. Obama told a crowd of 3,500 at the Mississippi Valley Fairgrounds here in Davenport. "No Sleep! We're starting in Iowa, then we're gonna go to Colorado, then Nevada, California, then we're gonna go to Florida, then Virginia, Ohio, and then we're going to Illinois to vote."
Whew.
Perhaps aware of his limited time in each place, Mr. Obama ended his speech in Davenport after a short 16 minutes, so he could get back to his jam-packed schedule.
The furious campaign is a sign of the tight race, which has shown very little sign of movement in the past three weeks. In the next 13 days, Mr. Obama is focusing almost exclusively on eight swing states, where both campaigns believe the race will be won or lost.
Of those, none is more important than Ohio, where Mr. Obama ended his day yesterday, in Dayton, and where he will be again tomorrow evening, in Cleveland. Campaign aides have been working on the Ohio ground game furiously, urging Obama supporters to the polls for early voting.
Speaking to reporters on the bus headed back to Quad Cities airport after Mr. Obama's first stop on Wednesday, David Plouffe, a senior adviser to Mr. Obama, said that the Obama campaign, despite a narrative he said has developed in the press about Mr. Romney gaining momentum, is feeling good about the swing states. Mr. Plouffe said the Romney campaign "is overstating their Electoral College situation."
But similar to what Mr. Obama did during the Democratic primaries in 2008 versus Hillary Clinton, Mr. Obama's campaign seemed very focused on the numbers, as they relate to the Electoral College. That means working on the ground game and get-out-the-vote effort among key Democratic constituencies, like African-Americans and Latinos.
For instance, Mr. Plouffe said, "there are hundreds of thousands more Latino and African-American voting than in 2008."
Mr. Obama did not personally wade into the brewing fight over remarks this week by Richard Mourdock, the Republican running for a Senate seat in Indiana, that God intended for women who got pregnant as a result of rape to have their babies.
But his spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, did, and promptly tied it to Mr. Romney, who has endorsed Mr. Mourdock. "The president felt those comments were outrageous and demeaning to women," she told reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Iowa. "This is an issue where Mitt Romney is starring in an ad" for Mr. Mourdock "and it is perplexing that he wouldn't demand to have that ad taken down."
A previous version of this post misstated the number of states President Obama will visit on his campaign tour. Mr Obama will visit eight, not nine.
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October 24, 2012 Wednesday
Obama Reminds Supporters About the 2000 Election
BYLINE: JEREMY W. PETERS
SECTION: US; politics
LENGTH: 245 words
HIGHLIGHT: A new ad reminds voters how the country could have taken a much different turn in 2000 had more of Al Gore's supporters turned up at the polls.
President Obama and his advisers are fond of reminding people just how close this election will be. Now they are putting those words into a new ad that reminds voters how the country could have taken a much different turn in 2000 had more of Al Gore's supporters turned up at the polls.
The ad is called "537," a reference to the number of votes that separated George W. Bush from Mr. Gore in Florida. Or, as the ad puts it in rather dramatic terms, 537 was "the difference between what was and what could have been."
It continues, "So this year if you're thinking that your vote doesn't count, that it won't matter, well back then there were probably at least 537 people who felt the same way. Make your voice heard. Vote."
"Vote" has become a refrain in Mr. Obama's stump speeches lately. When he mentions his opponents by name, eliciting the predictable boos from the crowd, he implores them: "Don't boo. Vote."
The ad also underscores a major hurdle for Democrats to overcome as they battle Mitt Romney. Enthusiasm among their base is not nearly as high as it was four years ago. And the Obama campaign, mindful that low turnout could cost it the election, has been making extensive efforts to get its voters to the polls - both on Election Day and through early voting.
With its heavy, almost defensive tone, the ad never mentions or shows a photograph of Mr. Gore. Instead, the ad seems intended to motivate the Democratic Party's base using a favorite boogeyman: Mr. Bush.
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October 24, 2012 Wednesday 10:48 PM EST
Mourdock apologizes for 'misinterpretation' of rape comments, Obama campaign pounces;
Another GOP Senate candidate makes a potentially costly statement about rape and pregnancy.
BYLINE: Aaron Blake;Chris Cillizza
LENGTH: 738 words
Indiana Republican Senate candidate Richard Mourdock on Wednesday insisted his comments about rape and pregnancy were being willfully misinterpreted for political gain even as President Obama's campaign sought to ensnare Mitt Romney in the growing controversy.
VIDEO: Richard Mourdock: 'I don't think God wants rape'
"If there was any interpretation other than what I intended, I really regret that," Mourdock said in an midday press conference in the Hoosier State. He added: "Anyone who goes to the video tape and views that understands fully what I meant."
Mourdock's explanation will likely do little to quiet the national firestorm created by his initial comments at a debate Tuesday night; "I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen," he said. (The full video of Mourdock's comments is at the bottom of this post.)
In fact, even before Mourdock sought to clarify his comments, President Obama's campaign was working to hang those remarks around Romney's ankles.
"This is a reminder that a Republican Congress working with a Republican president Mitt Romney would (feel) that women should not be able to make choices about their own health care," Obama spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Wednesday morning. To further drive that point home, the Democratic National Committee released a web video splicing Mourdock's rape comments with Romney's full-throated endorsement of him.
Romney, sensing danger to his growing momentum and to his attempts to court suburban women, sought to quickly distance himself from Mourdock's comments.
"Governor Romney disagrees with Richard Mourdock's comments, and they do not reflect his views," Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul said in a statement Tuesday night. But on Wednesday, Saul said that Romney would not rescind his endorsement of Mourdock or ask that the recent endorsement ad he cut for the Indiana Republican be removed from the airwaves.
But while Romney distanced himself from Mourdock, National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman John Cornyn (R-Texas) gave the party's nominee a vote of support.
"Richard and I, along with millions of Americans - including even (Mourdock's Democratic opponent) Joe Donnelly - believe that life is a gift from God," Cornyn said. "To try and construe his words as anything other than a restatement of that belief is irresponsible and ridiculous."
While about half of Americans oppose abortion, many who do also support exceptions in the case of rape and incest.
Mourdock, who beat longtime Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) in a primary earlier this year, is locked in a tight race with Donnelly despite Indiana's Republican lean. Republicans note that Donnelly also opposes abortion rights and was a co-sponsor in the House of a bill that would have denied abortion funding for victims of rape and incest and created a separate category called "forcible rape." The bill was soon amended to eliminate the "forcible rape" designation, which Donnelly said he didn't know was included in the original bill. Republicans believe they can level the playing field - at least somewhat - by pointing to Donnelly's involvement in that controversial bill.
For the national GOP, it's a potential case of deja vu. The party's chances in the Missouri Senate race plummeted when newly minted nominee Rep. Todd Akin remarked in August that "legitimate rape" rarely causes pregnancy.
Akin has since apologized for the comment but is struggling both in the polls and in fundraising. GOP leaders tried unsuccessfully to push him out of the race so they could get a different candidate.
If the GOP loses the Senate races in Indiana and Missouri, its path back to a Senate majority becomes very difficult.
Romney - and Republicans more broadly - have worked hard in recent weeks to push back against Democratic allegations that they are waging a "war on women" because of the policies they pursue. The Mourdock controversy is likely to re-ignite that debate just 13 days before the election.
VIDEO: Mourdock makes controversial comments during a debate Tuesday night.
Read more from PostPolitics
The Fix: Is Richard Mourdock the new Todd Akin?
Sheldon Adelson: A man of many motives
Gloria Allred's October surprise?
Is this America's worst candidate?
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October 24, 2012 Wednesday 10:32 PM EST
Democrat Jim Moran's son resigns from campaign following video released by James O'Keefe
BYLINE: Sean Sullivan
LENGTH: 760 words
Make sure to sign up to receive "Afternoon Fix" every day in your e-mail inbox by 5(ish) p.m.!
EARLIER ON THE FIX:
Post-ABC tracking poll: Obama wins final debate, Romney changes minds
Why winning Ohio means the difference between an electoral college layup and a 30-foot heave for Mitt Romney
The final debate - auto-tuned (Video)
Mourdock apologizes for 'misinterpretation' of rape comments, Obama campaign pounces
The Colbert Report examines the undecided voter (VIDEO)
Richard Mourdock and the damage done
How President Obama won Ohio in 2008 - and whether he can do it again
WHAT YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED:
* President Obama holds a slight 49 percent to 44 percent lead over Mitt Romney in Ohio, according to a new Time poll of Buckeye State voters who said they will head to the polls on Election Day and those who have already cast a ballot during the early voting period. Obama leads Romneu 60 percent to 30 percent among those who say they already voted.
* Elizabeth Warren (D) holds a slight 50 percent to 44 percent lead over Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.), according to a WBUR survey conducted by the MassINC Polling Group. The Oct. 21-22 poll differs from the Oct. 5-7 survey which showed Brown leading Warren 48 percent to 45 percent. In a break from a long-term trend, Brown no longer has higher favorable ratings in the latest survey His fav/unfav split (49/38) is about the same as Warren's (49/39).
* The Louisville Courier-Journal newspaper is endorsing Rep. Joe Donnelly (D) in the Indiana Senate race, a day after state Treasurer Richard Mourdock (R) stoked controversy at a Tuesday debate with his remarks about rape and pregnancy. "Indiana voters wondering who to vote for in the U.S. Senate race should have no doubts after Tuesday's spectacular implosion on the abortion issue by Republican candidate Richard Mourdock. It is clear that the only rational choice for voters in this election is Democrat Joe Donnelly," the paper wrote in its endorsement.
* Brown said he disagreed with Mourdock's comment. "It's not what I believe. I'm a pro-choice Republican and that's not what I believe. I disagree with what he said," said the Massachusetts Republican.
* Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) has canceled her campaign events for the rest of the week to be with her critically ill mother, who was in an intensive care unit of a St. Louis hospital on Tuesday.
WHAT YOU SHOULDN'T MISS:
* Rep. Jim Moran's (D-Va.) son Patrick Moran resigned from the congressman's campaign after conservative activist James O'Keefe posted video online appearing to show him providing advice about how to commit voter fraud.
* The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has taken out a $17 million line of credit in its quest to win back the 25 seats it needs to net to seize back control of the House. "With so many of our candidates tied or closing in on Republicans, we are on offense and fighting back against the Republican superPACs that want to save these tea party Republicans," said DCCC spokesman Jesse Ferguson.
* A day after former Wisconsin governor Tommy Thompson (R) hit Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D) with an ad slamming her for voting against a bill commemorating the fifth anniversary of 9/11, Baldwin hit back with an ad of her own. "Tommy Thompson's ad is a disgrace," says the narrator, before criticizing the Republican for getting a "government contract to provide health care to 9/11 first-responders. But Tommy took advantage, leaving them without the care they were promised. Tommy Thompson personally made over $3 million off the deal."
* The Republican Governors Association is targeting former congressman Jay Inslee's (D) congressional record in its latest TV ad in the Washington governor's race. "We know now that Inslee purchased stock in a solar energy company and then championed policies in Congress that would aid the industry's growth. An independent watchdog group called Inslee's action a conflict of interest," says the narrator.
* That "very big" announcement Donald Trump promised is an offer to donate $5 million to charity if Obama releases his college records and applications, along with this passport records and applications.
THE FIX MIX:
It's not over until...
With Aaron Blake
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October 24, 2012 Wednesday 10:14 PM EST
Shorthand
BYLINE: Rachel Weiner
LENGTH: 49 words
* In an initially off-the-record interview, Obama suggests the Latino vote will help him pass immigration reform.
* Donald Trump said something.
* Michelle Obama appeared in her first campaign ad.
* Obama is airing more ads, despite being outspent.
* And Romney is planning a major economic speech.
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October 24, 2012 Wednesday 9:19 PM EST
How President Obama won Ohio in 2008 - and whether he can do it again
BYLINE: Chris Cillizza;Aaron Blake
LENGTH: 833 words
The last two weeks of the presidential campaign are upon us and Ohio, again, finds itself at the center of the political universe.
President Obama stumped in the state on Tuesday alongside Vice President Joe Biden; it was the president's 17th trip to the state in 2012 alone, according to the Associated Press. Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, too, has lavished the state with visits and will be in Cincinnati on Thursday.
With conventional wisdom - the Fix and Nate Silver count as that, right? - congealing around the idea of Ohio as the sine qua non for Romney and, increasingly, Obama, in 13 days time, we thought it would be a worthwhile exercise to look back at the 2008 race in the state to see how Obama won.
First of all, it's important to note how incredibly closely divided the vote in Ohio has been over the past few elections. In 2004, George W. Bush won the state by 118,601 votes out of more than 5.6 million cast. In 2008, despite routing John McCain nationally, Obama carried the state by just 262,224 votes out of more than 5.6 million cast.
In the four presidential elections prior to 2008, the Democratic candidates got 9,060,521 total votes as compared to 8,965,170 for the Republican candidates, according to calculations made by the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
An exit poll comparison between Obama's 2008 totals and Kerry's 2004 totals turns up two groups in Ohio where the current president overperformed the Massachusetts Senator.
The first and most obvious/important is among black voters. In 2004, Kerry won 84 percent of African Americans, who made up 10 percent of the total vote in Ohio. In 2008, Obama won 97 percent of the black vote, which comprised 11 percent of the total Ohio vote.
The second is among young(ish) voters. Among the truly young - defined as those 18-29 years old - Kerry won 56 percent in 2004 while Obama took 61 percent in 2008. Among those 30-44 years old, Kerry took 47 percent to Obama's 51 percent.
So, how is Obama measuring up among those two key groups this time around? In a CBS/Quinnipiac University poll released earlier this week, Obama led Romney 50 percent to 45 percent overall in Ohio. Among black voters, Obama led 91 percent to five percent over Romney with four percent saying they had no opinion or didn't know. Among 18-34 year old voters - the age bracket that Quinnipiac uses to define young voters - Obama led 59 percent to 34 percent.
Those numbers suggest that Obama is, at the moment, coming close to replicating his margins among the two key demographic groups he needs in order to win in Ohio again. The question is whether he can maintain - or even grow - those margins in the face of a race that has moved nationally toward Romney of late.
Mourdock's comment on rape and pregnancy raises eyebrows: Another Republican Senate candidate has been put on the defensive after comments on rape and pregnancy.
At a debate Tuesday night in Indiana, state Treasurer Richard Mourdock said that when pregnancies result from rape, "it is something that God intended to happen."
Democrats pounced, saying Mourdock was essentially saying that God intends for rapes to occur. Mourdock quickly issued a statement clarifying that he simply believes all life is part of God's plan.
Democrats are trying to turn Mourdock into the next Todd Akin. National Republicans suggested Tuesday night that that's not the case, and said while Mourdock was inarticulate, they expect him to recover.
But Romney, who cut an ad for Mourdock that was released this week, distanced himself from the comment.
"Gov. Romney disagrees with Richard Mourdock's comments, and they do not reflect his views," Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul said.
Fixbits:
A political adviser to Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval (R) predicts Romney will lose the state, even as Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) wins the state's Senate race.
The editor of the Des Moines Register says an off-the-record conversation he had with Obama should be shared with the public.
Tagg Romney apologizes to Obama for saying he wanted to "take a swing at him" during the second presidential debate.
The third-party presidential candidates debated Tuesday night.
Donald Trump says he'll reveal a bombshell piece of news about Obama on Wednesday.
Former Maine governor Angus King (I) outraised GOP Senate nominee Charlie Summers $387,000 to $325,000 in the first 17 days of October.
The national GOP has purchased $2.3 million more in ad time in the Arizona Senate race, meaning it will be on TV through Election Day.
Must-reads:
"2012's worst candidate? With Mark Clayton, Tennessee Democrats hit bottom." - David A. Fahrenthold, Washington Post
"Candidates reveal their strategies for the home stretch" - Philip Rucker and David A. Fahrenthold, Washington Post
"In Florida, Puerto Ricans' rise gives a key swing state more swing voters" - Joel Achenbach, Washington Post
"White House told of militant claim two hours after Libya attack: emails" - Mark Hosenball, Reuters
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October 24, 2012 Wednesday 9:15 PM EST
Obama maintains ad advantage despite being outspent by GOP;
President Obama and his allies have aired more ads in battleground states this month despite being outspent by Republican nominee Mitt Romney and GOP groups, who are getting less for their money than the incumbent, according to a study released Wednesday.
BYLINE: Dan Eggen
LENGTH: 517 words
President Obama and his allies have aired more ads in battleground states this month than Mitt Romney and his supporters, despite being outspent by the Republican nominee and GOP groups, according to a study released Wednesday.
The Obama campaign and its supporters spent $77 million on 112,730 advertisements from Oct. 1 to Oct. 21, according to the Wesleyan Media Project, which tracks and analyzes political ad spending. Romney and his allies, by contrast, spent more money - $87 million - on 15,000 fewer spots than their opponents.
The study also confirmed that 2012 has already shattered previous records for presidential ad spending, with 915,000 ads aired during the general election campaign through Sunday - a 44.5 percent increase compared with the same period four years ago.
The findings suggest that Obama and the Democrats may be able to weather a storm of Republican advertising purchases aimed at knocking the incumbent off balance in the final weeks of the election. One Republican media buyer calculates that GOP groups are outspending Democrats in this week by nearly 2 to 1.
But Obama has a key advantage over Romney by raising the bulk of his money through his campaign committee, which qualifies for discounted ad rates under federal election laws. That can allow Obama to pay much less for the same ads compared with conservative super PACs and other outside groups, which don't qualify for such rates.
Romney has less money under his direct control because he relies more heavily on wealthy donors who give to the Republican Party and on ad spending by well-funded independent groups. Unlike Obama, Romney also bought relatively little ad time in advance - which is cheaper - and has tended to choose more expensive ad spots with guaranteed placements.
"There was a lot of talk that Romney and his allies were hoarding resources for a major ad push in the closing moments of the campaign," Michael Franz, co-director of the project, said in a statement. "We just haven't seen that to date on local broadcast. And time is running out."
Erika Franklin Fowler, the other Wesleyan co-director, noted that while the volume of campaign advertising in 2012 has exploded, it is directed at a much smaller number of swing states than 2008. Las Vegas, Denver and Cleveland have been at the epicenter of presidential ad volume this year, the study found, while markets in 2008 battlegrounds such as Missouri and Indiana have dropped off the map.
Obama maintained an advantage in total ad volume in 13 of the top 15 markets during the first three weeks of October, the study found. Romney was ahead only in Columbus, Ohio, and Norfolk, Va., and even there only slightly.
Romney also relies much more heavily on assistance from groups such as American Crossroads and Restore Our Future, which accounted for nearly half of the pro-Romney ads aired this month.
The Obama campaign ran 86 percent of the spots aired on the president's behalf. The reelection campaign has aired a total of 461,000 commercials overall - more than the Romney campaign and all the Republican groups that are helping him combined.
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October 24, 2012 Wednesday 8:12 PM EST
Candidates adopt new roles for final stretch
BYLINE: Philip Rucker;David A. Fahrenthold
SECTION: A section; Pg. A01
LENGTH: 1051 words
HENDERSON, Nev. - On Tuesday, the presidential candidates unveiled their endgames.
After a debate season that reversed the two men's fortunes in the polls, President Obama indicated that he would run in the last two weeks of the race as an underdog. "I don't want to lose this election," he told supporters in an e-mail.
On a day of high-energy rallies, his campaign also announced a grand last-minute gesture. To rebut criticism that Obama has no agenda for a second term, his campaign plans to mail 3.5 million copies of what it calls the "Blueprint for America's Future," a repackaging of previously discussed ideas, to swing-state voters.
Republican nominee Mitt Romney, who had been the longtime underdog, signaled that he would finish the campaign as a calm, cautious front-runner. Advisers said he was unlikely to lay out new ideas. From his perspective, why would he?
Obama's "campaign is slipping," Romney told a crowd in this Las Vegas suburb, "and ours is gaining so much steam."
Both men were, in a sense, bluffing - the polls are effectively tied. But each seemed to have settled on the role he would play in the campaign's last frenetic days; both roles have previously served the candidates well. Romney, who was the front-runner through the GOP primaries, would again be the man destined to victory. Obama, who started in 2008 as a heavy underdog against Hillary Rodham Clinton, would try to reprise that image.
"We'll know who's bluffing in two weeks," David Axelrod, a longtime Obama adviser, said in a conference call with reporters to discuss the state of the race. "I'm looking forward to it."
A new Washington Post-ABC News tracking poll of likely voters showed Romney leading Obama by one point, 49 percent to 48 percent. The day before, the numbers were reversed, with Obama leading by the same thin margin.
On both days, the meaning was the same: The presidency will probably be decided by a small sliver of voters who may shift in the next two weeks.
Tuesday was the first day of that hyper-compressed campaign, with both candidates seemingly in every swing state at once.
In the morning, Obama was in Delray Beach, Fla., attacking what he said was Romney's move to more moderate positions. He repeated his latest zinger, that his opponent suffers from "Romnesia."
"We're accustomed to seeing politicians change their positions from, like, four years ago," Obama said. "We're not accustomed to seeing a politician change their positions from four days ago."
Behind the scenes, the president's advisers argued that they hold advantages in the key states needed to win the electoral college vote. They cited figures indicating that early voting and turnout among young people and Latinos - crucial Obama constituencies - are outpacing the historic levels of 2008.
"We [would] win the election if it were held today," said David Plouffe, a senior White House adviser. "In the battleground states, we think we've got many more pathways to 270 electoral votes."
But Obama's plaintive e-mail to supporters ("Please don't wait any longer," it said) and his massive mail-out of the "Blueprint" were strong signs of worry. In Monday's debate, Romney renewed a long-standing criticism with the line "Attacking me is not an agenda." Now, Obama's campaign said, it would put an agenda in millions of people's hands, with mailings and door-to-door canvassing. The plan can also be found online at www.barackobama.com/plans.
It includes familiar Obama ideas such as investing in community colleges, ending tax breaks for companies that outsource jobs overseas and increasing taxes on some people making more than $1 million.
In all-important Ohio on Tuesday, it seemed that Obama's campaign was still trying to fire up the Democratic base. Vice President Biden appeared at a rally in Toledo, following events Monday in two other Democratic strongholds. Biden and Obama appeared together in Dayton on Tuesday night, drawing a huge crowd.
Romney, by contrast, sounded more confident Tuesday than he has throughout much of his campaign - in which he has often had to correct himself to say "when I'm president," instead of "if."
In Henderson, he told the crowd that Obama is "taking on water."
"He's been reduced to try to defend characters on 'Sesame Street' and word games of various kinds, and then misfired attacks," Romney said, referring to an Obama ad in which Big Bird makes an appearance.
Romney's advisers spoke in metaphors of finality.
"The cake is baked," said Eric Fehrnstrom. "Something structural changed in that first debate, and all the movement has been toward Governor Romney."
Inside the Romney campaign, advisers think they are getting the election they always wanted - one focused on economic leadership and contrasting visions for the country's future.
The Republican nominee plans to deliver a major speech this week on the debt and federal spending, and he plans more television ads in which he speaks about his economic plans directly to the camera, advisers said.
As in most presidential campaigns, some of this late-game rhetoric amounts to advisers trying to fake one another out.
On Tuesday, for instance, Obama's camp said it would remain active in North Carolina, a state that appears to be trending Republican. Romney staffers, in turn, publicly pondered diving back into blue-tinted Pennsylvania and Michigan.
But their main audience is voters, and the campaigns hope to motivate them either through worry or the appeal of joining a winning team.
In Delray Beach, worry already seemed to be working for Obama.
Margot Mueller, 49, showed up at a campaign office on Monday with her 10-year old daughter. She voted for Obama four years ago and is hopeful he will win again. "I still believe in the Democratic philosophy," she said. "I still feel that too much wealth goes to too few."
Moments later, an elderly woman named Paula walked into the campaign office. "Would you like somebody to make a few calls?" she asked. "I have a free hour."
A campaign worker quickly stood up, grabbed a call sheet and hustled Paula into a back room away from a reporter.
"Just call as many people as you can," the worker said.
ruckerp@washpost.com
fahrenthold@washpost.com
Amy Gardner in Washington, Jerry Markon in Nevada, Joel Achenbach in Ohio and Ed O'Keefe in Florida contributed to this report.
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October 24, 2012 Wednesday 8:12 PM EST
U.S. set to keep kill lists for years
BYLINE: Greg Miller
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This project, based on interviews with dozens of current and former national security officials, intelligence analysts and others, examines evolving U.S. counterterrorism policies and the practice of targeted killing. This is the first of three stories.
Over the past two years, the Obama administration has been secretly developing a new blueprint for pursuing terrorists, a next-generation targeting list called the "disposition matrix."
The matrix contains the names of terrorism suspects arrayed against an accounting of the resources being marshaled to track them down, including sealed indictments and clandestine operations. U.S. officials said the database is designed to go beyond existing kill lists, mapping plans for the "disposition" of suspects beyond the reach of drones.
Although the matrix is a work in progress, the effort to create it reflects a reality setting in among the nation's counterterrorism ranks: The United States' conventional wars are winding down, but the government expects to continue adding names to kill or capture lists for years.
Among senior Obama administration officials, there is a broad consensus that such operations are likely to be extended at least another decade. Given the way al-Qaeda continues to metastasize, some officials said no clear end is in sight.
"We can't possibly kill everyone who wants to harm us," a senior administration official said. Generating lists and carrying out strikes is "a necessary part of what we do. . . . We're not going to wind up in 10 years in a world of everybody holding hands and saying, 'We love America.' "
That timeline suggests that the United States has reached only the midpoint of what was once known as the global war on terrorism. Targeting lists that were regarded as finite emergency measures after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, are now fixtures of the national security apparatus. The rosters expand and contract with the pace of drone strikes but never go to zero.
Meanwhile, a significant milestone looms: The number of militants and civilians killed in the drone campaign over the past 10 years will soon exceed 3,000 by some estimates, surpassing the number of people al-Qaeda killed in the Sept. 11 attacks.
The Obama administration has highlighted its successes against the terrorist network, including the death of Osama bin Laden, as signature achievements that argue for President Obama's reelection. The administration has taken tentative steps toward greater transparency, formally acknowledging for the first time the United States' use of armed drones.
Less visible is the extent to which Obama has institutionalized the highly classified practice of targeted killing, transforming ad-hoc elements into a counterterrorism infrastructure capable of sustaining a seemingly permanent war. Spokesmen for the White House, the National Counterterrorism Center, the CIA and other agencies declined to comment on the matrix or other counterterrorism programs.
Privately, officials acknowledge that the development of the matrix is part of a series of moves, in Washington and overseas, to embed counterterrorism tools into U.S. policy for the long haul.
White House counterterrorism adviser John O. Brennan is seeking to codify the administration's approach to generating capture/kill lists, part of a broader effort to guide future administrations through the counterterrorism processes Obama has embraced.
CIA Director David H. Petraeus is pushing to expand the agency's fleet of armed drones, U.S. officials said. The proposal, which would need White House approval, reflects the agency's transformation into a paramilitary force, and makes clear that it does not intend to dismantle its drone program and return to its pre-Sept. 11 focus on gathering intelligence.
The U.S. Joint Special Operations Command, which carried out the raid that killed bin Laden, has moved commando teams into suspected terrorist hotbeds in Africa. A rugged U.S. outpost in Djibouti has been transformed into a launching pad for counterterrorism operations across the Horn of Africa and the Middle East.
JSOC also established a secret targeting center across the Potomac River from Washington, U.S. officials said. The elite command's targeting cells have traditionally been located near the front lines of its missions, including in Iraq and Afghanistan. But JSOC created a "national capital region" task force that is a 15-minute commute from the White House so it could be more directly involved in deliberations about al-Qaeda lists.
The developments were described by current and former officials from the White House and the Pentagon, as well as intelligence and counterterrorism agencies. Most spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.
These counterterrorism components have been affixed to a legal foundation for targeted killing that the Obama administration has discussed more openly over the past year. In a series of speeches, administration officials have cited legal bases, including the congressional authorization to use military force granted after the Sept. 11 attacks, as well as the nation's right to defend itself.
Critics contend that those justifications have become more tenuous as the drone campaign has expanded far beyond the core group of al-Qaeda operatives behind the strikes on New York and Washington. Critics note that the administration still doesn't confirm the CIA's involvement or the identities of those killed. Certain strikes are now under legal challenge, including the killings last year in Yemen of U.S.-born al-Qaeda operative Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16-year-old son.
Counterterrorism experts said the reliance on targeted killing is self-perpetuating, yielding undeniable short-term results that may obscure long-term costs.
"The problem with the drone is it's like your lawn mower," said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA analyst and Obama counterterrorism adviser. "You've got to mow the lawn all the time. The minute you stop mowing, the grass is going to grow back."
An evolving database
The United States now operates multiple drone programs, including acknowledged U.S. military patrols over conflict zones in Afghanistan and Libya, and classified CIA surveillance flights over Iran. Strikes against al-Qaeda, however, are carried out under secret lethal programs involving the CIA and JSOC. The matrix was developed by the NCTC, under former director Michael Leiter, to augment those organizations' separate but overlapping kill lists, officials said.
The result is a single, continually evolving database in which biographies, locations, known associates and affiliated organizations are all catalogued. So are strategies for taking targets down, including extradition requests, capture operations and drone patrols.
Obama's decision to shutter the CIA's secret prisons ended a program that had become a source of international scorn, but it also complicated the pursuit of terrorists. Unless a suspect surfaced in the sights of a drone in Pakistan or Yemen, the United States had to scramble to figure out what to do.
"We had a disposition problem," said a former U.S. counterterrorism official involved in developing the matrix.
The database is meant to map out contingencies, creating an operational menu that spells out each agency's role in case a suspect surfaces in an unexpected spot. "If he's in Saudi Arabia, pick up with the Saudis," the former official said. "If traveling overseas to al-Shabab [in Somalia], we can pick him up by ship. If in Yemen, kill or have the Yemenis pick him up."
Officials declined to disclose the identities of suspects on the matrix. They pointed, however, to the capture last year of alleged al-Qaeda operative Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame off the coast of Yemen. Warsame was held for two months aboard a U.S. ship before being transferred to Justice Department custody and charged in federal court in New York.
"Warsame was a classic case of 'What are we going to do with him?' " the former counterterrorism official said. In such cases, the matrix lays out plans, including which U.S. naval vessels are in the area and which charges the Justice Department should prepare.
"Clearly, there were people in Yemen that we had on the matrix," as well as others in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the former counterterrorism official said. The matrix was a way to be ready if they moved. "How do we deal with these guys in transit? You weren't going to fire a drone if they were moving through Turkey or Iran."
Officials described the matrix as a database in development, although its status is unclear. Some said it has not been implemented because it is too cumbersome. Others, including officials from the White House, Congress and intelligence agencies, described it as a blueprint that could help the United States adapt to al-Qaeda's morphing structure and its efforts to exploit turmoil across North Africa and the Middle East.
A year after Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta declared the core of al-Qaeda near strategic defeat, officials see an array of emerging threats beyond Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia - the three countries where almost all U.S. drone strikes have occurred.
The Arab Spring has upended U.S. counterterrorism partnerships in countries including Egypt where U.S. officials fear al-Qaeda could establish new roots. The network's affiliate in North Africa, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, has seized territory in northern Mali and acquired weapons that were smuggled out of Libya.
"Egypt worries me to no end," a high-ranking administration official said. "Look at Libya, Algeria and Mali and then across the Sahel. You're talking about such wide expanses of territory, with open borders and military, security and intelligence capabilities that are basically nonexistent."
Streamlining targeted killing
The creation of the matrix and the institutionalization of kill/capture lists reflect a shift that is as psychological as it is strategic.
Before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the United States recoiled at the idea of targeted killing. The Sept. 11 commission recounted how the Clinton administration had passed on a series of opportunities to target bin Laden in the years before the attacks - before armed drones existed. President Bill Clinton approved a set of cruise-missile strikes in 1998 after al-Qaeda bombed embassies in East Africa, but after extensive deliberation, and the group's leader escaped harm.
Targeted killing is now so routine that the Obama administration has spent much of the past year streamlining the processes that sustain it.
This year, the White House scrapped a system in which the Pentagon and the National Security Council had overlapping roles in scrutinizing the names being added to U.S. target lists.
Now the system functions like a funnel, starting with input from half a dozen agencies and narrowing through layers of review until proposed revisions are laid on Brennan's desk, and subsequently presented to the president.
Videoconference calls that were previously convened by Adm. Mike Mullen, then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have been discontinued. Officials said Brennan thought the process shouldn't be run by those who pull the trigger on strikes.
"What changed is rather than the chairman doing that, John chairs the meeting," said Leiter, the former head of the NCTC.
The administration has also elevated the role of the NCTC, which was conceived as a clearinghouse for threat data and has no operational capability. Under Brennan, who served as its founding director, the center has emerged as a targeting hub.
Other entities have far more resources focused on al-Qaeda. The CIA, JSOC and U.S. Central Command have hundreds of analysts devoted to the terrorist network's franchise in Yemen, while the NCTC has fewer than two dozen. But the center controls a key function.
"It is the keeper of the criteria," a former U.S. counterterrorism official said, meaning that it is in charge of culling names from al-Qaeda databases for targeting lists based on criteria dictated by the White House.
The criteria are classified but center on obvious questions: Who are the operational leaders? Who are the key facilitators? A typical White House request will direct the NCTC to craft a list of al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen involved in carrying out or plotting attacks on U.S. personnel in Sanaa.
The lists are reviewed at regular three-month intervals during meetings at the NCTC headquarters that involve analysts from other organizations, including the CIA, the State Department and JSOC. Officials stress that these sessions don't equate to approval for additions to kill lists, an authority that rests exclusively with the White House.
With no objections - and officials said those have been rare - names are submitted to a panel of National Security Council officials that is chaired by Brennan and includes the deputy directors of the CIA and the FBI, as well as top officials from the State Department, the Pentagon and the NCTC.
Obama approves the criteria for lists and signs off on drone strikes outside Pakistan, where the CIA director decides when to fire. But aside from Obama's presence at "Terror Tuesday" meetings - which usually are devoted to discussing terrorism threats and trends rather than approving targets - the president's involvement is more indirect.
"The president would never come to a deputies meeting," a senior administration official said, although participants recalled cases in which Brennan stepped out of the situation room to get Obama's direction on questions the group couldn't resolve.
The review process is compressed but not skipped when the CIA or JSOC has compelling intelligence and a narrow window in which to strike, officials said. The approach also applies to the development of criteria for "signature strikes," which allow the CIA and JSOC to hit targets based on patterns of activity - packing a vehicle with explosives, for example - even when the identities of those who would be killed is unclear.
A model approach
For an administration that is the first to embrace targeted killing on a wide scale, officials seem confident that they have devised an approach that is so bureaucratically, legally and morally sound that future administrations will follow suit.
During Monday's presidential debate, Republican nominee Mitt Romney made it clear that he would continue the drone campaign. "We can't kill our way out of this," he said, but added later that Obama was "right to up the usage" of drone strikes and that he would do the same.
As Obama nears the end of his term, officials said the kill list in Pakistan has slipped to fewer than 10 al-Qaeda targets, down from as many as two dozen. The agency now aims many of its Predator strikes at the Haqqani network, which has been blamed for attacks on U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
In Yemen, the number of militants on the list has ranged from 10 to 15, officials said, and is not likely to slip into the single digits soon, even though there have been 36 U.S. airstrikes this year.
The number of targets on the lists isn't fixed, officials said, but fluctuates based on adjustments to criteria. Officials defended the arrangement even while acknowledging an erosion in the caliber of operatives placed in the drones' cross hairs.
"Is the person currently Number 4 as good as the Number 4 seven years ago? Probably not," said a former senior U.S. counterterrorism official involved in the process. "But it doesn't mean he's not dangerous."
In focusing on bureaucratic refinements, the administration has largely avoided confronting more fundamental questions about the lists. Internal doubts about the effectiveness of the drone campaign are almost nonexistent. So are apparent alternatives.
"When you rely on a particular tactic, it starts to become the core of your strategy - you see the puff of smoke, and he's gone," said Paul Pillar, a former deputy director of the CIA's counterterrorism center. "When we institutionalize certain things, including targeted killing, it does cross a threshold that makes it harder to cross back."
For a decade, the dimensions of the drone campaign have been driven by short-term objectives: the degradation of al-Qaeda and the prevention of a follow-on large-scale attack on U.S. soil.
Side effects are more difficult to measure - including the extent to which strikes breed more enemies of the United States - but could be more consequential if the campaign continues for 10 more years.
"We are looking at something that is potentially indefinite," Pillar said. "We have to pay particular attention, maybe more than we collectively have so far, to the longer-term pros and cons to the methods we use."
Obama administration officials at times have sought to trigger debate over how long the nation might employ the kill lists. But officials said the discussions became dead ends.
In one instance, Mullen, the former Joint Chiefs chairman, returned from Pakistan and recounted a heated confrontation with his counterpart, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani.
Mullen told White House and counterterrorism officials that the Pakistani military chief had demanded an answer to a seemingly reasonable question: After hundreds of drone strikes, how could the United States still be working its way through a "top 20" list?
The issue resurfaced after the U.S. raid that killed bin Laden. Seeking to repair a rift with Pakistan, Panetta, the CIA director, told Kayani and others that the United States had only a handful of targets left and would be able to wind down the drone campaign, former officials said.
A senior aide to Panetta disputed this account, and said Panetta mentioned the shrinking target list during his trip to Islamabad but didn't raise the prospect that drone strikes would end. Two former U.S. officials said the White House told Panetta to avoid even hinting at commitments the United States could not keep.
"We didn't want to get into the business of limitless lists," said a former senior U.S. counterterrorism official who oversaw the lists. "There is this apparatus created to deal with counterterrorism. It's still useful. The question is: When will it stop being useful? I don't know."
millergreg@washpost.com
Karen DeYoung, Craig Whitlock and Julie Tate contributed to this report.
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October 24, 2012 Wednesday 8:12 PM EST
Moderate Mitt plays the likability card
BYLINE: Melinda Henneberger
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How softly he spoke, his forehead glistening. He babbled a little - not unheard of at such a moment - and began: "It's nice to maybe funny this time, not on purpose. We'll see what happens.''
Yes, throughout Monday night's final presidential debate - and oh, how both participants will miss them - Mitt Romney tried to make himself attractive to the small number of perhaps less informed but definitely influential women in America who still haven't chosen a candidate. And to that end, Romney was Moderate Mitt on the military front, peace-loving as never before.
"We can't kill our way out of this mess,'' the candidate said of the war on terrorism. Apparently - and correctly, I believe - having concluded that likability matters more than foreign policy acumen to those who have yet to decide how they'll vote, the former governor of Massachusetts went easy on his opponent, even passing on the chance to exploit the president's vulnerability on the attack that killed our ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, and three other Americans on Sept. 11. He inched closer to the president on a number of matters, suddenly optimistic that the 2014 timeline for getting our troops out of Afghanistan would work out just fine.
And in a stunning re-creation of the John Kerry cartoon character created by his party in 2004, Romney even praised a plan hatched when "Arab scholars came together, organized by the U.N., to look at how we can help the world reject these terrorists.'' Can you imagine the derision if any Democrat running for president said the U.N.-sponsored answer lay in economic development, education and gender equality?
Still making up for his sleepy presentation in the first debate, Obama, on the other hand, began the evening with the hungry look of an eagle eyeing dinner. He pressed every advantage, armed with such zingers as the joke that Romney's comment naming Russia as our chief geopolitical foe was so outdated that "the 1980s, they're now calling to ask for their foreign policy back.''
There's nothing wrong with looking alive, mind you; Obama was sharp where Romney wobbled. But did Romney lose the debate and win the day?
The line that Obama's supporters liked best, about how the military has fewer bayonets and horses than it did in good old 1916, may have been a big hit in New York, but in Norfolk, I'm not so sure. As my friend Elizabeth De Angelo, a Navy vet, saw it, "Obama's condescending comments about horses made no sense" and "only sounds funny if you don't understand how the Navy functions.''
"We have these things called aircraft carriers, where planes land,'' the president said sarcastically, helping himself not at all with the sensitive sorts who are late-minute deciders. "We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines." If there's one thing the most moderate of women voters can live without, it's a heaping helping of disdain.
Yet nothing said in any of the debates was as ugly or ill-advised as the new Obama ad with the tag line "Mitt Romney. Not one of us'' - a shopworn slogan featured in racist campaigns over the past half-century. The president's advisers insist that the phrase refers only to Romney's indifference to the auto industry and other workers, but what happened to giving the voter a little credit? And how is this different from the offensive Republican line that we're "taking our country back" next month, though from whom is never spelled out, and doesn't have to be. If Romney's "not one of us,'' is that on the basis of religion, because he's a Mormon? Or class, because he grew up in privilege?
Sometimes I wonder whether, after the Citizens UnitedSupreme Court decision that's brought more money into politics than ever, Obama will be the last president who started with nothing but smarts and worked his way to the Oval Office. So to see his campaign stoop to painting Romney as "the other" is quite a letdown.
As Obama the conciliator seeks to convince us that he and his challenger could not be more different, Romney has set off just as briskly in the opposite direction. Not so long ago, he told us that our whole way of life was on the line in this election. Now, speaking to those last moderate holdouts who've yet to make a decision on this election, he mixes jabs on Israel, Iran and that mythical Obama "apology tour" with agreement on Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and drone strikes. We're not so different after all, this new Romney suggests.
The self-immolating 2012 political tell-all "The Payoff: Why Wall Street Always Wins,'' by former White House lawyer, Joe Biden staffer and lobbyist Jeff Connaughton, certainly made that point convincingly, showing how on both sides of the aisle and both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, meaningful financial reform was never even a goal after the '08 meltdown. And with Obama adopting campaign slogans from Jesse Helms, maybe it's time to wonder whether Mitt "I Concurred" Romney has more of a point than I wish were the case.
hennebergerm@washpost.com
Melinda Henneberger is a Post political writer and anchors the paper's She the People blog. Follow her on Twitter: @MelindaDC.
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Ad wars escalate
The pro-Mitt Romney super PAC Restore Our Future is launching a very significant $17.7 million ad buy this week, including three ads that attack President Obama's handling of the economy. The ads will run in 10 states: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin.
Meanwhile, the pro-Obama super PAC Priorities USA Action is hitting Romney with a new TV ad returning to its attacks on Bain Capital. The commercial features employees at companies that Bain took over who lost their jobs. The ad will air in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin.
- Aaron Blake and Sean Sullivan
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Election 2012
October 24, 2012 Wednesday 5:59 PM EST
Ad watch: Obama warns of 2000 recount repeat
BYLINE: Rachel Weiner
LENGTH: 110 words
Obama for America, "527
What it says: "Five hundred and thirty seven. The number of votes that changed the course of American history ... If you're thinking that your vote doesn't count, that it won't matter. Well, back then, there were probably at least 537 people who felt the same way."
What it means: President Obama consistently leads Mitt Romney among registered voters but not among likely voters. This ad hopes to scare complacent Obama supporters into voting by invoking the 2000 election.
Who will see it: Voters in Colorado, Nevada, Iowa, Ohio, New Hampshire, Virginia, Florida, and Wisconsin.
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The Fix
October 24, 2012 Wednesday 5:09 PM EST
Richard Mourdock and the damage done
BYLINE: Aaron Blake
LENGTH: 1058 words
Democrats are feverishly trying to turn Richard Mourdock into the next Todd Akin after Mourdock, like Akin, made some controversial comments Tuesday about rape and pregnancy.
At this point, the situation is certainly not helpful for Mourdock and will pretty clearly jeopardize his chance at victory in an already-tight Indiana Senate race. But it's not yet clear whether it will hurt Mourdock as much as it hurt Akin - or whether the matter will be as big a liability for the national GOP as Akin was.
VIDEO: Mourdock makes controversial comments during a debate Tuesday night.
Here's a breakdown of where we stand and where we go from here.
First, the full quote from Mourdock:
"You know, this is that issue that every candidate for federal or even state office faces. And I have to certainly stand for life. I know that there are some who disagree, and I respect their point of view. But I believe that life begins at conception. The only exception I have to have on abortion is in that case - of the life of the mother. I struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize life is that gift from God. And I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen."
Democrats immediately charged Mourdock with saying that God intends for rapes to happen, while Republicans said that such a reading of his remarks is ridiculous. They said Mourdock was only trying to make a point that all life is part of God's plan - a view shared by many Americans.
"God creates life, and that was my point," Mourdock said in a statement after the debate.
At this point, the debate is over whether Mourdock believes that God intends for rape to occur. But more broadly, it's about whether the comments turn off independents and moderates who have already been slow to warm to Mourdock after his primary upset of longtime Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.).
And a lot of it depends on how his fellow Republicans treat the matter.
So far, it's a mixed bag. Mitt Romney disavowed Mourdock's comments Tuesday night, and on Wednesday morning, Rep. Mike Pence (R), the favorite to become Indiana's next governor, called on Mourdock to apologize. But the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which disowned Akin after his comments, is standing by its man in this case.
The timing is particularly unhelpful for Romney, who was featured in an ad for Mourdock that launched just this week.
"Gov. Romney disagrees with Richard Mourdock's comments, and they do not reflect his views," Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul said.
While Romney's campaign quickly disavowed Mourdock's comment, he could still be pressed on whether he rescinds his endorsement of Mourdock and whether his party should stand by its candidate.
Romney has already been attacked for his position on abortion, with Democrats running ads noting that in the past Romney has said he would sign a ban on all abortions. Romney's campaign has clarified that he believes in exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother.
The Obama campaign is keeping up the pressure.
"This is a reminder that a Republican Congress working with a Republican president Mitt Romney would (feel) that women should not be able to make choices about their own health care," Obama spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Wednesday morning.
Pence, meanwhile, also appeared to want to separate his political brand from Mourdock's.
"I strongly disagree with the statement made by Richard Mourdock during last night's Senate debate. I urge him to apologize," Pence said, according to the Evansville Courier and Press.
As for national Republicans, though, they appear to be sticking by their man. National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman John Cornyn (R-Texas) issued a statement Wednesday morning in support of Mourdock and attempting to turn the focus to his opponent, Rep. Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.), and his position on abortion.
"Richard and I, along with millions of Americans - including even Joe Donnelly - believe that life is a gift from God," Cornyn said. "To try and construe his words as anything other than a restatement of that belief is irresponsible and ridiculous."
Donnelly also opposes abortion rights and, the GOP notes, was a co-sponsor of a bill that would have denied abortion funding for victims of rape and incest and created a separate category called "forcible rape." The bill was soon amended to eliminate the "forcible rape" designation, which Donnelly said he didn't know was included in the original bill. Republicans believe they can level the playing field - at least somewhat - by pointing to Donnelly's involvement in that controversial bill.
The other major player in this is Lugar, who still hasn't warmed to Mourdock himself after the primary.
Lugar's office said Wednesday morning that he's traveling in Asia, but a former top Lugar aide told The Fix that Mourdock has a problem.
"Mourdock has been losing support since the primary, even among those Republicans who voted for him because they thought the senator was too old," said former Lugar aide Mark Helmke, who is now a professor at Trine University in Angola, Ind. "(The rape comment is) all the talk of this small, conservative university town in far northeast Indiana."
Lugar's lack of support has been a particular sore spot for Mourdock since the primary. Polls suggest more moderate Lugar supporters from the primary haven't moved en masse to Mourdock's side, which has turned this red state into a potential loss for Republicans.
Clearly, Mourdock has some problems with the middle, and staking out such conservative territory on abortion could hurt in his effort to woo those voters.
Republicans acknowledge Mourdock said what he said in an inartful way, but they also note that he was quick to issue a forceful statement clarifying his intent.
The question from here is whether Republicans begin to disown Mourdock as they look out for their own political futures. If they do, it's going to be harder and harder for Mourdock to make the case that he simply made a poor choice of words and is the victim of a Democratic smear campaign.
Time will tell when it comes to whether comments about rape and pregnancy cost Republicans yet another Senate seat - and, more broadly, whether they create a major headache for Republicans in the presidential and other downballot races.
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In the Loop
October 24, 2012 Wednesday 2:17 PM EST
In Florida race, bygones are anything but; Eastwood's Romney redux; and TSA's image problem (read-this roundup);
In the Loop's morning roundup, a Florida race where bygones are anything but; Eastwood's Romney redux; and TSA's image problem
BYLINE: Emily Heil
LENGTH: 129 words
Here's what the Loop is reading Wednesday morning:
Past is prologue - Bygones are anything but in the Florida race that pits Republican Rep. Allen West against challenger Patrick Murphy. Each side is bringing up ugly allegations about his opponent's past.
Eastwood's Romney sequel - No empty chair this time - actor/director Clint Eastwood has cut a pro-Romney ad. Romneyland can breathe easier, since he's on script.
Extra baggage - TSA has an image problem - and this one's got nothing to do with X-rays.
Meanwhile, outside the bubble- While President Obama's "bayonets" barb during the last debate "made waves among politicians and pundits outside this Navy-heavy region, it seemed to hardly make a ripple in Hampton Roads."
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Election 2012
October 24, 2012 Wednesday 12:42 PM EST
Ad watch: Clint Eastwood stars in pro-Romney ad
BYLINE: Rachel Weiner
LENGTH: 140 words
American Crossroads, "At Stake"
What it says: In his first political foray since the Republican National Convention, Clint Eastwood declares, "In the last few years, America's been knocked down ... Obama's second term would be a rerun of the first and our country just couldn't survive that. We need someone who can turn it around fast, and that man is Mitt Romney."
What it means: Despite his odd and likely damaging turn at the RNC, Eastwood is still a hugely popular icon. Here, he sticks to the GOP message but adds a little of his personal charm. It's an interesting contrast with the Super Bowl ad he shot for Chrysler earlier this year, which some saw as boosting President Obama.
Who will see it: Voters in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio and Virginia.
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The Fix
October 24, 2012 Wednesday 2:33 AM EST
Democratic groups build a firewall in Pennsylvania;
The ad buy represents the first major spending from outside groups in the state and reinforces the idea that Casey finds himself in a closer-than-expected race.
BYLINE: Aaron Blake;Sean Sullivan
LENGTH: 815 words
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Why neither Obama nor Romney will 'pull out' of any swing state
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Who won the First Lady debate? (VIDEO)
Previewing the third-party presidential candidates debate
Taking the 'foreign policy' out of foreign policy debate
What we learned from the presidential debates
Wonk|Fix: Recapping the final presidential debate
Obama the instigator vs. Romney the reserved
FIRST ON THE FIX:
* Two major Democratic outside groups are going up with ad buys in Pennsylvania - the first major buys Democrats have made to defend the state at both the presidential and Senate level. Patriot Majority PAC is going up with an ad buy in the presidential race, the group tells The Fix, while Majority PAC has purchased $515,000 worth of ads for Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.), who faces an increasingly tight race with businessman Tom Smith (R). The two major parties and presidential campaigns have yet to make major buys in blue-leaning Pennsylvania. The question from here is whether the spending - particularly in the presidential race - is a head fake trying to get Republicans to burn money in a tough state or a real sign that Democrats are concerned about losing what would be a game-changing state.
WHAT YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED:
* The pro-Mitt Romney super PAC Restore Our Future is launching a very significant $17.7 million ad buy this week, including three ads that attack President Obama's handling of the economy. The ads will run in 10 states: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin.
* The pro-Obama super PAC Priorities USA Action is hitting Romney with a new TV ad returning to its attacks on Bain Capital. The commercial features employees at companies Bain took over who lost their jobs. The ad will air in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin.
* The GOP outside group Crossroads GPS is up with a new ad featuring the Oparowskis, the couple whose son formed a bond with Romney while being treated for cancer three decades ago. Romney later gave the eulogy at the boy's funeral.
* Obama isn't pulling out of any battleground states, campaign manager Jim Messina told reporters Tuesday morning. "I've heard a lot of gossip about which states campaigns are staying in or leaving," Messina said. "We are tied or ahead in every battleground state, and we're not leaving any state where we're tied or ahead."
WHAT YOU SHOULDN'T MISS:
* Romney is not committing to any network television interviews during the final two weeks of the campaign.
* Rep. Chris Murphy (D) holds a slight 46 percent-to-40 percent lead over Linda McMahon (R), according a new poll of the Connecticut Senate race conducted for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. The poll of 800 likely Connecticut voters was conducted by Hamilton Campaigns from Oct. 19-22. Quinnipiac University, which will release its next survey Wednesday, has shown the race to be a dead heat in recent weeks.
* Obama and Romney are tied at 47 percent among likely Florida voters, according to a new poll conducted by Mark Mellman for the liberal group Americans United for Change. The poll of 800 likely voters was conducted from Oct. 18-21 and also indicates a close race among early voters, with Obama at 50 percent and Romney at 45 percent. The five-point lead isn't statistically significant, though, given that just 17 percent of respondents said they voted early. Overall, the fact that a pro-Obama group would release an internal poll showing him tied in Florida could suggest the state is tilting towards Romney.
* A new poll conducted for Democrat Richard Carmona's Arizona Senate campaign shows him at 45 percent and Rep. Jeff Flake (R) at 41 percent. The poll was conducted by Anzalone Liszt from Oct. 17-21.
* Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.), a retired Army lieutenant colonel, said Tuesday that Obama doesn't know what he's talking about when it comes to "horses and bayonets." The Post's Ed O'Keefe reports that West said American soldiers were issued bayonets in Iraq in 2003 and rode on horseback in Afghanistan in 2001. "So obviously we have a president who does not understand the full capabilities and capacities and what we do in the United States military," West said. (We should note that Obama never said at Monday's debate that the military doesn't use horses and bayonets - simply that it uses fewer of them.)
THE FIX MIX:
Empty Seattle...
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October 24, 2012 Wednesday
Suburban Edition
Candidates adopt new roles for final stretch
BYLINE: Philip Rucker;David A. Fahrenthold
SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A01
LENGTH: 1048 words
DATELINE: HENDERSON, NEV.
HENDERSON, Nev. - On Tuesday, the presidential candidates unveiled their endgames.
After a debate season that reversed the two men's fortunes in the polls, President Obama indicated that he would run in the last two weeks of the race as an underdog. "I don't want to lose this election," he told supporters in an e-mail.
On a day of high-energy rallies, his campaign also announced a grand last-minute gesture. To rebut criticism that Obama has no agenda for a second term, his campaign plans to mail 3.5 million copies of what it calls the "Blueprint for America's Future," a repackaging of previously discussed ideas, to swing-state voters.
Republican nominee Mitt Romney, who had been the longtime underdog, signaled that he would finish the campaign as a calm, cautious front-runner. Advisers said he was unlikely to lay out new ideas. From his perspective, why would he?
Obama's "campaign is slipping," Romney told a crowd in this Las Vegas suburb, "and ours is gaining so much steam."
Both men were, in a sense, bluffing - the polls are effectively tied. But each seemed to have settled on the role he would play in the campaign's last frenetic days; both roles have previously served the candidates well. Romney, who was the front-runner through the GOP primaries, would again be the man destined to victory. Obama, who started in 2008 as a heavy underdog against Hillary Rodham Clinton, would try to reprise that image.
"We'll know who's bluffing in two weeks," David Axelrod, a longtime Obama adviser, said in a conference call with reporters to discuss the state of the race. "I'm looking forward to it."
A new Washington Post-ABC News tracking poll of likely voters showed Romney leading Obama by one point, 49 percent to 48 percent. The day before, the numbers were reversed, with Obama leading by the same thin margin.
On both days, the meaning was the same: The presidency will probably be decided by a small sliver of voters who may shift in the next two weeks.
Tuesday was the first day of that hyper-compressed campaign, with both candidates seemingly in every swing state at once.
In the morning, Obama was in Delray Beach, Fla., attacking what he said was Romney's move to more moderate positions. He repeated his latest zinger, that his opponent suffers from "Romnesia."
"We're accustomed to seeing politicians change their positions from, like, four years ago," Obama said. "We're not accustomed to seeing a politician change their positions from four days ago."
Behind the scenes, the president's advisers argued that they hold advantages in the key states needed to win the electoral college vote. They cited figures indicating that early voting and turnout among young people and Latinos - crucial Obama constituencies - are outpacing the historic levels of 2008.
"We [would] win the election if it were held today," said David Plouffe, a senior White House adviser. "In the battleground states, we think we've got many more pathways to 270 electoral votes."
But Obama's plaintive e-mail to supporters ("Please don't wait any longer," it said) and his massive mail-out of the "Blueprint" were strong signs of worry. In Monday's debate, Romney renewed a long-standing criticism with the line "Attacking me is not an agenda." Now, Obama's campaign said, it would put an agenda in millions of people's hands, with mailings and door-to-door canvassing. The plan can also be found online at www.barackobama.com/plans.
It includes familiar Obama ideas such as investing in community colleges, ending tax breaks for companies that outsource jobs overseas and increasing taxes on some people making more than $1 million.
In all-important Ohio on Tuesday, it seemed that Obama's campaign was still trying to fire up the Democratic base. Vice President Biden appeared at a rally in Toledo, following events Monday in two other Democratic strongholds. Biden and Obama appeared together in Dayton on Tuesday night, drawing a huge crowd.
Romney, by contrast, sounded more confident Tuesday than he has throughout much of his campaign - in which he has often had to correct himself to say "when I'm president," instead of "if."
In Henderson, he told the crowd that Obama is "taking on water."
"He's been reduced to try to defend characters on 'Sesame Street' and word games of various kinds, and then misfired attacks," Romney said, referring to an Obama ad in which Big Bird makes an appearance.
Romney's advisers spoke in metaphors of finality.
"The cake is baked," said Eric Fehrnstrom. "Something structural changed in that first debate, and all the movement has been toward Governor Romney."
Inside the Romney campaign, advisers think they are getting the election they always wanted - one focused on economic leadership and contrasting visions for the country's future.
The Republican nominee plans to deliver a major speech this week on the debt and federal spending, and he plans more television ads in which he speaks about his economic plans directly to the camera, advisers said.
As in most presidential campaigns, some of this late-game rhetoric amounts to advisers trying to fake one another out.
On Tuesday, for instance, Obama's camp said it would remain active in North Carolina, a state that appears to be trending Republican. Romney staffers, in turn, publicly pondered diving back into blue-tinted Pennsylvania and Michigan.
But their main audience is voters, and the campaigns hope to motivate them either through worry or the appeal of joining a winning team.
In Delray Beach, worry already seemed to be working for Obama.
Margot Mueller, 49, showed up at a campaign office on Monday with her 10-year old daughter. She voted for Obama four years ago and is hopeful he will win again. "I still believe in the Democratic philosophy," she said. "I still feel that too much wealth goes to too few."
Moments later, an elderly woman named Paula walked into the campaign office. "Would you like somebody to make a few calls?" she asked. "I have a free hour."
A campaign worker quickly stood up, grabbed a call sheet and hustled Paula into a back room away from a reporter.
"Just call as many people as you can," the worker said.
ruckerp@washpost.com
fahrenthold@washpost.com
Amy Gardner in Washington, Jerry Markon in Nevada, Joel Achenbach in Ohio and Ed O'Keefe in Florida contributed to this report.
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October 24, 2012 Wednesday
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Moderate Mitt plays the likability card
BYLINE: Melinda Henneberger
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How softly he spoke, his forehead glistening. He babbled a little - not unheard of at such a moment - and began: "It's nice to maybe funny this time, not on purpose. We'll see what happens.''
Yes, throughout Monday night's final presidential debate - and oh, how both participants will miss them - Mitt Romney tried to make himself attractive to the small number of perhaps less informed but definitely influential women in America who still haven't chosen a candidate. And to that end, Romney was Moderate Mitt on the military front, peace-loving as never before.
"We can't kill our way out of this mess,'' the candidate said of the war on terrorism. Apparently - and correctly, I believe - having concluded that likability matters more than foreign policy acumen to those who have yet to decide how they'll vote, the former governor of Massachusetts went easy on his opponent, even passing on the chance to exploit the president's vulnerability on the attack that killed our ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, and three other Americans on Sept. 11. He inched closer to the president on a number of matters, suddenly optimistic that the 2014 timeline for getting our troops out of Afghanistan would work out just fine.
And in a stunning re-creation of the John Kerry cartoon character created by his party in 2004, Romney even praised a plan hatched when "Arab scholars came together, organized by the U.N., to look at how we can help the world reject these terrorists.'' Can you imagine the derision if any Democrat running for president said the U.N.-sponsored answer lay in economic development, education and gender equality?
Still making up for his sleepy presentation in the first debate, Obama, on the other hand, began the evening with the hungry look of an eagle eyeing dinner. He pressed every advantage, armed with such zingers as the joke that Romney's comment naming Russia as our chief geopolitical foe was so outdated that "the 1980s, they're now calling to ask for their foreign policy back.''
There's nothing wrong with looking alive, mind you; Obama was sharp where Romney wobbled. But did Romney lose the debate and win the day?
The line that Obama's supporters liked best, about how the military has fewer bayonets and horses than it did in good old 1916, may have been a big hit in New York, but in Norfolk, I'm not so sure. As my friend Elizabeth De Angelo, a Navy vet, saw it, "Obama's condescending comments about horses made no sense" and "only sounds funny if you don't understand how the Navy functions.''
"We have these things called aircraft carriers, where planes land,'' the president said sarcastically, helping himself not at all with the sensitive sorts who are late-minute deciders. "We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines." If there's one thing the most moderate of women voters can live without, it's a heaping helping of disdain.
Yet nothing said in any of the debates was as ugly or ill-advised as the new Obama ad with the tag line "Mitt Romney. Not one of us'' - a shopworn slogan featured in racist campaigns over the past half-century. The president's advisers insist that the phrase refers only to Romney's indifference to the auto industry and other workers, but what happened to giving the voter a little credit? And how is this different from the offensive Republican line that we're "taking our country back" next month, though from whom is never spelled out, and doesn't have to be. If Romney's "not one of us,'' is that on the basis of religion, because he's a Mormon? Or class, because he grew up in privilege?
Sometimes I wonder whether, after the Citizens United Supreme Court decision that's brought more money into politics than ever, Obama will be the last president who started with nothing but smarts and worked his way to the Oval Office. So to see his campaign stoop to painting Romney as "the other" is quite a letdown.
As Obama the conciliator seeks to convince us that he and his challenger could not be more different, Romney has set off just as briskly in the opposite direction. Not so long ago, he told us that our whole way of life was on the line in this election. Now, speaking to those last moderate holdouts who've yet to make a decision on this election, he mixes jabs on Israel, Iran and that mythical Obama "apology tour" with agreement on Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and drone strikes. We're not so different after all, this new Romney suggests.
The self-immolating 2012 political tell-all "The Payoff: Why Wall Street Always Wins,'' by former White House lawyer, Joe Biden staffer and lobbyist Jeff Connaughton, certainly made that point convincingly, showing how on both sides of the aisle and both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, meaningful financial reform was never even a goal after the '08 meltdown. And with Obama adopting campaign slogans from Jesse Helms, maybe it's time to wonder whether Mitt "I Concurred" Romney has more of a point than I wish were the case.
hennebergerm@washpost.com
Melinda Henneberger is a Post political writer and anchors the paper's She the People blog. Follow her on Twitter: @MelindaDC.
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October 24, 2012 Wednesday
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Ad wars escalate
The pro-Mitt Romney super PAC Restore Our Future is launching a very significant $17.7 million ad buy this week, including three ads that attack President Obama's handling of the economy. The ads will run in 10 states: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin.
Meanwhile, the pro-Obama super PAC Priorities USA Action is hitting Romney with a new TV ad returning to its attacks on Bain Capital. The commercial features employees at companies that Bain took over who lost their jobs. The ad will air in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin.
- Aaron Blake and Sean Sullivan
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The Washington Post
October 24, 2012 Wednesday
Suburban Edition
U.S. set to keep kill lists for years
BYLINE: Greg Miller
SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A01
LENGTH: 3042 words
This project, based on interviews with dozens of current and former national security officials, intelligence analysts and others, examines evolving U.S. counterterrorism policies and the practice of targeted killing. This is the first of three stories.
Over the past two years, the Obama administration has been secretly developing a new blueprint for pursuing terrorists, a next-generation targeting list called the "disposition matrix."
The matrix contains the names of terrorism suspects arrayed against an accounting of the resources being marshaled to track them down, including sealed indictments and clandestine operations. U.S. officials said the database is designed to go beyond existing kill lists, mapping plans for the "disposition" of suspects beyond the reach of drones.
Although the matrix is a work in progress, the effort to create it reflects a reality setting in among the nation's counterterrorism ranks: The United States' conventional wars are winding down, but the government expects to continue adding names to kill or capture lists for years.
Among senior Obama administration officials, there is a broad consensus that such operations are likely to be extended at least another decade. Given the way al-Qaeda continues to metastasize, some officials said no clear end is in sight.
"We can't possibly kill everyone who wants to harm us," a senior administration official said. Generating lists and carrying out strikes is "a necessary part of what we do. . . . We're not going to wind up in 10 years in a world of everybody holding hands and saying, 'We love America.' "
That timeline suggests that the United States has reached only the midpoint of what was once known as the global war on terrorism. Targeting lists that were regarded as finite emergency measures after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, are now fixtures of the national security apparatus. The rosters expand and contract with the pace of drone strikes but never go to zero.
Meanwhile, a significant milestone looms: The number of militants and civilians killed in the drone campaign over the past 10 years will soon exceed 3,000 by some estimates, surpassing the number of people al-Qaeda killed in the Sept. 11 attacks.
The Obama administration has highlighted its successes against the terrorist network, including the death of Osama bin Laden, as signature achievements that argue for President Obama's reelection. The administration has taken tentative steps toward greater transparency, formally acknowledging for the first time the United States' use of armed drones.
Less visible is the extent to which Obama has institutionalized the highly classified practice of targeted killing, transforming ad-hoc elements into a counterterrorism infrastructure capable of sustaining a seemingly permanent war. Spokesmen for the White House, the National Counterterrorism Center, the CIA and other agencies declined to comment on the matrix or other counterterrorism programs.
Privately, officials acknowledge that the development of the matrix is part of a series of moves, in Washington and overseas, to embed counterterrorism tools into U.S. policy for the long haul.
White House counterterrorism adviser John O. Brennan is seeking to codify the administration's approach to generating capture/kill lists, part of a broader effort to guide future administrations through the counterterrorism processes Obama has embraced.
CIA Director David H. Petraeus is pushing to expand the agency's fleet of armed drones, U.S. officials said. The proposal, which would need White House approval, reflects the agency's transformation into a paramilitary force, and makes clear that it does not intend to dismantle its drone program and return to its pre-Sept. 11 focus on gathering intelligence.
The U.S. Joint Special Operations Command, which carried out the raid that killed bin Laden, has moved commando teams into suspected terrorist hotbeds in Africa. A rugged U.S. outpost in Djibouti has been transformed into a launching pad for counterterrorism operations across the Horn of Africa and the Middle East.
JSOC also established a secret targeting center across the Potomac River from Washington, U.S. officials said. The elite command's targeting cells have traditionally been located near the front lines of its missions, including in Iraq and Afghanistan. But JSOC created a "national capital region" task force that is a 15-minute commute from the White House so it could be more directly involved in deliberations about al-Qaeda lists.
The developments were described by current and former officials from the White House and the Pentagon, as well as intelligence and counterterrorism agencies. Most spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.
These counterterrorism components have been affixed to a legal foundation for targeted killing that the Obama administration has discussed more openly over the past year. In a series of speeches, administration officials have cited legal bases, including the congressional authorization to use military force granted after the Sept. 11 attacks, as well as the nation's right to defend itself.
Critics contend that those justifications have become more tenuous as the drone campaign has expanded far beyond the core group of al-Qaeda operatives behind the strikes on New York and Washington. Critics note that the administration still doesn't confirm the CIA's involvement or the identities of those killed. Certain strikes are now under legal challenge, including the killings last year in Yemen of U.S.-born al-Qaeda operative Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16-year-old son.
Counterterrorism experts said the reliance on targeted killing is self-perpetuating, yielding undeniable short-term results that may obscure long-term costs.
"The problem with the drone is it's like your lawn mower," said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA analyst and Obama counterterrorism adviser. "You've got to mow the lawn all the time. The minute you stop mowing, the grass is going to grow back."
An evolving database
The United States now operates multiple drone programs, including acknowledged U.S. military patrols over conflict zones in Afghanistan and Libya, and classified CIA surveillance flights over Iran. Strikes against al-Qaeda, however, are carried out under secret lethal programs involving the CIA and JSOC. The matrix was developed by the NCTC, under former director Michael Leiter, to augment those organizations' separate but overlapping kill lists, officials said.
The result is a single, continually evolving database in which biographies, locations, known associates and affiliated organizations are all catalogued. So are strategies for taking targets down, including extradition requests, capture operations and drone patrols.
Obama's decision to shutter the CIA's secret prisons ended a program that had become a source of international scorn, but it also complicated the pursuit of terrorists. Unless a suspect surfaced in the sights of a drone in Pakistan or Yemen, the United States had to scramble to figure out what to do.
"We had a disposition problem," said a former U.S. counterterrorism official involved in developing the matrix.
The database is meant to map out contingencies, creating an operational menu that spells out each agency's role in case a suspect surfaces in an unexpected spot. "If he's in Saudi Arabia, pick up with the Saudis," the former official said. "If traveling overseas to al-Shabab [in Somalia], we can pick him up by ship. If in Yemen, kill or have the Yemenis pick him up."
Officials declined to disclose the identities of suspects on the matrix. They pointed, however, to the capture last year of alleged al-Qaeda operative Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame off the coast of Yemen. Warsame was held for two months aboard a U.S. ship before being transferred to Justice Department custody and charged in federal court in New York.
"Warsame was a classic case of 'What are we going to do with him?' " the former counterterrorism official said. In such cases, the matrix lays out plans, including which U.S. naval vessels are in the area and which charges the Justice Department should prepare.
"Clearly, there were people in Yemen that we had on the matrix," as well as others in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the former counterterrorism official said. The matrix was a way to be ready if they moved. "How do we deal with these guys in transit? You weren't going to fire a drone if they were moving through Turkey or Iran."
Officials described the matrix as a database in development, although its status is unclear. Some said it has not been implemented because it is too cumbersome. Others, including officials from the White House, Congress and intelligence agencies, described it as a blueprint that could help the United States adapt to al-Qaeda's morphing structure and its efforts to exploit turmoil across North Africa and the Middle East.
A year after Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta declared the core of al-Qaeda near strategic defeat, officials see an array of emerging threats beyond Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia - the three countries where almost all U.S. drone strikes have occurred.
The Arab Spring has upended U.S. counterterrorism partnerships in countries including Egypt where U.S. officials fear al-Qaeda could establish new roots. The network's affiliate in North Africa, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, has seized territory in northern Mali and acquired weapons that were smuggled out of Libya.
"Egypt worries me to no end," a high-ranking administration official said. "Look at Libya, Algeria and Mali and then across the Sahel. You're talking about such wide expanses of territory, with open borders and military, security and intelligence capabilities that are basically nonexistent."
Streamlining targeted killing
The creation of the matrix and the institutionalization of kill/capture lists reflect a shift that is as psychological as it is strategic.
Before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the United States recoiled at the idea of targeted killing. The Sept. 11 commission recounted how the Clinton administration had passed on a series of opportunities to target bin Laden in the years before the attacks - before armed drones existed. President Bill Clinton approved a set of cruise-missile strikes in 1998 after al-Qaeda bombed embassies in East Africa, but after extensive deliberation, and the group's leader escaped harm.
Targeted killing is now so routine that the Obama administration has spent much of the past year streamlining the processes that sustain it.
This year, the White House scrapped a system in which the Pentagon and the National Security Council had overlapping roles in scrutinizing the names being added to U.S. target lists.
Now the system functions like a funnel, starting with input from half a dozen agencies and narrowing through layers of review until proposed revisions are laid on Brennan's desk, and subsequently presented to the president.
Videoconference calls that were previously convened by Adm. Mike Mullen, then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have been discontinued. Officials said Brennan thought the process shouldn't be run by those who pull the trigger on strikes.
"What changed is rather than the chairman doing that, John chairs the meeting," said Leiter, the former head of the NCTC.
The administration has also elevated the role of the NCTC, which was conceived as a clearinghouse for threat data and has no operational capability. Under Brennan, who served as its founding director, the center has emerged as a targeting hub.
Other entities have far more resources focused on al-Qaeda. The CIA, JSOC and U.S. Central Command have hundreds of analysts devoted to the terrorist network's franchise in Yemen, while the NCTC has fewer than two dozen. But the center controls a key function.
"It is the keeper of the criteria," a former U.S. counterterrorism official said, meaning that it is in charge of culling names from al-Qaeda databases for targeting lists based on criteria dictated by the White House.
The criteria are classified but center on obvious questions: Who are the operational leaders? Who are the key facilitators? A typical White House request will direct the NCTC to craft a list of al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen involved in carrying out or plotting attacks on U.S. personnel in Sanaa.
The lists are reviewed at regular three-month intervals during meetings at the NCTC headquarters that involve analysts from other organizations, including the CIA, the State Department and JSOC. Officials stress that these sessions don't equate to approval for additions to kill lists, an authority that rests exclusively with the White House.
With no objections - and officials said those have been rare - names are submitted to a panel of National Security Council officials that is chaired by Brennan and includes the deputy directors of the CIA and the FBI, as well as top officials from the State Department, the Pentagon and the NCTC.
Obama approves the criteria for lists and signs off on drone strikes outside Pakistan, where the CIA director decides when to fire. But aside from Obama's presence at "Terror Tuesday" meetings - which usually are devoted to discussing terrorism threats and trends rather than approving targets - the president's involvement is more indirect.
"The president would never come to a deputies meeting," a senior administration official said, although participants recalled cases in which Brennan stepped out of the situation room to get Obama's direction on questions the group couldn't resolve.
The review process is compressed but not skipped when the CIA or JSOC has compelling intelligence and a narrow window in which to strike, officials said. The approach also applies to the development of criteria for "signature strikes," which allow the CIA and JSOC to hit targets based on patterns of activity - packing a vehicle with explosives, for example - even when the identities of those who would be killed is unclear.
A model approach
For an administration that is the first to embrace targeted killing on a wide scale, officials seem confident that they have devised an approach that is so bureaucratically, legally and morally sound that future administrations will follow suit.
During Monday's presidential debate, Republican nominee Mitt Romney made it clear that he would continue the drone campaign. "We can't kill our way out of this," he said, but added later that Obama was "right to up the usage" of drone strikes and that he would do the same.
As Obama nears the end of his term, officials said the kill list in Pakistan has slipped to fewer than 10 al-Qaeda targets, down from as many as two dozen. The agency now aims many of its Predator strikes at the Haqqani network, which has been blamed for attacks on U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
In Yemen, the number of militants on the list has ranged from 10 to 15, officials said, and is not likely to slip into the single digits soon, even though there have been 36 U.S. airstrikes this year.
The number of targets on the lists isn't fixed, officials said, but fluctuates based on adjustments to criteria. Officials defended the arrangement even while acknowledging an erosion in the caliber of operatives placed in the drones' cross hairs.
"Is the person currently Number 4 as good as the Number 4 seven years ago? Probably not," said a former senior U.S. counterterrorism official involved in the process. "But it doesn't mean he's not dangerous."
In focusing on bureaucratic refinements, the administration has largely avoided confronting more fundamental questions about the lists. Internal doubts about the effectiveness of the drone campaign are almost nonexistent. So are apparent alternatives.
"When you rely on a particular tactic, it starts to become the core of your strategy - you see the puff of smoke, and he's gone," said Paul Pillar, a former deputy director of the CIA's counterterrorism center. "When we institutionalize certain things, including targeted killing, it does cross a threshold that makes it harder to cross back."
For a decade, the dimensions of the drone campaign have been driven by short-term objectives: the degradation of al-Qaeda and the prevention of a follow-on large-scale attack on U.S. soil.
Side effects are more difficult to measure - including the extent to which strikes breed more enemies of the United States - but could be more consequential if the campaign continues for 10 more years.
"We are looking at something that is potentially indefinite," Pillar said. "We have to pay particular attention, maybe more than we collectively have so far, to the longer-term pros and cons to the methods we use."
Obama administration officials at times have sought to trigger debate over how long the nation might employ the kill lists. But officials said the discussions became dead ends.
In one instance, Mullen, the former Joint Chiefs chairman, returned from Pakistan and recounted a heated confrontation with his counterpart, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani.
Mullen told White House and counterterrorism officials that the Pakistani military chief had demanded an answer to a seemingly reasonable question: After hundreds of drone strikes, how could the United States still be working its way through a "top 20" list?
The issue resurfaced after the U.S. raid that killed bin Laden. Seeking to repair a rift with Pakistan, Panetta, the CIA director, told Kayani and others that the United States had only a handful of targets left and would be able to wind down the drone campaign, former officials said.
A senior aide to Panetta disputed this account, and said Panetta mentioned the shrinking target list during his trip to Islamabad but didn't raise the prospect that drone strikes would end. Two former U.S. officials said the White House told Panetta to avoid even hinting at commitments the United States could not keep.
"We didn't want to get into the business of limitless lists," said a former senior U.S. counterterrorism official who oversaw the lists. "There is this apparatus created to deal with counterterrorism. It's still useful. The question is: When will it stop being useful? I don't know."
millergreg@washpost.com
Karen DeYoung, Craig Whitlock and Julie Tate contributed to this report.
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The New York Times
October 23, 2012 Tuesday
Late Edition - Final
Altered Race as Republicans Recast Romney Image
BYLINE: By JIM RUTENBERG and JEFF ZELENY
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; Pg. 11
LENGTH: 1230 words
BOCA RATON, Fla. -- With a last aggressive debate performance behind him and 14 grueling days ahead, President Obama is now facing what he worked so hard to avoid: a neck-and-neck race with a challenger gaining ground when it matters most.
Over the last month, through the debates and a gradual moderation of the conservative tone he struck during the Republican primaries, Mitt Romney undermined the Democrats' expensive summertime work of casting him as the candidate of and for the rich, emerging as a far more formidable opponent than Mr. Obama had ever expected.
He continued down the path of moderation here on Monday night, agreeing with Mr. Obama almost as often as he disagreed.
''For the first time in this race, I'd rather be us than them,'' said Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, crediting Mr. Romney's strength in the first debate as a critical shift in the campaign. ''They spent months building him up as one thing and one night he disproved it.''
The president, aware of deepening worry among Democrats about the prospect of losing the White House, was aggressive at the debate, belittling his rival's foreign policy experience in a bid to keep voters from seeing him as a credible commander in chief.
But Democrats could only hope the candidates' final encounter here would level out a steady rise for Mr. Romney that has brought him to even with or leading the president in several national polls of likely voters. The race is suddenly so tight in the nine battleground states that each side is looking at a single Congressional district in Maine whose one electoral vote, in the event of an exceedingly tight outcome, could decide whether Mr. Romney or Mr. Obama is in the White House come Jan. 20.
The growing sense of optimism inside the Romney campaign about his place in the race was visible in the newly relaxed faces of its senior advisers as they lounged poolside at their hotel in nearby Delray Beach before Monday's debate, ticking through states where they see new opportunities and rising poll numbers. Back in Boston, a senior aide marveled at how much the mood had changed from one month ago, gallows humor giving way to a realization that ''we're in it.''
It remained a question whether Mr. Romney was gaining steam or riding a head of it from the strongest month of his campaign. Obama officials argued that the president's showing at the debate on Monday would remind wavering voters of his leadership in foreign affairs, a strong suit. They emphatically pointed to advantages he still holds in enough important swing states as their life line.
''This race has automatically tightened as everybody in the Obama campaign predicted that it would, but he's ahead in the critical states,'' said Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, Mr. Obama's debate sparring partner.
But it is now unmistakable that Mr. Obama, who leaned forward in his chair at several points during the debate and glared at his rival, is focused on protecting some of his safest turf and Mr. Romney is seeing new opportunities to take it.
Though polls have shown a mix of results, it is more often than not Mr. Romney who is on the upward trajectory, if not always overtaking Mr. Obama, then, at least, cutting into his leads among important constituencies. For instance a CBS News poll released Monday showed his edge among women was down to 5 percentage points from 12 a month ago. Another, from CBS News and Quinnipiac University, showed Mr. Obama's lead in Ohio among likely voters narrowing to 5 percentage points from 10 points last month.
Mr. Obama will spend the next two weeks pitting the campaign machinery he built to push his voters to the polls against Mr. Romney's sense of momentum and new signs of hope in states that were tilting away from him only a month ago.
Yet Mr. Romney still faces more of a challenge in the Electoral College and must win more of the battleground states than does Mr. Obama, who won all of them four years ago.
Though they had been basking in their new sense of momentum, Mr. Romney's aides acknowledged that their hardest work could still lie ahead. They were hoping to break through Mr. Obama's firewall of supportive states while seeking new opportunities in places previously believed to be slipping out of reach, like New Hampshire and Nevada.
Underlying it all will be a defining fight, as Mr. Obama and his allies seek to recreate the image of Mr. Romney as a plutocrat whose policies will punish the middle class. Television ads from Democratic groups began appearing on Monday, reprising the accusations that Mr. Romney killed jobs to make a profit at Bain Capital.
Mr. Romney's aides say voters now know him well enough to reject that image. They say they will continue to present Mr. Romney as a credible leader whose plans have a specific appeal to women, who have provided Mr. Obama much of his support in polls.
Heading into the final phase of their advertising war, Mr. Romney and Mr. Obama have contrasting imperatives.
Mr. Romney is seeking to win over the last remaining undecided voters -- many of them 2008 Obama supporters -- by presenting himself as a credible president ready to work in the bipartisan manner swing voters crave. Mr. Obama has to keep that from happening.
And that is making for a jarring contrast during the commercial breaks -- giving Mr. Romney the opening to show himself as the transcendent politician of a sort Mr. Obama has sought to be as Mr. Obama pounds away at him in his commercials.
The question for Mr. Obama is whether attacks on Mr. Romney's business record can still work. Aides to Mr. Romney argue that Mr. Obama and his allies ran so many ads painting Mr. Romney as plutocrat whose policies would harm the middle class that they turned him into a caricature. It was shattered when he showed up as someone else -- himself, they say -- on the debate stage.
''He wiped out millions of dollars in attack ads portraying Mitt Romney as a rich guy from Bain Capital,'' Senator John McCain said.
Democrats say they are confident about the continued power of their attacks against Mr. Romney based on his business practices at Bain Capital, as well as on his secretly taped remarks that 47 percent of Americans are so reliant on government they will not take responsibility for themselves.
''It's not that this line of questioning of his business record doesn't have salience,'' said Bill Burton, a senior strategist with Priorities USA Action, a ''super PAC'' supporting Mr. Obama. ''It's just that as we get to the end of the campaign folks need a reminder.''
And Obama campaign officials argue that the line of attack is precisely what is behind his continued edge in polls in the Midwest.
The best path to victory for Mr. Romney is to win Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Ohio -- and one more state, with campaign advisers putting Colorado at the top of the list.
The narrowest path to victory for Mr. Obama is by winning Ohio, Wisconsin and at least one other state -- the president's personal top favorite, aides say, is Iowa. Along with other safely Democratic states, that would be enough to block Mr. Romney from winning.
As a sign of how tight the election could be, the president is heading to New Hampshire on Saturday to avoid what one aide described as ''the Al Gore problem.'' In 2000, Mr. Gore lost New Hampshire to George W. Bush, which made the entire presidential race hinge on Florida.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/23/us/politics/campaign-moods-shift-as-contest-tightens.html
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GRAPHIC: PHOTO: A supporter listened to Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Monday at a rally in Canton, Ohio. (PHOTOGRAPH BY MICHAEL F. McELROY FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)
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October 23, 2012 Tuesday
Late Edition - Final
Casting Dual Roles, At Treasury And the Fed
BYLINE: By ANDREW ROSS SORKIN
SECTION: Section B; Column 0; Business/Financial Desk; DEALBOOK; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1464 words
For the last couple of months, there has been a parlor game on Wall Street and in Washington about who will become the next Treasury secretary. After all, Timothy F. Geithner has made it clear he plans to be out of that office at the end of the year whether President Obama is re-elected or not.
But there is another wrinkle in the parlor game calculus: Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, is likely to need a successor, too. If Mitt Romney wins the presidency, he has already pledged he will replace Mr. Bernanke, whose term as chairman ends in January 2014, in just over 15 months. However, Mr. Bernanke has told close friends that even if Mr. Obama wins, he probably will not stand for re-election.
That would be a one-two punch, with two of the most important jobs in the nation up for grabs. And over the last couple of years, especially at the depth of the financial crisis, the relationship between the two people in those roles has been increasingly important. They are the equivalent of roles in a buddy movie.
Lots of names are regularly bandied about for both positions. But they are not always thought about in tandem. So here is a field guide to handicapping the next Treasury secretary and Federal Reserve chairman:
The top Democratic name that pops up when discussing the Treasury position is usually Erskine Bowles, the former White House chief of staff under President Bill Clinton who reinvented himself with his Simpson-Bowles bipartisan plan to reduce the deficit. The business community, on both sides, appear to love the plan and say they love him.
About a year ago, when Mr. Geithner first told the president that he wanted to step down - before the president persuaded him to stick around for another year - Mr. Bowles was at, or near, the top of the list, according to people involved in the process. That may have changed, however: Mr. Bowles has privately criticized the president to business leaders as he has sought to gain support for his plan.
Some of that criticism has made its way back to the president, these people said, so it is unclear how strongly Mr. Obama would support him.
Another, perhaps more intriguing idea has made the rounds: Mr. Bowles as a Romney appointee. Several supporters of Mr. Romney have pitched him and his team on the idea. An appointment of Mr. Bowles under Mr. Romney would be a quick and clever way to show that he wants to reach across the aisle and find bipartisan ways to comprise.
Among the names on Wall Street that are thrown around, virtually none has a real shot, if for no other reason than, well, they work on Wall Street. Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, once considered a contender, is off the list. He recently told Vanity Fair, "I intend to be here for many more years," adding, "and I will not run for office."
Laurence Fink, chief executive of BlackRock, the asset management juggernaut, has been a big supporter of the president and has told friends he would love the job, but people close to the administration say it is unlikely he would get it, given his title and his firm's previous relationship as an adviser to the Treasury.
The same most likely can be said of Roger Altman, chairman of Evercore Partners and a former deputy Treasury secretary, who is well liked by the administration but may be unable to shed the "investment banker" baggage.
And then there is Kenneth Chenault, the chief executive of American Express. Consider him a dark horse candidate, but perhaps the only person connected to the world of finance who would have a shot. His name was put on a list last summer when Mr. Geithner was considering leaving, people briefed on the list said. Given his history - an African-American who made his way up the ranks at American Express starting in 1981 - he could be the perfect mix of finance background and market experience, but one step removed from Wall Street banker.
The chances of an executive from what people in Washington call a "real company" - as in, not a financial business - also do not appear good. The one name that is buzzed about most, Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook, is likely to be off the table after Facebook's problematic I.P.O.
Here's a wild card: Dan Doctoroff, chief executive of Bloomberg L.P. and a former deputy mayor of New York under Mayor Michael Bloomberg. He is hardly campaigning for the job, but his name was put on an internal list at the Treasury Department last summer, these people said, though it is unclear whether he would want the position.
So who is most likely to get the job under President Obama? Drum roll, please. Jacob Lew.
Huh? If you're a business person, you might be asking, Mr. Lew who? That is probably the biggest knock against him, which gives everyone else on the list a chance. Mr. Lew is Mr. Obama's chief of staff, which makes him very confirmable. A former lawyer and career technocrat, he does not have much of a business background - he was briefly chief operating officer of Citigroup's Alternative Investments unit, between the Clinton and Obama administrations - but the president is very comfortable with him, and that can go a long way.
Now, on to the role of Federal Reserve chairman under President Obama.
It is slim pickings. At the top of the list is Lawrence Summers, Treasury secretary under President Clinton and director of the National Economic Council for President Obama. He's a serious economist who knows his numbers and has a worldview that is similar to the president's. He would be expected to continue the loose money policy of Mr. Bernanke.
But one of the knocks against Mr. Summers is that he has a reputation for not playing well with others. He has had his own run-ins with the president. And if you consider the Treasury secretary and Federal Reserve chairman as a tag team, you would have to be confident that whomever you pick for Treasury secretary would get along well with Mr. Summers.
There are a couple of other names in the Democratic economist world, but virtually all of them would be long shots: Janet L. Yellen, the vice chairwoman of the Federal Reserve. She would be the first woman to run the Federal Reserve and could provide some continuity. Alan Krueger, an economist who was briefly an assistant secretary of the Treasury for economic policy under President Obama, is less of a classic choice, but is considered highly by the president.
If you want to be really daring, let's add one more name to the list, perhaps the perfect candidate from the president's perspective: Mr. Geithner. He would have had a year to recover from his current position and may have tired of the speaking circuit. Given his former role as the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York during the financial crisis, he would bring steadiness to the job with Mr. Bernanke's departure, and a level of comfort for the president.
Now, if Mr. Romney wins the presidency, the chessboard for possible appointments for Treasury secretary and Federal Reserve chairman becomes a little more crowded.
Glenn Hubbard, who headed the Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush and is a top adviser to Mr. Romney, is often mentioned as a top candidate for the Federal Reserve job - and the Treasury secretary job. It is likely that he would get one of the two.
So the question is, who gets the other? If Mr. Hubbard takes the Treasury secretary job, the other candidates for Federal Reserve chairman are N. Gregory Mankiw, who also headed the Council of Economic Advisers, and John B. Taylor, a Stanford economist, though he is considered more of a long shot.
If Mr. Hubbard gets the Federal Reserve job, however, the Treasury role becomes wide open.
Robert B. Zoellick, former president of the World Bank, is said to be among the names in the hopper for the Treasury secretary job. (He was previously a managing director at Goldman Sachs, but his role at the World Bank may have cleansed him of his Wall Street association and Mr. Romney is less concerned about ties to finance given his own background.)
Also on the list is Rob Portman, the senator from Ohio, who has become very close to Mr. Romney and knows a spreadsheet: he was director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Bush. Whether Mr. Romney would be willing to give up Mr. Portman's seat in the Senate is a question mark.
Finally, there is Mike Leavitt, the former governor of Utah, who is a close confidant and adviser to Mr. Romney. He is likely to get a big role in Mr. Romney's cabinet.
Oddly enough, given Wall Street's support for Mr. Romney, there are very few bankers or other business people on his short lists.
Whoever gets these two roles, let's hope this buddy movie isn't too much of a thriller.
This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.
URL: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/10/22/casting-dual-roles-at-treasury-and-the-fed/
LOAD-DATE: October 23, 2012
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GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: Erskine Bowles, left, and Senator Rob Portman have both been mentioned as potential candidates for Treasury secretary. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY ALEX WONG/GETTY IMAGES) (B10)
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October 23, 2012 Tuesday
Was There a Bankruptcy Alternative for the Automakers?
BYLINE: STEPHEN J. LUBBEN
SECTION: BUSINESS
LENGTH: 517 words
HIGHLIGHT: Mitt Romney has argued for a more traditional Chapter 11 bankruptcy for General Motors and Chrysler, without any direct government involvement. But at the time, that might not have been possible.
Some months ago,I predicted that we would finally move on from the overheated rhetoricsurrounding the automotive bankruptcy cases. After all, even Paul D. Ryan supported the Obama administration on this point.
Boy, was I wrong.
General Motors and Chrysler made another appearance last night, this in the foreign policy debate.
The dispute between the Obama and Romney campaign turns on a 2008 opinion article that Mitt Romney wrote in The New York Times entitled "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt." The Obama campaign focuses on the title, the Romney campaign on the end of the piece, where he urges that the auto companies go through a "managed bankruptcy."
Neither campaign disputes the need for bankruptcy inthe Chapter 11 sense. The crucial issue is whether Mr. Romney's article was actually advocating something like bankruptcy in the Chapter 7 sense: appoint a trustee and liquidate.
Mr. Romney may not have actually advocated Chapter 7 for G.M. or Chrysler, but his ideas about a "managed bankruptcy" might have lead to the same place.
He has generally argued for a more traditional Chapter 11 case,without any direct government involvement. In his opinion article, he did suggest that the government might guarantee debtor-in-possession loans for the automakers.
That would have been a perfectly viable plan in 2006 or early 2007, when syndicated debtor-in-possession loans were still widely available. These would have been very large loans, but it's not impossible that they could have been arranged.
The question is whether this would have been viable in late 2008 or early 2009, and there I think we have to say thatthe answer is plainly "no."
Traditionally, the top providers of debtor-in-possession loans have been financial institutions like Bank of America, GE Capital, Citigroupand Wachovia. Lehman Brothers also participated in a fair number of such loans.
After Sept. 15, 2008, when Lehman filed for bankruptcy, none of these institutions were in a place to provide what would have been the largest debtor-in-possession loan ever in the case of General Motors. The only way the government guarantee would have changed this is if it were nothing more than a fig leaf, disguising what would have been for all intents a government-financed debtor-in-possession loan.
I don't think the Romney campaign is arguing for something like that, which is essentially just an opaque version of the actual policy adopted by the Obama administration. After all, in another article Mr. Romney termed the Obama approach "crony capitalism on a grand scale."
Ultimately, the Romney policy is one that advocates a private Chapter 11 solution that was likely to break down at the time it was put into effect, resulting in either the need for the government to step in and save G.M. and Chrysler at a point where they might have been beyond saving.
Vendors and employees tend to stay away if it looks as if they won't get paid.
Or G.M. and Chrysler might have converted their Chapter 11 cases to Chapter 7 cases.
With Election Nearing, Wall Street Ponders a Romney Presidency
Fact-Checking Obama's 'Kiss' to Wall Street
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October 23, 2012 Tuesday
Couple Talks About Romney's Aid to Their Son in New Crossroads Ad
BYLINE: JEREMY W. PETERS
SECTION: US; politics
LENGTH: 314 words
HIGHLIGHT: One of the more compelling stories from Mitt Romney's time as a senior member of the Mormon Church is the subject of a new television commercial produced by a super PAC that has, until now, supported the Republican nominee mostly through attack ads.
One of the more compelling stories from Mitt Romney's time as a senior member of the Mormon Church is the subject of a new television commercial produced by a super PAC that has, until now, supported the Republican nominee mostly through attack ads.
The commercial, which was produced by Crossroads GPS, the group run with the help of Karl Rove and other top Republican strategists, features Ted and Pat Oparowski, a couple who lost their young son to cancer 30 years ago.
They firsttold their story to a national audience at the Republican National Convention in August. But now they will start sharing it with voters in swing states, in hopes of pushing Mitt Romney over the edge.
Mr. Romney helped the young man, David, prepare to die as his non-Hodgkins lymphoma worsened. Mr. Romney visited David in the hospital and helped him draft a will so he could give his possessions, like a skateboard and model rockets, away to his friends.
"He chose what he wanted to wear," Ms. Oparowski says as her voice trembles. "He wanted to wear his Boy Scout uniform. And he chose to have Mitt give the eulogy at his funeral."
Then, offering the kind of humanizing praise of Mr. Romney that his campaign has often been short on, Ms. Oparowski adds, "He cares about people and about their needs. I think he's going to be able to get us back on track, I really do."
The ad ends with a gentle push: "Please Vote. Mitt Romney for President."
The ad is notable not just for its content but also for where it is airing. It had its debut in Wisconsin on Tuesday morning, a state that is suddenly flush with Republican ad dollars now that the Romney campaign and its allies see a path to victory there.
The Caucus Click: Biden Weighs In
September, November: 40 Precious Days to Spend on Early Vote
Romney Won't Play the Lottery
In Wisconsin Speech, Romney Makes His Case Against Obama
The Early Word: Final Round
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October 23, 2012 Tuesday
How the Presidential Campaign Is Being Viewed Around the World
BYLINE: THE NEW YORK TIMES
LENGTH: 2360 words
HIGHLIGHT: Times correspondents report on how the election in the United States is seen in a half-dozen countries.
As our Moscow correspondent Ellen Barry reports, the way news organizations in other countries portray the United States' presidential campaign "reveals as much about how they see themselves as it does about the American political process."
The same can be said for much of the global conversation on social media platforms during Monday night's final presidential debate on foreign policy. Some noted on Twitter that their countries were not visible at all, as neither President Obama nor Mitt Romney discussed the debt crisis in Europe; India; South Africa; or the thousands of people killed in the drug war in Mexico.
In the Middle East and North Africa, others, including this blogger from Beirut, commented that both candidates bestowed much attention on Israel without discussing Palestinians.
Okay if I am an Israeli u convinced me to elect u as a president (both of u), if I am an #Arab do u even care abt my opinion? #debate
- Beirutiyat (@Beirutiyat)23 Oct 12
Elsewhere around the world, our correspondents shared these reports about how the campaign is being viewed in Brazil, China, Germany, Japan, Poland and South Korea.
The View From Brazil
The main newspapers in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro feature daily coverage of the race, analyzing every shift in the polls and sending correspondents to interview voters in states including Colorado, Nevada and New Hampshire.
Shock emerged in Brazil and other countries, for instance, over Mr. Romney's assertion in the Oct. 3 debate that he would end the subsidy for PBS, as previously reportedon The Lede. The claim by Mr. Romney focused attention not only on the issue of government assistance for public broadcasting, an idea that enjoys broad support in Brazil, but also the deep cultural ties between the United States and Brazil. After all, a Brazilian version of "Sesame Street," called "Vila Sésamo," was first broadcast in the 1970s, including a character in the prominent role of Garibaldo, or Big Bird.
Reflecting a broad current of support in Brazil for President Obama, Brazilian news media appeared to be relieved when the Obama campaign released ads attacking Mr. Romney for suggesting that PBS could lose its funding.
Yet while American campaigns still provoke interest in Brazil, other issues are gaining prominence. This week's issue of Veja, Brazil's most influential news magazine, offered an example of this shift in its cover article. It had nothing to do with Mr. Obama or Mr. Romney; instead, it discussed the ushering in of new political leadership in China, which has surpassed the United States as Brazil's largest trading partner. -SIMON ROMERO
The View From China
The timing of the American presidential vote - just two days before the opening of the 18th Communist Party Congress - has meant that despite the campaign's anti-China themes, it has attracted little attention in China. But there is no doubt that the government is monitoring the election, and officials in top financial institutions are well informed, and concerned, about the combat against China in the campaign, experts say.
After the debate last week when the candidates vied for anti-China barbs, the Chinese Foreign Ministry chided the candidates, suggesting that they raise the level of their discourse. "We hope the U.S. Republican and Democratic candidates will get rid of the impact of election politics and do more things conducive to China-U.S. mutual trust and cooperation," saida Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hong Lei.
Until the first debate between Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney, when the president fared poorly, the Chinese took it almost for granted that Mr. Obama would be re-elected. But political experts say that China would find a way to work with Mr. Romney, whose business background is considered a plus by some. Though his threat to name China a currency manipulator for keeping the renminbi at an artificially low level is not appreciated, analysts say he would find it difficult to follow through on his pledge because the value of China's currency against the dollar has risen substantially in recent years. Meanwhile, Mr. Obama's record on China has been viewed with increasing skepticism.
"There has been a downturn in the relationship in the last two years because he and Hillary Clinton announced the rebalancing," a plan to deploy more military assets to Asia, said Sun Zhe, director of the Center for U.S.-China Relations at Tsinghua University in Beijing. -JANE PERLEZ
The View From Germany
A lot has changed since Mr. Obama's race to the White House electrified the world, overturning expectations about race at home and abroad and bringing "Yes, we can," into the political lexicon around the world.
At the start of the presidential primary season in December 2007, Christoph von Marschall, Washington bureau chief for Germany's daily Tagesspiegel newspaper, published a book titled "Barack Obama - The Black Kennedy." When primary season rolled around this year, Mr. Marschall brought out a book with a very different name and a very different feel.
"What's Wrong With the Amis," the book was called, using the German nickname for Americans, with the subtitle "Why They Hate What We Love About Barack Obama." When he returns home for reading tours and other public events, the two most frequent questions he receives illustrate the gap between Germans and Americans on the president, Mr. Marschall says: Why didn't Mr. Obama close Guantánamo Bay, and what do Americans have against health care?
Christoph von Marschall being interviewed by Manouchehr Shamsrizi, a blogger working for a Bertelsmann Foundation project, at the America Center in Hamburg.
Andreas Etges, an expert on American history at Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich, said the 2008 campaign broke precedents in the German news media, with front-page articles in daily newspapers about state primary victories by Hillary Rodham Clinton or Mr. Obama. This year, Mr. Etges said, despite the disillusionment factor, the coverage started early again, with German news media keeping people abreast of every fluctuation in the race for the Republican nomination.
"It's definitely way more than Germans report on any other elections internationally, even on our neighbors," Mr. Etges said. In Berlin, many Germans pride themselves on their fluency in the nuts and bolts of the horse race - the breaking polls in the swing states, the intricacies of the Electoral College. "In spite of all the talk about American influence going down, the interest Germans have shown still illustrates what importance they think the American elections will have," Mr. Etges said. -NICHOLAS KULISH
The View From Japan
Interest in American presidential elections is always high in Japan, which relies on the United States to be both its military protector and an important market for exports.
As in past elections, the major newspapers and television news programs have run daily reports on the campaign that can rival those of American news media in their level of analysis and detail.
However, political and media analysts say the interest is much lower this time than in the 2008 election, which mirrored events in Japan at the time. In 2009, Japan held a historic election of its own, when an opposition party took power, ending almost six decades of virtually uninterrupted one-party rule by the Liberal Democrats.
Analysts said that as Japan gropes toward a stronger multiparty system, interest is high in how the United States' system works, and particularly in party primaries. Parties in Japan choose their leaders by an internal party vote, and although internal votes have become more public and transparent in recent years, Japanese voters still feel they want a bigger voice in the process.
"In Japan, the election of party heads is still not open to the people," said Takeshi Suzuki, a communications professor at Meiji University in Tokyo. "There is intense attention here in how America, our senior colleague in democracy, chooses its presidents."
Mr. Suzuki said this was particularly apparent in one way that coverage this time has been different than in the past: Japanese reporters are spending more time on the campaign trail, particularly in closely fought states like Ohio. In the past, reports often dealt with abstract polling data and general observations, he said. This time, Mr. Suzuki said, reporters have done more on-the-ground coverage of whether the candidates have succeeded in wooing women or minorities, and the prospects for states' going red or blue.
Analysts said interest was also keen in economic policy, largely because growth in the Japanese economy still relies heavily on whether American consumers buy its cars and electronics. This has led to close attention of the candidates' economic agendas, and particularly on issues important to Japan like whether the United States will prop up the dollar, which is near historic lows against the yen.
"The only chance in the short term for the yen to go down is for the United States economy to pick up," said Tatsuhiko Yoshizaki, chief economist at the Sojitz Research Institute. "The expectations are high, so people in the market are watching this one very closely."
Initial reaction in Japan to the final debate, on foreign policy, was dominated by unease at the focus on the Middle East.
"Too many topics went ignored, including the euro crisis, the Guantánamo base, immigration, nuclear nonproliferation, global warning. And of course, relations with Japan and the U.S. troops in Okinawa," Daisuke Nakai, a New York-based staff writer for the daily Asahi Shimbun, wrote on Twitter. Okinawans have long been upset at what they see as their disproportionate burden in hosting more than half of the American troops in Japan; their grievances spiked recently with reports that a woman was raped there by two American sailors.
"Mr. Obama reiterated that the United States is a Pacific nation, but at least judging from this debate, I don't get the sense that the region is a priority," Mr. Nakai said.
Japan has become increasingly concerned about China's growing power in the region, including its claims to an island chain controlled by Japan.
-MARTIN FACKLER, HISAKO UENO, MAKIKO INOUE AND HIROKO TABUCHI
The View From Poland
In Poland, one of Mr. Romney's stops on his overseas tour this past summer, all the major newspapers, magazines, online platforms and television stations are giving the election considerable air time, although there too the intensity of the coverage has dipped since the frenzy of attention after the last campaign. That has not stopped leading outlets from throwing manpower at the race.
On Twitter, Mr. Romney's criticism about the decision to remove missile systems in Poland prompted discussion in both Poland and the United States, with a commentator saying the move was intended to win Polish-American votes.
Romney: pulling our missile systems out of #Poland was unfortunate #debate
- Anna Zamejc (@stell7)23 Oct 12
Mitt makes a beeline for Polish-American voters in Ohio on missile defense ...in #Poland. #debate #2012debate #RCWdebate #tcot
- Tom Nichols (@TheWarRoom_Tom)23 Oct 12
The state-run television network TVP will send five additional correspondents to the United States for Election Day and will operate with six film crews. The evening news will be broadcast from Washington on Nov. 6 and 7. The biggest commercial television station, TVN, is sending three additional correspondents to help its usual correspondent cover Election Day.
In spite of the serious repercussions that Mr. Romney's tough stance on Russia could have for Poland, many people there are more focused on enjoying the gaffes and the jokes. Less earnest news outlets are running items about light subjects like cookies with the candidates' faces on them or a poll of which candidates' wives looked better when they both wore pink to the debate. -HANNA KOZLOWSKA
The View From South Korea
After the second presidential debate, some newspapers in South Korea dedicated a full page or two to the subject, displaying photos and graphics and charts and describing how President Obama turned more aggressive. The daily Chosun Ilbo reported that "China," as well as "jobs" and "economy," were key words in presidential debates, and that that seemed to reflect American unease over China rising as a "superpower" and what it called a populist political need to "blame the American economic crisis on China."
Still, South Koreans are preoccupied with their own presidential election in December, and they see little difference between Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney on North Korea - the one issue in the American election that really interests many South Koreans.
"In the past, people here believed that there was a clear difference between the Republican and Democratic Parties on North Korea," said Koh Yu-hwan, a political scientist and North Korea expert in Dongguk University in Seoul. "But after Obama came into office, such a difference was gone and in South Korean eyes, Obama was not that different from Bush when it comes to North Korea."
Mr. Koh said the outcome of the election could affect Korea's vote, because "liberals and conservatives here will argue that their candidate can work better with the new U.S. president. People here don't like a discord between Washington and Seoul on their North Korea policies." -CHOE SANG-HUN
For some, the debate raised more questions than answers.
Anne-Marie Slaughter, a professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University, posted on Twitter:
Unbelievable. An entire fopo debate with NO mention of Europe, Eurozone, Africa, anywhere in Asia other than China.
- Anne-Marie Slaughter (@SlaughterAM)23 Oct 12
Stayed up the Obama v Romney debate & suffered all day at work. Didn't help i despise coffee. Was it worth it ? Aint got a clue. Just had to
- Stuart (@The_Benevolent)23 Oct 12
A Railroad Rarity: Train Arrives Five Days Early
Romney's Threat to Big Bird Sows Confusion Abroad, and Feeds It at Home
Video Reports From Japan, Taiwan and China on Confrontation Off Disputed Islands
Controversy after German Soccer Team Visits Auschwitz
Leaked Video Shows Clash at Sea Between Chinese and Japanese Ships
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(The Caucus)
October 23, 2012 Tuesday
Indiana Senate Candidate Draws Fire for Rape Comments
BYLINE: JONATHAN WEISMAN
SECTION: US; politics
LENGTH: 575 words
HIGHLIGHT: The delicate issue of pregnancies resulting from rape rattled another campaign for the Senate when Indiana's Republican Senate nominee, Richard Mourdock, said a life conceived by rape "is something that God intended to happen."
The delicate issue of pregnancies resulting from rape rattled another campaign for the Senate Tuesday when Indiana's Republican Senate nominee, Richard Mourdock, said a life conceived by rape "is something that God intended to happen" and must be protected.
The comments came during a debate with Mr. Mourdock, the state treasurer; the Libertarian candidate Andrew Horning; and Representative Joe Donnelly, the Democrat locked in an unexpectedly tight contest for the seat now held by the Republican Senator Richard Lugar. All three were trying to distinguish themselves, since they all are identified as opposing abortion.
"I've struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize that life is that gift from God," Mr. Mourdock said. "And even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen."
The comments echoed back to the Republican Senate nominee Todd Akin's defense of his position opposing abortion in all instances. Mr. Akin, a Congressman from Missouri, said, "If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down." That comment set off a firestorm, with Republicans and Democrats alike castigating Mr. Akin and Republicans pressuring him to leave his race against the Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill. Mr. Akin refused, and a seat once widely expected to go to the Republicans in November now could stay with the Democrats.
Democrats, who have waged a fierce campaign against Mr. Mourdock, labeling him a Tea Party extremist, hoped lightning had struck twice.
"I think rape is a heinous and violent crime in every instance," Mr. Donnnelly said in a statement after the debate. "The God I believe in and the God I know most Hoosiers believe in, does not intend for rape to happen -- ever. What Mr. Mourdock said is shocking, and it is stunning that he would be so disrespectful to survivors of rape."
Mr. Donnelly, a Catholic, is also opposed to abortion. But the response forced Mr. Mourdock to backpedal.
"God creates life, and that was my point," Mr. Mourdock said. "God does not want rape, and by no means was I suggesting that he does."
The back and forth comes as Democrats -- from President Obama on down -- have tried to widen their advantage with female voters and play up the abortion issue. The Indiana Senate race is considered to be leaning Republican, but the state, which voted for Mr. Obama in 2008, is not in play this year. That was expected to give a slight edge to Mr. Mourdock, who defeated Mr. Lugar in a heated Republican primary.
Democrats quickly moved to capitalize on the controversy. The Democratic National Committee pointed to an advertisement that Mitt Romney cut for Mr. Mourdock, and asked whether the Republican presidential nominee would repudiate his endorsement.
"Richard Mourdock's rape comments are outrageous and demeaning to women," said Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee. "Unfortunately, they've become part and parcel of the modern Republican Party's platform toward women's health, as Congressional Republicans like Paul Ryan have worked to outlaw all abortions and even narrow the definition of rape. As Mourdock's most prominent booster and the star of Mourdock's current campaign ads, Mitt Romney should immediately denounce these comments and request that the ad featuring him speaking directly to camera on Mourdock's behalf be taken off the air."
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She the People
October 23, 2012 Tuesday 10:52 PM EST
Romney, the old softy, is wooing undecided women with a sweet new tune
BYLINE: Melinda Henneberger
LENGTH: 871 words
How softly he spoke, his forehead glistening. He babbled a little - not unheard of at such a moment - and began, "It's nice to maybe funny this time, not on purpose. We'll see what happens."
Yes, throughout Monday night's final presidential debate - and oh, how both participants will miss them - Mitt Romney tried to make himself attractive to the small number of perhaps less informed but definitely influential women in America who still haven't chosen a candidate. And to that end, Romney was 'Moderate Mitt' on the military front, peace-loving as never before.
"[W]e can't kill our way out of this mess," the candidate said of the war on terror. Apparently - and correctly, I believe - having concluded that likability matters more than foreign policy acumen to those who have yet to decide how they'll vote, the former governor of Massachusetts went easy on his opponent, even passing on the chance to exploit the president's vulnerability on the attack that killed our ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, and three other Americans on Sept. 11. He inched closer to the president on a number of matters, suddenly optimistic that the 2014 timeline for getting our troops out of Afghanistan would work out just fine.
And in a stunning recreation of the John Kerry cartoon character created by his party in 2004, Romney even praised a plan hatched when "Arab scholars came together, organized by the U.N., to look at how we can help the world reject these terrorists." Can you imagine the derision if any Democrat running for president said the U.N.-sponsored answer lay in economic development, education, and gender equality?
Still making up for his sleepy presentation in the first debate, Obama, on the other hand, began the evening with the hungry look of an eagle eyeing dinner. He pressed every advantage, armed with such zingers as the joke that Romney's comment naming Russia as our chief geopolitical foe was so outdated that "the 1980s, they're now calling to ask for their foreign policy back."
There's nothing wrong with looking alive, mind you; Obama was sharp where Romney wobbled. But did Romney lose the debate and win the day?
The line that Obama's supporters liked best, about how there are fewer bayonets and horses now, too, than in good old 1916, may have been a big hit in New York, but in Norfolk, I'm not so sure. As my friend Elizabeth De Angelo, a Navy vet, saw it, "Obama's condescending comments about horses made no sense" and "only sounds funny if you don't understand how the Navy functions."
"We have these things called aircraft carriers, where planes land," the president said sarcastically, helping himself not at all with the sensitive sorts who are late-minute deciders. "We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines." If there's one thing the most moderate of women voters can live without, it's a heaping helping of disdain.
Yet nothing said in any of the debates was as ugly or ill-advised as the new Obama ad with the tag line, "Mitt Romney. Not one of us" - a shopworn slogan featured in racist campaigns over the last half-century. The president's advisers insist that the phrase refers only to Romney's indifference to the auto industry and other workers, but what happened to giving the voter a little credit? And how is this different from the offensive Republican line that we're "taking our country back" next month, though from whom is never spelled out, and doesn't have to be. If Mitt Romney's "not one of us" either, is that on the basis of religion, because he's a Mormon? Or class, because he grew up in privilege?
Sometimes, I wonder whether, after the Citizen's United Supreme Court decision that's brought more money to politics than ever, Barack Obama will be the last president who started with nothing but smarts and worked his way to the Oval Office. So to see his campaign stoop to painting Romney as "the other" is quite a letdown.
As Obama the conciliator seeks to convince us that he and his challenger could not be more different, Romney has set off just as briskly in the opposite direction. Not so long ago, he told us that our whole way of life was on the line in this election. Now, speaking to those last moderate holdouts who've yet to make a decision on this election, he mixes jabs on Israel, Iran, and that mythical Obama "apology tour," with agreement on Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and drone strikes. We're not so different after all, this new Romney suggests.
The self-immolating '12 political tell-all "The Payoff: Why Wall Street Always Wins," by former White House lawyer, Joe Biden staffer and lobbyist Jeff Connaughton certainly made that point convincingly, showing how on both sides of the aisle and both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, meaningful financial reform was never even a goal after the '08 meltdown. And with Barack Obama adopting campaign slogans from Jesse Helms, maybe it's time to wonder whether Mitt "I concurred" Romney has more of a point than I wish were the case.
Melinda Henneberger is a Post political writer and anchors the paper's She the People blog. Follow her on Twitter at @MelindaDC.
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The Fix
October 23, 2012 Tuesday 9:06 PM EST
Why neither Obama nor Romney will "pull out" of any swing state
BYLINE: Chris Cillizza
LENGTH: 626 words
For all the speculation swirling in the political world about President Obama or Mitt Romney giving up on one swing (or semi-swing) state or another, here's the reality: Neither campaign is going to stop spending - and spending heavily - in every possible swing state between now and Nov. 6.
Why not? Because they don't have to.
The idea of campaigns "pulling out" of swing states in order to conserve resources for other states where their prospects look better is, frankly, antiquated.
Those sort of pull-out decisions happened regularly between the establishment of public financing of presidential campaigns in the wake of Watergate in the early 1970s and 2008 - the last election where at least one of the nominees accepted public financing. (Who could forget John McCain's decision to pull out of Michigan in 2008, John Kerry's decision to forego spending more money in Missouri and Arizona in 2004 or Al Gore pulling out of Ohio in 2000?)
Neither Obama nor Romney accepted public financing for the general election, meaning that they can raise and spend as much as they can, well, raise and spend. And that means never having to say "I'm sorry, it's over" to a swing state - even one where the trend line in polling isn't headed in your direction.
Compare what McCain, the last presidential nominee who accepted public financing, had to work with financially, and what Romney/Obama have to spend. By accepting public financing, McCain got $84 million to spend from the time he became the party's nominee on Sept. 4, 2008 until election day. At the end of September 2012 - so, roughly, one month later than McCain got his $84 million in 2008 - Romney had $183 million left to spend on the race while Obama had $149 million.
What that money means is that the campaigns can pursue a "both/and" (or more accurately a "both/and/and/and") strategy when it comes to spending millions of dollars on ads - and get-out-the-vote operations - in swing states.
Even if Obama is slipping in North Carolina, there's no question the race remains close enough to justify continuing to advertise (and advertise heavily) in it to ensure that if things change even slightly for the better for him in the last 14 days the campaign will be right there to take advantage.
The overload of cash that both candidates are carrying also poses another interesting question: Why not, in the final two weeks of the race, take a shot to move numbers in a swing(ish) state where there is relatively little presidential advertising on the air at the moment?
So, for Romney, why not put a few million dollars into Pennsylvania or Michigan just to see if the numbers move? Unlike years past, that money doesn't have to come out of the cash you can spend in Ohio, Virginia or Florida. At the moment, Romney isn't doing that - he has spent a total of $0 on TV in Michigan and Pennsylvania combined - but keep an eye out to see if he uses a little bit of money to make a run at one or both of them. (Pennsylvania is the far more likely choice due to its lack of any significant early voting.)
How then should you judge what the swingiest of the swing states are in these final two weeks if advertising dollars are no longer a good measure? Easy. Watch where the two presidential nominees go. Neither campaign will send their guy to a state that they don't think is winnable. So, Obama is in Ohio and Florida today while Romney is in Nevada and Colorado today. That tells you that all four states belong in the final battlegrounds conversation. By contrast, Obama hasn't been to North Carolina since the conclusion of the Democratic National Convention there in early September.
Where the candidates go - not what they spend - is the truest indication of the states that will decide the election.
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Election 2012
October 23, 2012 Tuesday 8:49 PM EST
Ad watch: Crossroads goes for the heart
BYLINE: Rachel Weiner
LENGTH: 94 words
Crossroads GPS, "Mitt and David"
What it says: "To spend time with a 14-year-old boy in his last days, that, you cannot help but know he's caring. He cares about people and about their needs."
What it means: The ad is a rare personal spot, focused on humanizing Mitt Romney rather than demonizing President Obama. It features Ted and Pat Oparowski, who spoke movingly at the Republican National Convention of the candidate's relationship with their late son David.
Who will see it: It's a $4.1 million buy.
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October 23, 2012 Tuesday 8:12 PM EST
TV stations profit from political pileup
BYLINE: Paul Farhi
SECTION: Style; Pg. C01
LENGTH: 1012 words
So many political ads. So little time. What's a TV station to do?
Faced with an unprecedented flood of commercials for candidates and causes, Washington's TV stations have had to get creative to fit them all in. Some are trimming their regular programming to squeeze in a few more ads, and some are adding more news at other hours.
WTTG (Channel 5), the District's Fox affiliate, for example, began bumping daily reruns of "The Simpsons" on Monday to add an extra half-hour to its 6 p.m. newscast. The expanded "News Edge" program will focus on political news - the kind of programming political advertisers demand most.
WJLA (Channel 7), the area's ABC affiliate, has temporarily added two weekend newscasts to its schedule for the same reason. On Saturday, the station preempted network programming and aired a two-hour movie in prime time in order to create more local ad slots. The station has occasionally shaved time from some of its weekday programming to accommodate an extra political ad or two, said Bill Lord, WJLA's general manager.
"It makes sense, let's put it that way," he says.
Washington's TV stations are the beneficiaries of a record amount of political advertising this fall. During a one-month period that ended Friday, the stations collected $58.6 million from political advertisers, a sixfold increase from the $9.8 million spent on political issues in the same period in 2008, according to an estimate by Campaign Media Analysis Group (CMAG), a tracking firm.
Washington ranks fifth nationwide among TV markets in the number of political ads broadcast during October, according to the firm. In the most recent week tracked (Oct. 11-17), about 5,560 political commercials ran on Washington's broadcast stations.
The deluge is driven by a confluence of events, and by the Washington area's two-state, three-jurisdiction geography.
With Virginia a crucial swing state in the presidential race, President Obama and challenger Mitt Romney, along with allied but independent groups, have poured money into local TV ads to reach viewers in the voter-rich northern part of the state. Senate candidates George Allen (R) and Tim Kaine (D) and their supporters have their own TV ad war going, too, aimed at those same Northern Virginians.
Meanwhile, voters in Maryland are getting bombarded with ads for and against two heavily contested ballot questions, particularly Question 7, which would expand casino gambling to Prince George's County. Proponents and opponents of Question 7 have raised about $56 million for the statewide fight, making the ballot measure more expensive than the past two Maryland gubernatorial campaigns combined.
Good news for Washington's stations, which reach Maryland, Virginia and the District simultaneously.
"This is the biggest political market that there has ever been in this marketplace," says Mark Burdett, the president and general manager of WUSA (Channel 9), the CBS affiliate. "It's the biggest wave you've ever ridden."
Elizabeth Wilner, a vice president of CMAG, characterized it this way: "Washington usually was an island where everyone knew about politics but where people didn't see the same number of ads that other [cities] did. This time, D.C. got on the political [ad] radar early and never fell off."
The crush has left station managers with a problem, albeit a happy one: How to get all of those ads onto the air when the supply of prime airtime is finite?
Federal rules require broadcast stations to sell "reasonable" amounts of commercial airtime to federal candidates, although in practice stations rarely turn away ads from qualified candidates, station managers say. That means that the Romney, Obama, Kaine and Allen campaigns have been able to buy all the airtime they want, eating up much of the available "inventory" of commercial slots.
Nonpolitical advertisers, which typically ramp up their TV advertising at this time of the year in anticipation of the holidays, push up the demand for airtime.
Traffic is so tight that local advertisers say they are having difficulty getting their ads on and are paying more for the ads that do make it. Sam Mansouri, president of Fairfax Hyundai and Fairfax Kia, said the cost of his commercials have risen about 8 to 10 percent recently.
To accommodate more political commercials, stations have cut some of the airtime they devote to promotional messages for their upcoming shows. Another trick: Taking time that is reserved for network ads and converting it into local ad time.
Stations say they are wary of tacking on too many commercials. Viewers notice when the ad breaks increase in a half-hour program, which typically carries about eight minutes of commercials.
Amen to that, says Barbara Levin, a retired Silver Spring resident. Levin, who describes herself as politically active, voices what is probably a widely shared view: Enough already. "If you turn on your TV, you can't help but see the ads," she says. "I am tired of seeing them."
Another person who is fed up is Jim Vance, the venerable anchorman on WRC (Channel 4), the NBC affiliate. In a commentary on Friday, Vance called the ad overload "noise," adding, "I am sick to death of all these campaign ads."
Nevertheless, the stations aren't giving up a good thing. When the ad clutter has grown too thick this fall, they have bumped their usual customers - car dealers, banks, supermarkets - to make room for more "I-approved-this-message" messages. Doing so is generally a distasteful step for the stations, since such preemptions upset their regular customers' ad planning.
Some of the overflow has gone to local cable stations - a less attractive alternative for advertisers, since cable audiences are usually smaller than those of the bigger broadcast stations.
WUSA's Burnett said his station has been in constant contact with its nonpolitical clients to advise them about the ebbs and flows of the ad-traffic jam that will surely last until Nov. 6. "We've planned accordingly, and we're managing it effectively," he says. "But we're not at the finish line yet."
farhip@washpost.com
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October 23, 2012 Tuesday 8:12 PM EST
Surprise GOP challenge has Pa. suddenly looking less blue
BYLINE: Paul Kane
SECTION: A section; Pg. A05
LENGTH: 1207 words
ELKINS PARK, Pa. - Pennsylvania was not supposed to be on the political map this year.
Having gone for the Democrats in every White House contest for the past 20 years, the Keystone State was abandoned early by Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney without a single dollar spent in the critical Philadelphia TV market. Usually a fiercely contested battleground in congressional races - the two parties spent $15 million on the airwaves fighting over three suburban districts here six years ago - the region has no competitive House contests this fall.
And Sen. Robert P. Casey Jr. (D), the scion of a political dynasty, was coasting toward reelection after a huge win in 2006.
But apparently no one told Tom Smith that Pennsylvania was off the grid. The coal industry executive has put $17 million of his own money into the Senate race, and with no competing ads on the air in Philadelphia for weeks, Smith, the GOP's nominee, had a relatively free run at Casey until recently.
The first-time candidate pounded away at Casey as "Senator Zero" for his close relationship to President Obama, turning the letter "O" into a version of Obama's campaign logo. Then came Romney's strong performance in the first presidential debate, and in just a few weeks the Republicans have surged within striking distance of Casey and Obama.
Now, outside interest groups are considering ad buys in the Senate race, which remains a long shot but might be the only chance Republicans have of securing the majority, given their stumbles in other Senate contests. Additionally, Romney's campaign dipped a toe back into Pennsylvania on Saturday when his running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.), held a rally with Smith at Pittsburgh's airport - the first time Ryan or Romney had been in the state in almost a month.
On Sunday, Romney officials said that they were intrigued by the state but that no final decisions had been made on whether to finance ads here. Because of Pennsylvania's restrictive absentee-voting rules - more than 95 percent of ballots will be cast on Election Day - officials said they are leaving open the option of a final sprint of ads.
Most local experts predict an Obama win, but with a smaller margin than his 10-percentage-point victory in 2008. Nonetheless, Pennsylvania is suddenly relevant again, and that's why the Obama campaign dispatched top surrogates last week to give pep talks to workers and volunteers engaged in a final effort to turn out voters.
On Wednesday evening, Joshua Shapiro, the new chairman of the Montgomery County Commission, made the rounds at several offices in Philadelphia as well as in his county, a critical suburban stronghold for Democrats. At his last stop, Shapiro added a plug for Casey, a recognition that the senator could be in trouble. "The key for the president, and for Senator Casey, is here in the suburbs," he told volunteers in Elkins Park.
Shapiro, 40, the first Democratic chairman in the 140 years that Montgomery County has been incorporated, is a symbol of why Pennsylvania has become such fertile ground for Democratic presidential campaigns. Once a bastion of "Rockefeller Republicans," the county has voted Democratic in every presidential contest since 1992. Shapiro's victory in 2011, giving his party its first majority on the three-member council, caught the attention of Obama campaign manager Jim Messina, who summoned Shapiro to Chicago this year to discuss how he won in the suburbs.
The question now, for Obama and Casey, is whether the suburbs have soured on the incumbents. In 2008, Obama won the four large suburban Philadelphia counties - Montgomery, Delaware, Chester and Bucks - by 200,000 votes, including an 80,000-vote margin in Montgomery. Combined with his 480,000-vote edge in Philadelphia, that made Obama unbeatable in the state. Casey, in his 2006 rout of an unpopular incumbent, Rick Santorum (R), also won the southeastern corner by more than 2 to 1.
Republicans, however, believe they have a path to victory in GOP Sen. Pat Toomey's win in 2010. Toomey captured just 16 percent of the vote in Philadelphia, but he won Bucks and Chester counties while running competitively in Montgomery. He won big in the part of Pennsylvania that locals call "the T": the rural area in the middle of the state and into the far northeastern and northwestern corners.
"Pennsylvania's always been in play, in my opinion," Smith said in a recent telephone interview after campaigning with Ryan. "It's pink now, turning red."
Smith was not the first choice of top Republicans here, including Gov. Tom Corbett (R), who supported a different candidate in the April primary. Unknown in the southeast, Smith poured $2 million into the Philadelphia media market in August and September as Casey's campaign held its powder in the expensive market until two weeks ago.
One poll, from Quinnipiac University, showed the two candidates statistically tied in the southeastern suburban counties, as Casey clung to a three-point lead statewide. His campaign released an internal poll from Friday showing the senator ahead by 52 percent to 39 percent. His image as a candidate willing to defy his party on key issues - Casey opposes abortion rights - has the senator receiving more support than most Democrats in the traditionally conservative regions.
Casey was clearly caught off guard by Smith. It's difficult to find a "Casey for Senate" lawn sign in eastern Montgomery County. At the Obama campaign office in Elkins Park, visitors are greeted with literature for the president, the nominee for state attorney general, the local congresswoman and two candidates for state representative - but nothing for Casey.
At a recent Casey event at an electrical workers union hall in Allentown, supporters hounded the senator and his staff for campaign literature and lawn signs, handing over contact information to receive campaign staples.
"We can finish strong," Casey said in an interview, noting the difficulty of running as an incumbent during tough economic times as opposed to six years ago against an unpopular Santorum.
Casey finally began running an ad that links Smith to the Senate conservatives who would overhaul Medicare and Social Security, a key issue for a state that has one of the nation's oldest populations. "This isn't just a one-liner. They are deadly serious," Casey warned supporters.
The aim is to define Smith as a fringe member of the tea party movement. Just as Messina tried to learn from Shapiro's Montgomery County victory, Casey is using similar themes. His ads end with a picture of Smith on a teacup, under the label "Tea Party Tom Smith."
The same admaker ran a similarly hard-hitting spot for Shapiro in 2011, and if the Obama campaign suddenly decides that Pennsylvania is back in play, it probably will use the same themes against Romney.
Once touted as someone who would help the president in other parts of the state, Casey may need to draft Obama's vote-getting operation in the southeastern corner for both incumbents to win. As Shapiro told Obama volunteers last week, they need to come close to replicating those large margins in the city and suburbs. "Every extra Obama vote we get here is going to make the difference," he said.
kanep@washpost.com
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October 23, 2012 Tuesday 8:12 PM EST
With 'one of us,' Obama ad echoes a racial code
BYLINE: Karen Tumulty
SECTION: A section; Pg. A04
LENGTH: 766 words
"Mitt Romney. Not one of us."
That's the tag line to a tough new ad that the Obama campaign is airing in Ohio. But ironically, it echoes a slogan that has been used as a racial code over at least the past half-century.
The context of the Obama ad is very different from some others, in which the phrase "one of us" was used to divide voters along racial lines, but conservative commentators have quickly seized on it.
President Obama's critics said the fact that he would use such loaded language in the hard-fought Ohio race shows how much he has changed since his famous "one America" speech at the 2004 Democratic convention, in which he denounced "those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes."
Charles C.W. Cooke wrote in National Review's Corner blog that Obama is "moving a long way from the famous - if vacuous - 'no red states or blue states' speech."
Added Rick Moran on the American Thinker blog: "Had Romney pulled this on him, we'd need a special two-hour episode of 'Hardball' to deal with the dog-whistle implications."
Obama's chief strategist, David Axelrod, dismissed the criticism. He noted in an interview that the ad focuses on Romney's opposition to the bailout of the auto industry, a large employer in Ohio.
"This goes to something fundamental - first of all, the issue itself is a fundamental issue for Ohio, where one in eight jobs is related to the auto industry. This has to do with a sense of identification with working-class families."
He added: "There's no subtlety about what the spot is about. This is about the economic survival of the auto industry."
Obama, the nation's first black president, has himself been a target of insinuations of otherness, including false but widely circulated suggestions that he was not born in this country and that he is a Muslim. During this presidential campaign, his allies say, they have seen racial coding in accusations that Obama is a "food stamp president" and in popular tea party slogans such as "Take back our country."
Romney has faced mistrust and prejudice as well, regarding his Mormon faith.
The slogan "He's one of us" goes at least as far back as the late 1950s, when segregationist Jimmie Davis used it in his successful campaign for Louisiana governor.
In the decades that followed, other Southern white politicians would also find it effective.
A conservative radio commentator named Jesse Helms (R) was an underdog in his 1972 Senate race in North Carolina against Rep. Nick Galifianakis (D). But he won, in part, because of his campaign pitch: "Jesse Helms: He's one of us."
The slogan was widely recognized as a dig at his opponent's foreign-sounding last name.
"I think the idea was: 'His name sounds different enough. He's not like us,' " the congressman's nephew, actor Zach Galifianakis, told the Toronto Sun in August. Galifianakis and fellow actor Will Ferrell parodied that rough style of Southern politics in their summer movie,"The Campaign."
In 1982, white Republican Webb Franklin won in a court-drawn Mississippi congressional district whose population was 48 percent voting-age African Americans. One of Franklin's television ads featured footage of Confederate monuments and warned, "We cannot forget a heritage that has been sacred through our generations." He also ran with the appeal: "He's one of us."
A three-judge federal court panel in 1984 pointed to that slogan when it wrote, "This inducement to racially polarized voting operated to further diminish the already unrealistic chance for blacks to be elected in majority white voting population districts."
The district lines were redrawn in 1986 by the U.S. Justice Department. In that year's election, Franklin was defeated by Assistant State Attorney General Mike Espy, who became the first African American congressman elected to represent Mississippi since Reconstruction.
Yet "one of us" has retained its currency, even into the 21st century.
"Regrettably, this is not a thing of the past," Robert McDuff, a Jackson, Miss., civil rights lawyer, wrote in the Southern California Review of Law and Social Justice, published by the University of Southern California's Gould School of Law.
In his article, McDuff noted that the slogan reappeared as recently as 2004, when white candidate Samac Richardson, running for a seat on the Mississippi Supreme Court, used it in his advertising against incumbent James Graves, the only African American on that court.
Graves won - after Richardson forced him into a runoff.
tumultyk@washpost.com
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October 23, 2012 Tuesday 8:12 PM EST
For ratings, last debate has a few strikes (and touchdowns) against it
BYLINE: Lisa De Moraes
SECTION: Style; Pg. C04
LENGTH: 840 words
Hopefully, you did not put your money on Monday night's debate to be the highest-rated of the three skirmishes between President Obama and GOP hopeful Mitt Romney.
Although four years ago the first of the three presidential debates attracted the fewest viewers, in this election cycle, network suits forecast that the third debate would be the least-watched.
Not that it makes any difference to them, professionally, because the debates run without ads, so they have no way to monetize them.
Presidential debate ratings have been quite robust this election cycle. Nearly 67 million people watched Romney attack Big Bird while Obama took a nap during the first debate. That's nearly 15 million people more than saw the first presidential debate in 2008.
Virtually the same number - about 66 million - caught last week's second debate, when Obama woke up and Romney brought binders full of women. That's about 2.4 million more folks than watched the second debate in '08.
"The first one was The First One. The second one was, 'Is Obama going to [mess] up?,'[#x200a]" one network exec explained to the TV Column, of the debates' nearly identical numbers.
But Monday's third debate - while sure to be the night's most-watched event, running as it does on a multitude of networks - had three strikes against it:
1. The debate was scheduled to air against Monday Night Football.
ESPN, for its part, was sufficiently concerned about debate viewing that it started running ads last weekend telling fans how to watch "Michigan's own battle Chicago's favorite son" in Boca Raton, Fla., while simultaneously watching the Chicago Bears take on the Detroit Lions on its network.
2. The debate was to air against Game 7 of the National League Championship Series.
Traditionally, Game 7s draw the highest numbers in a series. There's something about a Game 7 that gets even casual baseball viewers to the TV - even viewers who don't care that much about either St. Louis or San Francisco.
3. The debate was set to focus on foreign policy.
Which, the network exec explained, is "something no one cares about - unless we declare war on Lindsay Lohan."
Kids pick Obama
Children have elected President Obama to a second term in a landslide, in Nickelodeon's 2012 Kids Pick the President voting.
Since this franchise began in 1988, kids have correctly picked the POTUS (before the national vote) five out of the past six elections.
More than half a million votes were cast in the network's online poll this time around. Obama received 65 percent of the vote and former governor Mitt Romney received 35 percent, Nickelodeon reported.
Four years ago, children cast a record-setting 2.2 million votes in what Nickelodeon notes is not a scientific poll; then-Sen. Obama was declared the winner, with 51 percent of the vote to Sen. John McCain's 49 percent.
Voting was down because this year, for the first time, Nickelodeon limited voting to one vote per electronic device, to "more closely replicate the actual election, and to ensure the results were more authentic," although kids were able to vote online Oct. 15-22.
There's also no telling how voting might have been affected by Romney's decision to decline to participate in the accompanying "Kids Pick the President" TV special.
Only one candidate - Sen. John F. Kerry in '04 - has declined to participate in the special. Ironically, that year the kids picked Kerry to win - the only time they got it wrong.
'New Girl's' new price
Sunday NFL football has surpassed "American Idol" as the priciest program on television for advertisers, ending "Idol's" run of at least five years.
Drama series are nowhere to be found on the list of 10 shows commanding the highest price for a 30-second ad this season.
The top 10 list is positively polluted with comedies, suggesting that 18-to-49-year old viewers - the ones advertisers pay a premium to reach - want to laugh again.
ABC's hit "Modern Family" leads the comedy pack - duh - at No. 3 on trade publication Ad Age's annual survey of ad prices on all of the broadcast network's prime-time shows. Ad Age compiled the list using data from as many as six media-buying agencies, and other sources, for ad-time buying during the "upfront" market, before the kickoff of the 2012-13 TV season.
Most surprisingly, a 30-second ad during Fox's sophomore series "New Girl" costs only about $10,000 less than one in "Modern Family." Zooey Deschanel's sitcom ranks No. 4, Ad Age says.
Last season, the comedy came cheap - $126,000 for a 30-second ad. This season, "New Girl's" price has more than doubled, to $321,000 per 30-second spot. Several factors contributed to "New Girl's" it-girl status. The show is very upscale; its audience is thick with young, college-educated viewers in homes earning $125,000 per year or more, notes an industry exec who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he/she is not authorized to speak to the TV Column on this matter.
demoraesl@washpost.co
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To read previous columns by Lisa de Moraes, go to washingtonpost.com/tvblog.
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October 23, 2012 Tuesday 6:58 PM EST
Ad watch: Anti-Bain, anti-Romney ads are back
BYLINE: Rachel Weiner
LENGTH: 147 words
Priorities USA Action, "Same Promises"
What it says: "This was a booming place. And Mitt Romney and Bain Capital turned it into a junkyard."
What it means: With the election looming, the pro-Obama super PAC Priorities USA Action is again going after Romney's character, a strategy that was effective in damaging the Republican candidate earlier this year. This ad is a mash-up of sorts, not focusing on any one company but arguing that Bain had a record of laying off American workers and forcing firms into bankruptcy.
Who will see it: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin. Priorities also is back on the air with "Stage," a memorably grim ad in which a former Indiana paper plant employee says, "Mitt Romney made over a hundred million dollars by shutting down our plant, and devastated our lives."
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October 23, 2012 Tuesday 4:36 PM EST
Pro-Romney super PAC launches $18 million blitz
BYLINE: Rachel Weiner
LENGTH: 140 words
Restore Our Future, a super PAC supporting Mitt Romney's campaign, is launching a major $17.7 million ad buy this week.
The breakdown: $1.2 million in Colorado, $4 million in Florida, $1.2 million in Iowa, $1.6 million in Michigan, $1.6 million in Nevada, $530,000 in New Hampshire, $1.8 million in North Carolina, $3 million in Ohio, $2.9 million in Virginia and $1.3 million in Wisconsin.
The buy is for three ads - "Better" and "The New Normal," which attack Obama on the economy, plus "Genuinely Cares," a softer spot highlighting Romney's work with injured veterans.
Restore Our Future is the second biggest outside spender this cycle after the Karl Rove-linked Crossroads groups, but its advertising has dropped off since its August peak. The new buy is a sign that in the final weeks, Restore Our Future will be one of the major players.
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October 23, 2012 Tuesday 4:00 PM EST
Ad watch: Romney pushes small Navy line
BYLINE: Rachel Weiner
LENGTH: 108 words
Mitt Romney, "Highest Responsibility"
What it says: The ad quotes Mitt Romney in Tuesday's debate saying, "Our Navy is smaller now than at any time since 1917. ... That's unacceptable to me."
What it means: Taking out President Obama's memorable response to this line - "we also have fewer horses and bayonets," Romney is again pushing one of his more aggressive debate attacks out to voters. He also cut an ad accusing Obama of apologizing for America. Our Fact Checker gives the Navy claim Three Pinocchios, calling it a "nonsense fact."
Who will see it: Military-heavy areas, most likely.
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October 23, 2012 Tuesday 1:20 PM EST
Ad watch: Obama makes closing argument
BYLINE: Rachel Weiner
LENGTH: 108 words
Obama for America, "Determination"
What it says: "We're not there yet. But we've made real progress and the last thing we should do is turn back now. ... read my plan, compare it to Governor Romney's and decide which is better for you."
What it means: In this 60-second, direct to camera ad, Obama touts his plan for a second term (and urges voters to read more online). While he mentions Mitt Romney, there's no sharp contrast - a shift from his harsh, negative ads in recent days.
Who will see it: Voters in New Hampshire, Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, Ohio, Wisconsin and Colorado.
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The Fix
October 23, 2012 Tuesday 1:19 PM EST
Obama the instigator vs. Romney the reserved
BYLINE: Aaron Blake
LENGTH: 1312 words
If Mitt Romney was assertive and President Obama was passive in the first debate, the third and final debate was very much the opposite.
Monday's tilt at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Fla., was marked by a very aggressive Obama matching wits with a challenger who seemed happy to call the debate a draw and move on with the rest of the campaign.
Watch the highlights of the final presidential debate.
The question from here is whether that was a good strategy for both men. And snap polls at the end of the debate suggest Obama either got a bit more mileage out of it or, in the case of a CBS poll, scored some real points.
Here's a look at how both men handled their final face-to-face meeting of the 2012 campaign:
* Why Obama was so forceful: Anyone watching the debate who hadn't seen recent polls of the presidential race would have assumed that Obama was very much fighting from behind. The aggressive posture he staked out was the kind of strategy most often employed by candidates who need to make up ground. At the same time, the president's campaign has often seen foreign policy as a trump card in the 2012 election and one it can effectively use against Romney. Whether this strategy was one of necessity or choice, it was certainly the strategy going in.
* Why it was risky: The president risked coming off as un-presidential. His comments during the exchange about military spending, in particular, could read as patronizing and juvenile. When Romney noted that the Navy is now smaller than at any time since World War I, Obama shot back: "Well, governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military's changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers, where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines." Even if you think that exchange worked for Obama, the sarcasm was a bit jarring. (What's that adage? 'Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit?')
* Why it probably worked: Romney was clearly put on the defensive throughout the debate, whether on China, the auto bailout or - and this was the big one - Osama bin Laden. Obama pointing to Romney's 2007 comments that it wasn't "worth moving Heaven and Earth and spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person" was a particularly strong moment for the president, and one that will likely serve to elevate the death of bin Laden in the presidential debate - which is nothing but good for Obama.
* Why Romney was so reserved: It was clear from the first question that Romney wasn't looking to mix it up too much with Obama. The first question went to Romney on Libya, and he passed on the chance to repeat his attack on the president's handling of the situation. What followed was pretty much along the same lines. A few theories as to why: 1) The Libya attack didn't pan out so well in the last debate, 2) Romney was simply feeling good about his chances in the race and didn't want to mess anything up, and/or 3) Romney recognized that talking about foreign policy isn't his strength, and he wanted to avoid yet another stumble on the issue.
* Why it was risky: Any time you allow your opponent to be the aggressor, you risk allowing them the chance to define the debate. That was very much the case here. Obama's attacks on Romney will be the story on Tuesday - whether or not that reflects positively on the president - and that means that Obama had an opportunity to move numbers in his favor. Polling suggests the president did himself at least some good here.
* Why it probably worked: As we've written before, the name of the game for Romney on foreign policy is passing the "commander in chief" test enough so that he can win on the economy. And his performance Monday was probably good enough to do that - even if it wasn't Romney's strongest performance. A CNN poll after the debate showed 60 percent of voters thought Romney could handle the job of commander in chief. Romney avoided the kind of stumbles that have plagued his entree into foreign policy, and the fact is that, no matter how much the situation in Libya matters in the broader global context, it's hardly the major issue in the presidential campaign. It's hard to see where Romney created many glaring problems for himself at Monday's debate, and that appears to be what he was going for.
GOP group launches four-state buy: The Republican-leaning outside group Americans for Job Security is launching a $2.5 million ad buy in four states hitting Obama for his economic record.
The ad features a woman who says she supported Obama in 2008 but is worried that the country is headed for another recession. It will run in three heavily trafficked states - Iowa, Ohio and Virginia - along with a sleeper state, Democratic-leaning Minnesota.
The same ad ran in six states in September.
'Chinese professor' ad is back: TV viewers are about to have a little case of deja vu.
The so-called "Chinese professor" ad that got lots of airplay in 2010 is back for another round in 2012, with $2 million behind it.
The ad features a futuristic classroom scene with a Chinese professor speaking to his students about past empires that failed - including the United State of America - and talks about what led to its downfall, including deficit spending, Obamacare, stimulus and bailouts.
The kicker line: "Of course, we owned most of their debt, so now they work for us."
The ad is sponsored by Citizens Against Government Waste and the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, which put $8 million behind it in 2010.
Fixbits:
Jon Ralston recaps early voting in Nevada.
A hard-hitting new ad from former Wisconsin governor Tommy Thompson's (R) Senate campaign hits Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D) for voting against a resolution remembering the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. What the ad doesn't say: the bill also paid tribute to the Patriot Act, which Baldwin voted against.
Maine GOP Senate candidate Charlie Summers has upped his fundraising pace, pulling in $325,000 in two weeks.
A new ad from Connecticut GOP Senate candidate Linda McMahon features people who will be splitting their tickets between her and Obama.
A Montana judge may soon decide whether to release documents on an investigation into a 2009 boat crash involving Senate candidate Rep. Denny Rehberg (R).
A new poll for Rep. Joe Donnelly's (D-Ind.) Senate campaign shows him leading at 43 percent and Republican Richard Mourdock at 41 percent.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) raises money for the top Democratic super PAC raising money for House races, House Majority PAC.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has moved leadership elections back to Dec. 5, leading to speculation that she will step aside and let others campaign for the top Democratic post in the House.
Embattled Rep. David Rivera (R-Fla.) chats with the Post's Ed O'Keefe. One choice quote comes when Rivera is asked whether he has been informed that he's being investigated: "You really need to ask them, because no federal agency has ever said I'm under federal investigation for anything. You need to call the DEA or the IRS or the FBI or the CIA or the KGB or the ABC or the XYZ or the LMNOP. Ask them."
The Murfreesboro Daily News Journal bashes Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-Tenn.) in an editorial, urging him to "fade into the background" after a report that he urged his mistress to get an abortion years ago.
Must-reads:
"Obama's 'not one of us' attack on Romney echoes racial code" - Karen Tumulty, Washington Post
"Obama, Romney differ less on China trade, investment issues than they claim" - Tom Hamburger, Washington Post
Uncertainty Clouds Polling, but Obama Remains Electoral College Favorite" - Nate Silver, New York Times
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October 23, 2012 Tuesday 1:05 PM EST
Ad watch: Mitt Romney doubles down on 'apology tour';
Romney was cautious in debate but takes on Obama in ad.
BYLINE: Rachel Weiner
LENGTH: 133 words
Mitt Romney, "Apology Tour"
What it says: The ad uses a long clip from Monday's foreign policy debate, in which Mitt Romney accused President Obama of launching "an apology tour," of visiting various nations ... and criticizing America."
What it means: Romney was more cautious and conciliatory in this debate than he has been in the past. This ad uses one of his more aggressive lines to take the fight back to Obama. The Fact Checker gave the "apology tour" claim Four Pinocchios, saying "the apology tour never happened."
Who will see it: Romney has recently bought time in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia. But this ad seems designed more for Beltway buzz than swing state undecideds.
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October 23, 2012 Tuesday 12:21 AM EST
Ad watch: 'Chinese Professor' going back on the air
BYLINE: Rachel Weiner
LENGTH: 174 words
Citizens Against Government Waste and Americans for Prosperity Foundation, "Chinese Professor"
What it says: In Chinese, "America tried to spend and tax itself out of a great recession. ... Of course, we owned most of their debt. So now they work for us." It's the same ad seen in the fall of 2010.
What it means: The striking ad, which suggests that America will fall and China will rise thanks to our profligate borrowing and spending, was among the most memorable spots of the 2010 midterm elections. Now it's being enlisted to help Mitt Romney beat President Obama. The U.S. has actually become less reliant on Chinese credit over the past two years, but the country remains a major lender. China has spent heavily to bolster its own economy.
Who will see it: The ad will air tonight on Fox News, after the debate. Other networks include CNN, MSNBC, Headline News, AMC, Fox Business and Hallmark. So far it's a $2 million buy; $8 million was spent on the ad in the 2010 election.
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The Fact Checker
October 23, 2012 Tuesday 12:16 AM EST
Romney's official stance on abortion;
We checked an Obama ad that challenges Romney's growing support among women voters.
BYLINE: Josh Hicks
LENGTH: 1054 words
"Trying to mislead us? That's wrong. But banning all abortions? Only if you vote for him."
- Narration from Barack Obama campaign ad, referring to GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney engaged in an ad war last week with President Obama, with both sides trying to define the GOP challenger's stance on abortion. The exchange was no surprise considering that recent polls show Romney closing the gap among women. A USA Today/Gallup poll last week had the Republican virtually tied with his opponent among female likely voters.
Romney's ad features a woman concluding that, contrary to what the Obama campaign has said, the GOP candidate doesn't oppose contraceptives or abortion in cases of rape and incest. The president's team shot back with an ad that shows Romney saying during a 2007 Republican primary debate that he would be "delighted" to sign a bill banning all abortions.
Romney's abortion positions involved some well-documented twists and turns over the years, but we wondered how accurately the Obama ad depicts his current stance. Let's take a look at the GOP candidate's record and examine the full context of his 2007 debate comments.
The Facts
Former Fact Checker columnist Michael Dobbs created a detailed list back in 2007 that details Mitt Romney's flip-flops on the abortion issue. There is no doubt that the Republican's stance has evolved.
In terms of Romney supporting a ban on all abortions, we covered this issue in a previous column, noting that the candidate currently supports exceptions for victims of rape and incest, and that "the former governor has shown near perfect consistency on this issue, with one notable exception [the 2007 debate comment]."
Romney's campaign acknowledged for our previous column that the Republican candidate has unquestionably changed his position on abortion since running for U.S. Senate in 1994 - the year he said during a Planned Parenthood fundraiser that he supported abortion rights, and that he had felt that way since 1970.
Romney basically stuck to that position while running for governor of Massachusetts in 2002, promising to uphold the status quo on abortion rights. He lived up to that promise but also declared an antiabortion stance midway through his term. Critics have suggested he was eyeing a presidential run at the time.
Romney has said time and again during his 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns that he is "unapologetically pro-life" but does not oppose abortions in instances of rape and incest or when the procedure is necessary to protect the life of a mother. This is the same position he proclaims to this day and which his campaign reiterated in its ad last week.
Many conservatives, former GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich and an antiabortion group questioned Romney's conviction on this issue during the Republican primaries. During one 2007 debate, an audience member submitted a question asking the former governor: "If hypothetically Roe v. Wade was overturned, and the Congress passed a federal ban on all abortions, and it came to your desk, would you sign it? Yes or no?"
Note that this hypothetical scenario involves an unlikely set of circumstances: Either the U.S. Supreme Court has to overturn its previous decision in Roe v. Wade or a majority of the House and Senate would need to reach an agreement on amending the Constitution, followed by both chambers of Congress approving a law to ban all abortions.
Romney sidestepped the "yes or no" part of the debate question by saying, "We should overturn Roe v. Wade and return these issues to the states." But debate moderator Anderson Cooper pressed the GOP candidate to answer more directly, asking: "Would you sign the bill?"
Here's Romney's full response:
"I'd be delighted to sign that bill. But that's not where we are. That's not where America is today - where America is ready to overturn Roe v. Wade and return to the states that authority. But if the Congress got there, we had that kind of consensus in that country - terrific."
The Obama ad suggested that this isolated answer represents Romney's one true and current view on abortion. But there are several reasons why this doesn't make sense.
First, the ad ignores Romney's official position, which is that abortion should be legal in instances of rape, incest and when it's necessary to protect a woman's life.
Second, Romney noted that the nation is not ready to repeal Roe v. Wade. As such, he was talking about an alternate reality. His response suggests he longs for a day when the American conscience shifts toward his "unapologetically pro-life" stance, but not that he will make an effort to upend the status quo.
The Pinocchio Test
Obama's campaign pulled out the same cropped video clip it used for an older ad claiming that "Romney backed a law that outlaws all abortion, even in cases of rape and incest." The problem, both in that case and in this one, is that the GOP candidate has said time and again while running for president that abortions should be legal in cases of rape, incest, and when the procedure is necessary to protect a woman's life.
Furthermore, the circumstances required to outlaw all abortions during a Romney administration have almost no chance of occurring. It would require first for the Supreme Court to reverse Roe v. Wade and then a majority in both chambers in Congress (including a filibuster-proof 60 votes in the Senate) to pass a law that a president could sign. An even bigger stretch would be a legislation authorizing a constitutional amendment, which first requires two-thirds majority in each chamber, and then would need to be ratified by three-quarters of the states.
Romney has all but invited critics to mischaracterize his abortion stance with nuanced and even shifting abortion positions in past elections. But that doesn't negate the Republican's official stance for 2012. The president's campaign earns Three Pinocchios for its second offense with this clipped footage.
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October 23, 2012 Tuesday
Met 2 Edition
TV stations profit from political pileup
BYLINE: Paul Farhi
SECTION: STYLE; Pg. C01
LENGTH: 1009 words
So many political ads. So little time. What's a TV station to do?
Faced with an unprecedented flood of commercials for candidates and causes, Washington's TV stations have had to get creative to fit them all in. Some are trimming their regular programming to squeeze in a few more ads, and some are adding more news at other hours.
WTTG (Channel 5), the District's Fox affiliate, for example, began bumping daily reruns of "The Simpsons" on Monday to add an extra half-hour to its 6 p.m. newscast. The expanded "News Edge" program will focus on political news - the kind of programming political advertisers demand most.
WJLA (Channel 7), the area's ABC affiliate, has temporarily added two weekend newscasts to its schedule for the same reason. On Saturday, the station preempted network programming and aired a two-hour movie in prime time in order to create more local ad slots. The station has occasionally shaved time from some of its weekday programming to accommodate an extra political ad or two, said Bill Lord, WJLA's general manager.
"It makes sense, let's put it that way," he says.
Washington's TV stations are the beneficiaries of a record amount of political advertising this fall. During a one-month period that ended Friday, the stations collected $58.6 million from political advertisers, a sixfold increase from the $9.8 million spent on political issues in the same period in 2008, according to an estimate by Campaign Media Analysis Group (CMAG), a tracking firm.
Washington ranks fifth nationwide among TV markets in the number of political ads broadcast during October, according to the firm. In the most recent week tracked (Oct. 11-17), about 5,560 political commercials ran on Washington's broadcast stations.
The deluge is driven by a confluence of events, and by the Washington area's two-state, three-jurisdiction geography.
With Virginia a crucial swing state in the presidential race, President Obama and challenger Mitt Romney, along with allied but independent groups, have poured money into local TV ads to reach viewers in the voter-rich northern part of the state. Senate candidates George Allen (R) and Tim Kaine (D) and their supporters have their own TV ad war going, too, aimed at those same Northern Virginians.
Meanwhile, voters in Maryland are getting bombarded with ads for and against two heavily contested ballot questions, particularly Question 7, which would expand casino gambling to Prince George's County. Proponents and opponents of Question 7 have raised about $56 million for the statewide fight, making the ballot measure more expensive than the past two Maryland gubernatorial campaigns combined.
Good news for Washington's stations, which reach Maryland, Virginia and the District simultaneously.
"This is the biggest political market that there has ever been in this marketplace," says Mark Burdett, the president and general manager of WUSA (Channel 9), the CBS affiliate. "It's the biggest wave you've ever ridden."
Elizabeth Wilner, a vice president of CMAG, characterized it this way: "Washington usually was an island where everyone knew about politics but where people didn't see the same number of ads that other [cities] did. This time, D.C. got on the political [ad] radar early and never fell off."
The crush has left station managers with a problem, albeit a happy one: How to get all of those ads onto the air when the supply of prime airtime is finite?
Federal rules require broadcast stations to sell "reasonable" amounts of commercial airtime to federal candidates, although in practice stations rarely turn away ads from qualified candidates, station managers say. That means that the Romney, Obama, Kaine and Allen campaigns have been able to buy all the airtime they want, eating up much of the available "inventory" of commercial slots.
Nonpolitical advertisers, which typically ramp up their TV advertising at this time of the year in anticipation of the holidays, push up the demand for airtime.
Traffic is so tight that local advertisers say they are having difficulty getting their ads on and are paying more for the ads that do make it. Sam Mansouri, president of Fairfax Hyundai and Fairfax Kia, said the cost of his commercials have risen about 8 to 10 percent recently.
To accommodate more political commercials, stations have cut some of the airtime they devote to promotional messages for their upcoming shows. Another trick: Taking time that is reserved for network ads and converting it into local ad time.
Stations say they are wary of tacking on too many commercials. Viewers notice when the ad breaks increase in a half-hour program, which typically carries about eight minutes of commercials.
Amen to that, says Barbara Levin, a retired Silver Spring resident. Levin, who describes herself as politically active, voices what is probably a widely shared view: Enough already. "If you turn on your TV, you can't help but see the ads," she says. "I am tired of seeing them."
Another person who is fed up is Jim Vance, the venerable anchorman on WRC (Channel 4), the NBC affiliate. In a commentary on Friday, Vance called the ad overload "noise," adding, "I am sick to death of all these campaign ads."
Nevertheless, the stations aren't giving up a good thing. When the ad clutter has grown too thick this fall, they have bumped their usual customers - car dealers, banks, supermarkets - to make room for more "I-approved-this-message" messages. Doing so is generally a distasteful step for the stations, since such preemptions upset their regular customers' ad planning.
Some of the overflow has gone to local cable stations - a less attractive alternative for advertisers, since cable audiences are usually smaller than those of the bigger broadcast stations.
WUSA's Burnett said his station has been in constant contact with its nonpolitical clients to advise them about the ebbs and flows of the ad-traffic jam that will surely last until Nov. 6. "We've planned accordingly, and we're managing it effectively," he says. "But we're not at the finish line yet."
farhip@washpost.com
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October 23, 2012 Tuesday
Met 2 Edition
Surprise GOP challenge has Pa. suddenly looking less blue
BYLINE: Paul Kane
SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A05
LENGTH: 1205 words
DATELINE: ELKINS PARK, PA.
ELKINS PARK, Pa. - Pennsylvania was not supposed to be on the political map this year.
Having gone for the Democrats in every White House contest for the past 20 years, the Keystone State was abandoned early by Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney without a single dollar spent in the critical Philadelphia TV market. Usually a fiercely contested battleground in congressional races - the two parties spent $15 million on the airwaves fighting over three suburban districts here six years ago - the region has no competitive House contests this fall.
And Sen. Robert P. Casey Jr. (D), the scion of a political dynasty, was coasting toward reelection after a huge win in 2006.
But apparently no one told Tom Smith that Pennsylvania was off the grid. The coal industry executive has put $17 million of his own money into the Senate race, and with no competing ads on the air in Philadelphia for weeks, Smith, the GOP's nominee, had a relatively free run at Casey until recently.
The first-time candidate pounded away at Casey as "Senator Zero" for his close relationship to President Obama, turning the letter "O" into a version of Obama's campaign logo. Then came Romney's strong performance in the first presidential debate, and in just a few weeks the Republicans have surged within striking distance of Casey and Obama.
Now, outside interest groups are considering ad buys in the Senate race, which remains a long shot but might be the only chance Republicans have of securing the majority, given their stumbles in other Senate contests. Additionally, Romney's campaign dipped a toe back into Pennsylvania on Saturday when his running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.), held a rally with Smith at Pittsburgh's airport - the first time Ryan or Romney had been in the state in almost a month.
On Sunday, Romney officials said that they were intrigued by the state but that no final decisions had been made on whether to finance ads here. Because of Pennsylvania's restrictive absentee-voting rules - more than 95 percent of ballots will be cast on Election Day - officials said they are leaving open the option of a final sprint of ads.
Most local experts predict an Obama win, but with a smaller margin than his 10-percentage-point victory in 2008. Nonetheless, Pennsylvania is suddenly relevant again, and that's why the Obama campaign dispatched top surrogates last week to give pep talks to workers and volunteers engaged in a final effort to turn out voters.
On Wednesday evening, Joshua Shapiro, the new chairman of the Montgomery County Commission, made the rounds at several offices in Philadelphia as well as in his county, a critical suburban stronghold for Democrats. At his last stop, Shapiro added a plug for Casey, a recognition that the senator could be in trouble. "The key for the president, and for Senator Casey, is here in the suburbs," he told volunteers in Elkins Park.
Shapiro, 40, the first Democratic chairman in the 140 years that Montgomery County has been incorporated, is a symbol of why Pennsylvania has become such fertile ground for Democratic presidential campaigns. Once a bastion of "Rockefeller Republicans," the county has voted Democratic in every presidential contest since 1992. Shapiro's victory in 2011, giving his party its first majority on the three-member council, caught the attention of Obama campaign manager Jim Messina, who summoned Shapiro to Chicago this year to discuss how he won in the suburbs.
The question now, for Obama and Casey, is whether the suburbs have soured on the incumbents. In 2008, Obama won the four large suburban Philadelphia counties - Montgomery, Delaware, Chester and Bucks - by 200,000 votes, including an 80,000-vote margin in Montgomery. Combined with his 480,000-vote edge in Philadelphia, that made Obama unbeatable in the state. Casey, in his 2006 rout of an unpopular incumbent, Rick Santorum (R), also won the southeastern corner by more than 2 to 1.
Republicans, however, believe they have a path to victory in GOP Sen. Pat Toomey's win in 2010. Toomey captured just 16 percent of the vote in Philadelphia, but he won Bucks and Chester counties while running competitively in Montgomery. He won big in the part of Pennsylvania that locals call "the T": the rural area in the middle of the state and into the far northeastern and northwestern corners.
"Pennsylvania's always been in play, in my opinion," Smith said in a recent telephone interview after campaigning with Ryan. "It's pink now, turning red."
Smith was not the first choice of top Republicans here, including Gov. Tom Corbett (R), who supported a different candidate in the April primary. Unknown in the southeast, Smith poured $2 million into the Philadelphia media market in August and September as Casey's campaign held its powder in the expensive market until two weeks ago.
One poll, from Quinnipiac University, showed the two candidates statistically tied in the southeastern suburban counties, as Casey clung to a three-point lead statewide. His campaign released an internal poll from Friday showing the senator ahead by 52 percent to 39 percent. His image as a candidate willing to defy his party on key issues - Casey opposes abortion rights - has the senator receiving more support than most Democrats in the traditionally conservative regions.
Casey was clearly caught off guard by Smith. It's difficult to find a "Casey for Senate" lawn sign in eastern Montgomery County. At the Obama campaign office in Elkins Park, visitors are greeted with literature for the president, the nominee for state attorney general, the local congresswoman and two candidates for state representative - but nothing for Casey.
At a recent Casey event at an electrical workers union hall in Allentown, supporters hounded the senator and his staff for campaign literature and lawn signs, handing over contact information to receive campaign staples.
"We can finish strong," Casey said in an interview, noting the difficulty of running as an incumbent during tough economic times as opposed to six years ago against an unpopular Santorum.
Casey finally began running an ad that links Smith to the Senate conservatives who would overhaul Medicare and Social Security, a key issue for a state that has one of the nation's oldest populations. "This isn't just a one-liner. They are deadly serious," Casey warned supporters.
The aim is to define Smith as a fringe member of the tea party movement. Just as Messina tried to learn from Shapiro's Montgomery County victory, Casey is using similar themes. His ads end with a picture of Smith on a teacup, under the label "Tea Party Tom Smith."
The same admaker ran a similarly hard-hitting spot for Shapiro in 2011, and if the Obama campaign suddenly decides that Pennsylvania is back in play, it probably will use the same themes against Romney.
Once touted as someone who would help the president in other parts of the state, Casey may need to draft Obama's vote-getting operation in the southeastern corner for both incumbents to win. As Shapiro told Obama volunteers last week, they need to come close to replicating those large margins in the city and suburbs. "Every extra Obama vote we get here is going to make the difference," he said.
kanep@washpost.com
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October 23, 2012 Tuesday
Suburban Edition
With 'one of us,' Obama ad echoes a racial code
BYLINE: Karen Tumulty
SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A04
LENGTH: 759 words
"Mitt Romney. Not one of us."
That's the tag line to a tough new ad that the Obama campaign is airing in Ohio. But ironically, it echoes a slogan that has been used as a racial code over at least the past half-century.
The context of the Obama ad is very different from some others, in which the phrase "one of us" was used to divide voters along racial lines, but conservative commentators have quickly seized on it.
President Obama's critics said the fact that he would use such loaded language in the hard-fought Ohio race shows how much he has changed since his famous "one America" speech at the 2004 Democratic convention, in which he denounced "those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes."
Charles C.W. Cooke wrote in National Review's Corner blog that Obama is "moving a long way from the famous - if vacuous - 'no red states or blue states' speech."
Added Rick Moran on the American Thinker blog: "Had Romney pulled this on him, we'd need a special two-hour episode of 'Hardball' to deal with the dog-whistle implications."
Obama's chief strategist, David Axelrod, dismissed the criticism. He noted in an interview that the ad focuses on Romney's opposition to the bailout of the auto industry, a large employer in Ohio.
"This goes to something fundamental - first of all, the issue itself is a fundamental issue for Ohio, where one in eight jobs is related to the auto industry. This has to do with a sense of identification with working-class families."
He added: "There's no subtlety about what the spot is about. This is about the economic survival of the auto industry."
Obama, the nation's first black president, has himself been a target of insinuations of otherness, including false but widely circulated suggestions that he was not born in this country and that he is a Muslim. During this presidential campaign, his allies say, they have seen racial coding in accusations that Obama is a "food stamp president" and in popular tea party slogans such as "Take back our country."
Romney has faced mistrust and prejudice as well, regarding his Mormon faith.
The slogan "He's one of us" goes at least as far back as the late 1950s, when segregationist Jimmie Davis used it in his successful campaign for Louisiana governor.
In the decades that followed, other Southern white politicians would also find it effective.
A conservative radio commentator named Jesse Helms (R) was an underdog in his 1972 Senate race in North Carolina against Rep. Nick Galifianakis (D). But he won, in part, because of his campaign pitch: "Jesse Helms: He's one of us."
The slogan was widely recognized as a dig at his opponent's foreign-sounding last name.
"I think the idea was: 'His name sounds different enough. He's not like us,' " the congressman's nephew, actor Zach Galifianakis, told the Toronto Sun in August. Galifianakis and fellow actor Will Ferrell parodied that rough style of Southern politics in their summer movie,"The Campaign."
In 1982, white Republican Webb Franklin won in a court-drawn Mississippi congressional district whose population was 48 percent voting-age African Americans. One of Franklin's television ads featured footage of Confederate monuments and warned, "We cannot forget a heritage that has been sacred through our generations." He also ran with the appeal: "He's one of us."
A three-judge federal court panel in 1984 pointed to that slogan when it wrote, "This inducement to racially polarized voting operated to further diminish the already unrealistic chance for blacks to be elected in majority white voting population districts."
The district lines were redrawn in 1986 by the U.S. Justice Department. In that year's election, Franklin was defeated by Assistant State Attorney General Mike Espy, who became the first African American congressman elected to represent Mississippi since Reconstruction.
Yet "one of us" has retained its currency, even into the 21st century.
"Regrettably, this is not a thing of the past," Robert McDuff, a Jackson, Miss., civil rights lawyer, wrote in the Southern California Review of Law and Social Justice, published by the University of Southern California's Gould School of Law.
In his article, McDuff noted that the slogan reappeared as recently as 2004, when white candidate Samac Richardson, running for a seat on the Mississippi Supreme Court, used it in his advertising against incumbent James Graves, the only African American on that court.
Graves won - after Richardson forced him into a runoff.
tumultyk@washpost.com
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October 23, 2012 Tuesday
Suburban Edition
For ratings, last debate has a few strikes (and touchdowns) against it
BYLINE: Lisa De Moraes
SECTION: STYLE; Pg. C04
LENGTH: 833 words
Hopefully, you did not put your money on Monday night's debate to be the highest-rated of the three skirmishes between President Obama and GOP hopeful Mitt Romney.
Although four years ago the first of the three presidential debates attracted the fewest viewers, in this election cycle, network suits forecast that the third debate would be the least-watched.
Not that it makes any difference to them, professionally, because the debates run without ads, so they have no way to monetize them.
Presidential debate ratings have been quite robust this election cycle. Nearly 67 million people watched Romney attack Big Bird while Obama took a nap during the first debate. That's nearly 15 million people more than saw the first presidential debate in 2008.
Virtually the same number - about 66 million - caught last week's second debate, when Obama woke up and Romney brought binders full of women. That's about 2.4 million more folks than watched the second debate in '08.
"The first one was The First One. The second one was, 'Is Obama going to [mess] up?,'â[#x20ac][#x160]" one network exec explained to the TV Column, of the debates' nearly identical numbers.
But Monday's third debate - while sure to be the night's most-watched event, running as it does on a multitude of networks - had three strikes against it:
1. The debate was scheduled to air against Monday Night Football.
ESPN, for its part, was sufficiently concerned about debate viewing that it started running ads last weekend telling fans how to watch "Michigan's own battle Chicago's favorite son" in Boca Raton, Fla., while simultaneously watching the Chicago Bears take on the Detroit Lions on its network.
2. The debate was to air against Game 7 of the National League Championship Series.
Traditionally, Game 7s draw the highest numbers in a series. There's something about a Game 7 that gets even casual baseball viewers to the TV - even viewers who don't care that much about either St. Louis or San Francisco.
3. The debate was set to focus on foreign policy.
Which, the network exec explained, is "something no one cares about - unless we declare war on Lindsay Lohan."
Kids pick Obama
Children have elected President Obama to a second term in a landslide, in Nickelodeon's 2012 Kids Pick the President voting.
Since this franchise began in 1988, kids have correctly picked the POTUS (before the national vote) five out of the past six elections.
More than half a million votes were cast in the network's online poll this time around. Obama received 65 percent of the vote and former governor Mitt Romney received 35 percent, Nickelodeon reported.
Four years ago, children cast a record-setting 2.2 million votes in what Nickelodeon notes is not a scientific poll; then-Sen. Obama was declared the winner, with 51 percent of the vote to Sen. John McCain's 49 percent.
Voting was down because this year, for the first time, Nickelodeon limited voting to one vote per electronic device, to "more closely replicate the actual election, and to ensure the results were more authentic," although kids were able to vote online Oct. 15-22.
There's also no telling how voting might have been affected by Romney's decision to decline to participate in the accompanying "Kids Pick the President" TV special.
Only one candidate - Sen. John F. Kerry in '04 - has declined to participate in the special. Ironically, that year the kids picked Kerry to win - the only time they got it wrong.
'New Girl's' new price
Sunday NFL football has surpassed "American Idol" as the priciest program on television for advertisers, ending "Idol's" run of at least five years.
Drama series are nowhere to be found on the list of 10 shows commanding the highest price for a 30-second ad this season.
The top 10 list is positively polluted with comedies, suggesting that 18-to-49-year old viewers - the ones advertisers pay a premium to reach - want to laugh again.
ABC's hit "Modern Family" leads the comedy pack - duh - at No. 3 on trade publication Ad Age's annual survey of ad prices on all of the broadcast network's prime-time shows. Ad Age compiled the list using data from as many as six media-buying agencies, and other sources, for ad-time buying during the "upfront" market, before the kickoff of the 2012-13 TV season.
Most surprisingly, a 30-second ad during Fox's sophomore series "New Girl" costs only about $10,000 less than one in "Modern Family." Zooey Deschanel's sitcom ranks No. 4, Ad Age says.
Last season, the comedy came cheap - $126,000 for a 30-second ad. This season, "New Girl's" price has more than doubled, to $321,000 per 30-second spot. Several factors contributed to "New Girl's" it-girl status. The show is very upscale; its audience is thick with young, college-educated viewers in homes earning $125,000 per year or more, notes an industry exec who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he/she is not authorized to speak to the TV Column on this matter.
demoraesl@washpost.co
m
To read previous columns by Lisa de Moraes, go to washingtonpost.com/tvblog.
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October 22, 2012 Monday
Late Edition - Final
Debate? Football? Why Not Both?
BYLINE: By BRIAN STELTER
SECTION: Section B; Column 0; Business/Financial Desk; MEDIA DECODER; Pg. 4
LENGTH: 335 words
Fans of political and athletic battles face quite a conundrum on Monday night.
The third and final presidential debate coincides with ESPN's "Monday Night Football" game between the Chicago Bears, from President Obama's adopted hometown, and the Detroit Lions, hailing from Mitt Romney's birthplace.
What's a patriotic American to do?
ESPN is subtly advertising a solution: watch both. Not with a picture-in-picture display on the TV screen - that's so 1990s - but with two screens, like a TV set and an iPad.
A pair of ads that started appearing on ESPN on Saturday promote the WatchESPN app, which allows subscribers of certain cable companies to watch ESPN on phones and computers at no additional charge.
"This debate will be settled on the gridiron," one of the ads says, after referencing the verbal battle that will be taking place on a stage in Boca Raton, Fla. The ad concludes, "Don't miss a minute of Monday Night Football on ESPN, the WatchESPN app and WatchESPN.com."
"Monday Night Football" is blacked out on phones because the National Football League has a separate mobile carriage deal with Verizon. So the ads for Monday night's game show a big-screen TV set transforming into a laptop computer and then a tablet computer, but not a phone.
Of course, some football fans may relegate the debate to the laptop or tablet screen while keeping the game on the big-screen TV, since ESPN's sibling ABC and dozens of other outlets are live-streaming the debate.
Recent second-screen studies by Nielsen and other measurement companies have found that many tablet and phone owners use the devices at least once a day while watching television. This has been on display during the presidential debates, as millions of real-time reactions to comments from Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney have been recorded on Facebook and Twitter. Surely at least a few debate-and-football watchers will have a third screen handy for reacting to both events.
This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.
URL: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/21/espn-suggests-watching-monday-night-game-and-debate-on-2-screens/
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(IHT Rendezvous)
October 22, 2012 Monday
Obama Could Be Buoyed by Latest W.T.O. Victory Over China
BYLINE: MARK MCDONALD
SECTION: WORLD
LENGTH: 760 words
HIGHLIGHT: China figures to be a centerpiece of the third and final presidential debate, and President Obama will arrive with a newly won victory over Beijing in a trade case. A ruling last week by the World Trade Organization helps two U.S. steelmakers located in the swing states of Ohio and Pennsylvania.
HONG KONG - China is expected to be a centerpiece of the third and final U.S. presidential debate on Monday night, and my colleague David Sanger, in a curtain-raiser, calls China"perhaps the most important long-term subject of the debate."
Mitt Romney, the Republican challenger, has charged that President Barack Obama has not pressed China hard enough on its trade policies, to the detriment of American firms and jobs. Mr. Obama has countered by calling Mr. Romney "a pioneer of outsourcing" and noting that his administration has brought twice as many trade cases against China as the previous administration.
The United States scored a victory in one of those trade cases last week, as a World Trade Organization panel ruled against China for imposing unfair tariffs on American-made specialty steel. The steel in question was manufactured at two factories - AK Steel of Ohio and ATI Allegheny Ludlum of Pennsylvania.
The W.T.O. ruling could well help Mr. Obama's electoral chances in those key states.
"This is a victory for the United States as well as for American workers and manufacturers," said Ron Kirk, the U.S. trade representative, adding that "China's unfair duties choked off nearly all" of the U.S. exports of the special rolled steel.
"The Obama administration," Mr. Kirk said, "will not stand by and allow China to break international trade rules."
Mr. Kirk's statement and some background on the case are here. The W.T.O. panel's ruling is on its Web site here.
James L. Wainscott, the chairman, president and C.E.O. of AK Steel, said in a statement that the company was "very grateful" to Mr. Kirk's office for "this excellent defense of the rights of U.S. manufacturers and U.S. workers."
The administration filed the case in 2010, and the W.T.O. ruled against China in June of this year. The Ministry of Commerce in Beijing quickly appealed that decision, but the latest ruling effectively settles the matter.
"We are pleased that China at this point has no further avenue for appeals," Mr. Wainscott said.
Derek Scissors, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, the conservative policy-research group, said in a Reuters report that the ruling was "a small benefit for the Obama campaign because it can advertise 'beating China' in Ohio, but it's not a benchmark for anything."
In the second of the three debates, Mr. Romney slammed China for currency manipulation and "stealing our intellectual property; our designs, our patents, our technology. There's even an Apple store in China that's a counterfeit Apple store, selling counterfeit goods."
Indeed, there have been numerous fake Apple stores operating in China, and knockoff Apple products, which Rendezvous addressed this year.
At least 25 stores in the city of Kunming alone were discovered last year after an American health-care worker began photographing, videotaping and blogging about the phony stores.
The blogger, Jessica Angelson, who has since moved to New York to attend nursing and midwifery school, was contacted by the China Real Time blog of The Wall Street Journal after Mr. Romney's debate remarks about the Apple store.
Mr. Romney used the Apple-store example, she said, "as a shorthand to generate outrage about trade practices in China and as a shorthand that he will be quote unquote 'tough on China.' It's a somewhat meaningless shorthand. I'm not entirely sure he knows what he's referring to at this point."
Her blogging from Kunming - she has links to those posts here - drew submissions of other fake Apple outlets around the world, including one in the New York borough of Queens. That shop, according to the Journal blog, was "shut down after she posted a photo of it online."
"It is more of a global issue," Ms. Angelson said, "but it doesn't create as nice a story as China ripping off Apple stores."
Meanwhile, on Saturday, Apple opened an authentic store in Beijing, a gleaming three-level place, the company's largest in Asia.
The store, Apple's third official outlet in Beijing and its sixth on the Chinese mainland, has a first-class address - the renowned shopping street of Wangfujing, near the Forbidden City. The store employs about 300, local news reports said, and encompasses nearly 25,000 square feet, or 2,300 square meters.
Apple also has three stores in Shanghai, and there are two here in Hong Kong.
Candidates Spar Sharply Over China
An Alternate Interpretation of Romney's '47 Percent'
What Would a President Romney Mean for the Arab Spring? For Europe?
Will Paul Ryan Make a Difference in the U.S. Election?
What Europe Thinks of Paul Ryan
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(The Caucus)
October 22, 2012 Monday
Foreign Policy Debate Puts Focus on Leadership
BYLINE: MICHAEL D. SHEAR
SECTION: US; politics
LENGTH: 861 words
HIGHLIGHT: A debate centering on international affairs may offer a window on the candidates' leadership skills.
For 90 minutes tonight, President Obama and Mitt Romney will clash over specific foreign policy issues, their differences heightened by a debate intended to draw out sharp contrasts ahead of Election Day in two weeks.
But for viewers, the specifics may be mostly background noise as they search for the answer to a gauzy question: Who would be the best leader?
In polls this year, voters have practically screamed at the top of their lungs how little they care about foreign policy. In recent polls of three battleground states, Colorado, Virginia and Wisconsin, fewer than 10 percent of voters in each state said national security was the most important issue to them, ranking below the economy, deficit and health care.
And yet, both campaigns have spent plenty of time and money in an effort to claim the mantle of who is best able to lead. Top strategists for both Mr. Romney and Mr. Obama seem to believe that foreign policy will help shape those perceptions.
In a strategy memorandum released by the Democratic campaign on Monday, Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, argues that Mr. Obama has proved to be a "steady and strong leader" around the world. He accuses Mr. Romney of "endless bluster and a record of dangerous blunders" in foreign affairs.
"He is an extreme and expedient candidate who lacks the judgment and vision so vital for the Oval Office," Mr. Kerry wrote of Mr. Romney. "And he's at the top of the most inexperienced foreign policy ticket to run for president and vice president in decades."
Mr. Romney's campaign countered with a memo of its own, arguing that at the end of Mr. Obama's four years in office, "America stands weakened around the world, with our safety threatened, our allies increasingly isolated, and hostile nations emboldened." The campaign added, "As president, Mitt Romney will deliver where President Obama has failed."
In recent weeks, Mr. Romney and his top surrogates have seized on the killing of the American ambassador in Libya and other developments in the Middle East as evidence of a broader leadership failure on the president's part. Mr. Romney fumbled his efforts to make that broader case in his second debate with Mr. Obama last week.
In that exchange, Mr. Romney's argument about leadership became caught up in his specific assertion about whether the president had called the attacks "terrorism." Now, the Republican candidate will get another chance to make the larger case.
Mr. Obama's advisers have long believed that the president's success in making good on some crucial promises -- leaving Iraq, winding down in Afghanistan and killing Osama bin Laden -- has earned him broad support when it comes to foreign policy leadership.
"Presidential elections are about character and the character of your convictions, and my guy, he never tells you anything he doesn't mean and he doesn't do," Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. said at a rally over the weekend in Florida.
Surveys suggest that Mr. Obama remains strong on foreign policy -- to a point. Even as Mr. Romney has been hammering the president on Libya policy, for example, voters in many polls still give Mr. Obama the edge on handling foreign policy matters.
A Quinnipiac University / CBS News poll of voters in Ohio released Monday gives Mr. Obama a seven-point edge over Mr. Romney on that question.
But Mr. Romney does better on the broader question of leadership. In the same survey, Ohio voters gave Mr. Romney the edge when asked whether they view the candidates as strong leaders. Tonight's debate could be an opportunity for Mr. Romney to further widen that gap.
To do that, Mr. Romney will have to find a way to connect his specific criticism of what he calls Mr. Obama's "feckless" foreign policy to a bigger critique of the president's ability to lead on the world stage.
On some crucial foreign policy issues, Mr. Romney's own positions are different more in tone than substance from Mr. Obama's. But Mr. Romney is likely to focus on the continuing standoff with Iran over its nuclear program, the continuing stalemate over peace between Israel and the Palestinians, and the growing security and economic tensions with Russia and China.
The president's challenge is to defend his own record while broadly questioning Mr. Romney's capacity to lead in a complex world. In his Monday memo, Mr. Kerry wrote that a failure by Mr. Romney to answer those concerns would convince people that he has "fallen short of the Commander-in-Chief threshold."
In the past, Mr. Obama has sought to undercut perceptions of his rival's leadership qualities by tying him to the policies of President George W. Bush, and by suggesting that Mr. Romney will undo any progress made during the last four years.
The president's campaign previewed that theme in a new television commercial it released Monday. The commercial claims that Mr. Romney would have left American troops in Iraq and opposes a responsible drawdown of the conflict in Afghanistan.
"President Obama ended the Iraq war. Mitt Romney would have left 30,000 troops there and called bringing them home 'tragic,'" the ad says. "It's time to stop fighting over there and start rebuilding over here."
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(Taking Note)
October 22, 2012 Monday
Bilingual Lies
BYLINE: LAWRENCE DOWNES
SECTION: OPINION
LENGTH: 464 words
HIGHLIGHT: Mitt Romney has a new Spanish-language campaign ad that's misleading even by his own slippery standards.
Mitt Romney has a new Spanish-language campaign ad, about immigration reform, that's misleading and fraudulent even by his own slippery standards. Univision, among others, conducted a fact-check that reveals how the ad uses vagueness, misdirection and omission to create the false impression that a President Romney would enact reforms that immigrants favor.
"As governor, Mitt Romney worked with Democrats to achieve solutions," the ad says - which may be true about some things, like health care, but not immigration. Governor Romney wasn't about achieving immigrant-friendly solutions. He vetoed the Massachusetts version of the Dream Act, which would have given in-state tuition to undocumented students. He opposed giving undocumented immigrants driver's licenses. And in the presidential campaign he promised to veto the federal Dream Act, which would legalize youths who were brought here illegally as children if they go to college or serve in the military.
The ad continues: "Romney and the Republicans will fight for bipartisan reform to bring families together. To establish a program for work visas. And to achieve permanent solutions for undocumented youth."
Bipartisan reform? Family togetherness? Work visas and "permanent solutions"? This is where the ad goes off the deep end, and why immigrant advocates have called on the Romney campaign to take it down.
Mr. Romney has said he would end, not continue, President Obama's temporary deportation reprieves for undocumented students, which are giving thousands of young people the chance to work legally for the first time. This has left many of them feeling jerked around and anxious about the upcoming election, as Julia Preston reported last week. It takes courage to come forward, but if President Romney ends the program, those who did so will be heading back into the shadows, surely feeling more vulnerable to arrest and deportation for having outed themselves to the federal government. And they will also be out of work, or back to working off the books.
As for reform, the Republican Party has spent much of the last decade beating back efforts to streamline the system or to make life for the undocumented easier, fairer, safer or more lawful. Former moderates like John McCain and Lindsey Graham have retreated into hard-line restrictionism. Extremists like Kris Kobach - a Romney supporter and adviser - have defined the party's no-compromise immigration stance.
Mr. Romney is now making vague, unsupported promises of "solutions" in hopes of snagging a few Latino votes. But the only solution he has offered so far is "self-deportation," the choice to leave the country.
Mitt Romney's Secret Plan
The G.O.P.'s Message to Latino Voters
The Spanish Campaign
Romney's Immigration Speech
Shhh, Don't Mention Immigration
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(The Caucus)
October 22, 2012 Monday
Final Presidential Debate Fact-Checks and Updates
BYLINE: THE NEW YORK TIMES
SECTION: US; politics
LENGTH: 13656 words
HIGHLIGHT: President Obama and Mitt Romney square off on Monday night in Boca Raton, Fla. for the final presidential debate. Live coverage begins at 8 p.m. eastern.
President Obama and Mitt Romney square off on Monday night in Boca Raton, Fla. for the final presidential debate before the election. Live coverage begins at 8 p.m. Eastern. The Times will be providing updates and analysis on our live dashboard. You can also follow along on Twitter @thecaucus, or follow our list of Times journalists covering the debate.
11:56 P.M. | That's a Wrap
The final presidential debate has ended, and the candidates are going home. The Caucus live blog has ended, too. You can rewatch the entire debate, read the transcript and scroll through our fact-check feature, and be sure to come back to The Caucus and the rest of NYTimes.com for continuing coverage.
And don't forget to download the Election 2012 iPhone app, which smartly combines our coverage with the best from political news sites, Twitter and blogs from around the Web.
- The New York Times
11:38 P.M. | Report From Spin Alley
Oh dear. Your spin-alley correspondent has emerged from the elbow-throwing, toe-crushing mosh pit of several hundred reporters and 40 or so Democratic and Republican officials, but he's forgotten who said what. He had his voice recorder, but they all sound so much alike, give or take a party affiliation. Please help him match the names after each letter to the words following the numbers. Feel free to print out and draw arrows between spinner and spin.
A. Ed Gillespie, senior adviser to Mr. Romney.
B. Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio.
C. Jim Messina, Mr. Obama's campaign manager.
D. Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts.
E. David Axelrod, chief strategist to Mr. Obama.
F. Representative Jason Chaffetz, Republican of Utah
No. 1. "I thought Mitt Romney was pitch perfect when it came to intertwining the role of the economy as it relates to foreign policy and sharing a vision of the world, rather than prosecuting the intimate details of what happened or didn't' happen in Benghazi."
No. 2. "You saw a strong and decisive president; you saw a wrong and reckless Romney, on defense the entire evening, looking unsteady. I thought it was a great performance by the president."
No. 3. "The game Battleship came up in there. I think the president sank his battleship tonight. He didn't have enough binders on foreign policy, folks."
No. 4. "When polls were irrationally exuberant, I said the race was going to be a close race. We won with 53 percent of the vote last time with all the wind at our back, and this was going to be a closer race. This race is basically the race we expected."
No. 5. "In many respects I thought the roles were reversed: you saw Barack Obama look more like a challenger who was behind, because of his attacks. And Governor Romney was calmer, more thoughtful, acting as though he was the incumbent president."
No. 6. "I think the momentum continues tonight as the American people see Mitt Romney directly for themselves."
- Trip Gabriel
11:30 P.M. | Fact-Check: Bilateral Talks With Iran
Mr. Obama said on Monday that a front-page report in The New York Times on Sunday was "not true," that the United States and Iran have not agreed to meet after the American election, in one-on-one talks over the Iranian nuclear program.
But a few minutes later, after declaring that Mr. Romney was "all over the map" on foreign policy, Mr. Obama said to him, "I'm pleased that you are now endorsing our policy of applying diplomatic pressure and potentially having bilateral discussions with the Iranians to end their nuclear program."
The Times, citing senior administration officials, reported that the United States and Iran had an "agreement in principle" for one-on-one talks after the election. But the article said it was not clear if the plan had been approved by Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Nor did it did say the two sides had agreed on a date or an agenda for those negotiations.
On the latter point, the article pointed out that there remained a substantial disagreement: the United States wants to keep the talks narrowly focused on the nuclear program; Iran wants to broaden them to include regional issues like Syria and Bahrain.
News of this diplomatic initiative, two weeks before the election, poses significant political risks for Mr. Obama. Mr. Romney has accused the president of appeasing foes like Iran and of allowing ties with a close ally, Israel, to fray. Mr. Romney has said he would stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Israel against the nuclear threat from Iran.
For Mr. Romney, the prospect of direct talks poses a different problem. He has publicly declared that Iran must cease all enrichment of uranium. Iran, which insists its nuclear program is for peaceful energy purposes, is almost certain to reject that demand. If Mr. Romney were elected, that could doom the one-on-one talks before they could even start.
- Mark Landler
11:19 P.M. | Fact-Check: Trade War With China
Mr. Romney said that the United States was currently engaged in an unacknowledged trade war with China - and that China was winning, as evidenced by its trade imbalance with the United States. Many economists agree that what is happening now are skirmishes on the sidelines, not a full-scale trade war in which both sides lose heavily.
Trade experts say that perhaps 90 percent of trade between the United States and China is unaffected by the current trade disputes. In fact, the United States and China are much more economically interdependent than any listener to these three debates might think. In today's multinational supply chain, both imports and exports support American jobs, according to trade experts like Dan Ikenson of the Cato Institute, a nonprofit research organization in Washington that focuses on libertarian issues.
A of one fifth-generation iPod showed how the trade deficit figure can be misleading. For every $300 iPod that was sold in the United States, the study said, the trade deficit with China rose by $150, the factory cost. But in fact, China probably only added a few dollars to the product's value because companies headquartered in Japan, the United States and elsewhere made the high-value components while China only assembled them.
A study a year ago by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco argued that despite China's export juggernaut, Americans still buy American. It concluded that 88.5 percent of the goods and services purchased by ordinary Americans were produced in the United States. Chinese products accounted for only 2.7 percent of personal consumption expenditures in the United States.
- Sharon LaFraniere
11:00 P.M. | Fact-Check: On the Side of Democracy
Mr. Obama spoke of the role the United States has played during the Arab Spring uprisings, saying, "We have stood on the side of democracy." But that is not true across the board.
Consider Bahrain, where thousands of people rose up more than a year ago to demand political liberties, social equality and an end to corruption. Its Sunni monarchy, seen by the United States and Saudi Arabia as a strategic ally and as a bulwark against Iran, was never left to face the rage on its own.
More than a thousand Saudi troops helped put down the uprising, and the United States, a sometimes critical but ultimately unshakable friend, called for political reform but strengthened its support for the government.
- Michael Cooper
10:56 P.M. | Fact-Check: Drawing 'Red Lines' on Iran
At some points in the campaign, there has been a clear difference in where Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney would draw a "red line'' beyond which they would not let Iran go toward a nuclear weapon. But more often than not, it has been more like a red smudge, giving both candidates maximum flexibility, while each tries to sound more determined to stop the Iranian program.
Mr. Obama's position has been the most consistent. He has said consistently that Iran would not be permitted to get a nuclear weapon. But when pressed about whether the United States would block Iran from getting a weapons "capability" - that is, to obtain the fuel and technology to stop just short of obtaining a weapon - he said, "I'm not going to parse that." And he hasn't.
Mr. Romney, in contrast, has parsed it - but inconsistently. He usually says he will not allow Iran to have the capability, or to be, as his aides put it, just a few screwdriver turns away from a bomb. But in an interview last month with George Stephanopoulos of ABC, Mr. Romney forgot his own position and made it sound as if he and Mr. Obama were on the same page. A few days later he went back to his old formulation.
It sounds like a small difference, but it is a huge one - technologically and politically. Many experts believe Iran only intends to go up to the line of a weapon, stopping a step or two short. That would enable it to stay inside the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, of which it is a signatory. And it would make it harder for Israel, or the United States, to mount an attack that gained global support. Moreover, a "capability" may be all Iran needs, in a world where a virtual bomb brings with it almost as much symbolic power as a real one.
But Mr. Obama is being vague for a reason. "He doesn't want to agree to a certain amount of uranium, or a certain deadline, that triggers a war," one of his aides said last month. "He needs room to resolve this peacefully."
- David E. Sanger
10:58 P.M. | Fact-Check: Trade Cases Against China
President Obama said, "We have brought more cases against China for violating trade rules than the other - the previous administration had done in two terms." It is true that the Obama administration has brought eight cases against China in the past four years - an average of two a year - before the World Trade Organization.
The tariff on Chinese-made tires, imposed unilaterally by the Commerce Department, makes nine challenges. In eight years under President George W. Bush, the United States brought seven cases - or an average of one a year since China joined the World Trade Organization.
But Dan Ikenson, a trade expert with the Cato Institute, a nonprofit research group in Washington that focuses on libertarian causes, said the president's claim was "somewhat bogus" because China was granted a kind of honeymoon after it joined the World Trade Organization in December 2001 in recognition of all the effort it had to make to rewrite laws and regulations. "Now we are at a different stage of our relationship," Mr. Ikenson says. That has led to increasing demands that China practice fair trade, he and other trade experts contend.
- Sharon LaFraniere
10:53 P.M. | Fact-Check: 'Obamacare' and Military Spending
When Mr. Romney was asked how he would find the money to pay for the increased military spending he seeks, he said: "We do it by getting - by reducing spending in a whole series of programs. By the way, No. 1 I get rid of is 'Obamacare.' " But repealing the health care law would actually increase the federal deficit.
This summer, after Republicans in the House of Representative passed a bill to repeal the law, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that doing so would increase the federal deficit by $109 billion over the next decade. That is because the parts of the law that would require more spending to expand coverage would be offset by the parts of the law that raise new revenues and curb spending - including provisions calling to curb the growth of Medicare costs and several new taxes and fees. Repealing the law would also mean that 30 million fewer people would have health insurance in 2022, it projected.
- Michael Cooper
10:51 P.M. | Fact-Check: Romney Investments and Outsourcing
Mr. Obama accused Mr. Romney of investing in companies that shipped jobs overseas. Is this true?
In short, yes. Bain Capital, the private equity firm Mr. Romney founded and whose funds remain a big part of his portfolio, has invested over the years in a variety of companies that moved jobs overseas, as detailed in a Washington Post article that ran this summer.
The attack line Mr. Obama used in the debate is actually a tweak of a stronger one the Obama campaign had previously used against Mr. Romney, accusing him of being more directly involved in shipping jobs to Asia and elsewhere through Bain, as opposed to being a mere passive investor.
Fact-checkers, including Politifact.com, FactCheck.org and The Washington Post's Fact Checker column, had questioned the more direct line of attack on outsourcing, because most of the companies cited by the Obama campaign were investments that occurred after Mr. Romney had left day-to-day management of Bain in 1999 to run the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. Mr. Romney was indisputably involved with at least one Bain-owned company that outsourced jobs overseas - to China, in particular - the Holson Burnes Group, a picture frame and photo album manufacturer that Bain owned from 1987 to 1995. But FactCheck.org, which examined the issue, pointed out that it is unclear whether the company's outsourcing increased or decreased under Bain, or if the manufacturing overseas came at the expense of American jobs.
The question of whether Bain Capital ever invested in such companies, with Mr. Romney benefiting as an investor, is a much less controversial one. Besides the companies mentioned in the Washington Post article, a recent New York Times article highlighted another example: an auto parts manufacturer, Asimco Technologies, shut down two camshaft factories in Michigan and went on to make the same parts in China.
- Michael Luo
10:50 P.M. | Fact-Check: Fund-raisers in Israel
After Mr. Romney complained that Mr. Obama had not visited Israel during a trip to the region, Mr. Obama responded by contrasting the trip he took to Israel as a candidate with the one that Mr. Romney took as a candidate.
Mr. Obama said: "when I went to Israel as a candidate, I didn't take donors. I didn't attend fund-raisers. I went to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum there, to remind myself the nature of evil and why our bond with Israel will be unbreakable."
He was alluding to Mr. Romney's remarks this summer at a fund-raiser in Israel, where he offended Palestinian leaders by suggesting that cultural differences explain why the Israelis are so much more economically successful than Palestinians. The remarks drew strong rebukes from Palestinians who noted that Mr. Romney had failed to mention the years of trade restrictions imposed by Israel.
Mr. Romney was speaking at a fund-raiser with prominent Jewish-American backers in July when he mentioned that he had been influenced by "The Wealth and Poverty of Nations," by David S. Landes, which argues that culture is the defining factor in determining the success of a society.
"Culture makes all the difference," Mr. Romney said. "And as I come here and I look out over this city and consider the accomplishments of the people of this nation, I recognize the power of at least culture and a few other things."
He added: "As you come here and you see the G.D.P. per capita, for instance, in Israel, which is about $21,000, and compare that with the G.D.P. per capita just across the areas managed by the Palestinian Authority, which is more like $10,000 per capita, you notice such a dramatically stark difference in economic vitality. And that is also between other countries that are near or next to each other. Chile and Ecuador, Mexico and the United States."
In fact, the share of the gross domestic product per capita in the West Bank was estimated to be $2,900 in 2008, the most recent year available, according to the . Israel's has been about 10 times as high in recent years, according to the agency. The agency said that in the West Bank, "Israeli closure policies continue to disrupt labor and trade flows, industrial capacity, and basic commerce, eroding the productive capacity of the West Bank economy."
Mr. Romney's remarks, which were first reported by The Associated Press, drew a swift rejoinder from Palestinian leaders. Saeb Erekat, a senior aide to President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, told the news agency that "it is a racist statement and this man doesn't realize that the Palestinian economy cannot reach its potential because there is an Israeli occupation."
- Michael Cooper
10:40 P.M. | Auto Bailout Accusations
If there's one thing that gets Mr. Romney angry, it's being accused of wanting to let the American auto industry go bankrupt.
After Mr. Obama repeated the accusation, Mr. Romney insisted on a retort.
"Never," he said, describing himself as a "son of Detroit."
He insisted that he supported a "managed bankruptcy" and said that what ended up happening is what he called for.
Mr. Obama would not let the comments pass. He insisted that "you keep on trying to airbrush history."
The president insisted that Mr. Romney would not have provided government assistance to the auto companies, which the vast majority of economists say would have meant the companies would have had to liquidate.
"You said they could get it in the private sector," Mr. Obama said, noting that it would never have happened that way.
Mr. Obama said the fact-checkers would quickly check out who was right, a point that Mr. Romney agreed upon.
- Michael D. Shear
10:39 P.M. | Fact-Check: Romney Position on Troops in Afghanistan
Has Romney changed his view on an Afghan withdrawal and timeline? Yes, about an hour into the debate, Mr. Romney seemed to tweak his long-held position on Afghan troop withdrawals.
In the past, he has said that while he wanted to follow the same 2014 withdrawal timeline as the Obama administration and NATO allies, he would seek the advice of military commanders on the ground before making a decision. This prompted critics to suggest that Mr. Romney was giving himself wiggle room to keep regular combat brigades in Afghanistan past 2014. (Both the Obama administration and the Romney campaign have talked about keeping a small residual force, presumably of special operations forces and military trainers, after 2014 - if the government of Afghanistan allows it.)
But Monday night, Mr. Romney seemed to draw a much clearer line that he would take all regular combat troops out of Afghanistan by 2014 - without the caveat of first asking military commanders whether they believed that was a good idea.
In response to a question about whether he would withdraw troops even if it were obvious that the Afghans were not able to handle their own security, Mr. Romney said, "We're going to be finished by 2014, and when I'm president, we'll make sure we bring our troops out by the end of 2014."
He made no mention of first getting input from military commanders, as he has in the past in response to similar questions. "We're going to be able to make that transition by the end of 2014, so our troops will come home at that point," Mr. Romney said.
- Richard A. Oppel Jr.
10:37 P.M. | Fact-Check: A 'Pivot' to the Pacific
Mr. Obama spoke of his administration's "pivot" to the Pacific, but Mr. Romney's defense advisers say that President Obama's plan to shift from a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan and move national security resources toward Asia and the Pacific - read, China - is rhetorical flourish, not real policy. "The so-called pivot is hollow," Roger Zakheim, one of Mr. Romney's defense advisers, told reporters earlier this month. But is it?
An initial glance shows that the United States is hardly defenseless in the region. Right now some 325,000 American military and civilian personnel are assigned to the region, including 40,000 in Japan and 28,500 in South Korea. The Navy has 180 ships and 2,000 aircraft in the area; the Air Force has roughly 300 planes and 40,000 airmen at nine bases.
As part of the "pivot," the Pentagon is deploying only a relative handful of additional forces - 2,500 Marines for six months of the year to train with the Australian Defense Force - but they are based in Darwin, China's strategic backyard.
The Pentagon is also increasing its naval presence in the region to 60 percent of its fleet from the 50 percent that has been there until now. Even before the administration announced what it calls its rebalancing toward the region, the Pentagon had responded to China's increasing aggressiveness in the South China Sea by stepping up investments in a range of weapons, jet fighters and technology, including in a new generation of electronic jammers for the Navy designed to thwart a missile from finding and hitting a target. The jammers would be a safeguard against China's development of antiship ballistic missiles, potentially capable of hitting an American aircraft carrier in the Pacific.
Despite the Obama administration's assertions that its rebalancing is real, an independent review of the pivot has been critical of the Pentagon, saying it has not sufficiently explained how the government would sharpen its focus in the region. The review, released in August by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a nonpartisan policy institute in Washington, found that the Defense Department "has not adequately articulated the strategy behind its force posture planning, nor aligned the strategy with resources in a way that reflects current budget realities."
The review called for one or more additional nuclear attack submarines in Guam, the deployment of more Marines in the region and the bolstering of missile defense systems.
As part of his focus on Asia, Mr. Romney would build more military ships - 15 a year to Mr. Obama's 9 or 10 - although he has not provided a detailed explanation of how he would pay for them beyond substantially increasing the defense budget. Of those 15 ships, Mr. Romeny would like three to be submarines. A Virginia-class nuclear-powered attack submarine costs more than $2 billion.
In the midst of all the charges and countercharges, it is important to remember that China is not equipped to mount a frontal military challenge to the United States. China's total military budget in 2010 was an estimated $160 billion - roughly a tripling since the 1990s. By comparison, the Pentagon spent more than $500 billion in 2010, or closer to $700 billion if the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are included. Although the estimated 1.25 million ground troops of the People's Liberation Army make it the largest in the world (there are about 750,000 active-duty United States Army soldiers and Marines), there is a vast difference in training and ability.
Still, nearly all of China's spending is Asia-focused while only a portion of American defense spending is. And in lessons learned from the Soviet Union, American defense officials say the Chinese are not trying to compete comprehensively with the United States, but "asymmetrically," where they have an advantage - the Pacific.
- Elisabeth Bumiller
10:36 P.M. | The Caucus Click: The Reporters' View
- Stephen Crowley
10:31 P.M. | Fact-Check: The Case of China and Cheap Tires
President Obama again brought up the tire case, saying that China was flooding the United States with cheap tires and that he put a stop to it and saved jobs. But in fact, many economists criticize the administration's action.
In 2009, the Obama administration unilaterally imposed a duty on imports of Chinese tires - a move sought by the United Steelworkers union. It was one of nine trade enforcement actions taken by the United States against China under President Obama and, some economists argue, the most questionable. The tariff protected 1,200 American jobs, at most, according to a study by Gary Hufbauer of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. But the same study found that the tariff cost American consumers $1.1 billion last year alone in higher-priced tires - or about $900,000 per job. Moreover, China responded by slapping tariffs on imports of American chicken parts that cost American poultry producers an estimated $1 billion in lost sales. Last month, the Obama administration let the tire tariff quietly expire. Critics argue that is because it was a lose-lose scenario for the United States.
- Sharon LaFraniere
10:32 P.M. | The Caucus Click: The Debate in a Beijing Cafe
- Sim Chi Yin
10:29 P.M. | Fact-Check: Mission Creep in Libya
Mr. Obama noted more than once that Mr. Romney had called the Obama administration's intervention in Libya "mission creep" and "mission muddle." Here, Mr. Romney can make a strong case.
When NATO and the Arab League went into Libya in 2011, it was to protect the population against the forces of Muammar el-Qadaffi, which were promising to hunt down Mr. Qaddafi's opponents "like rats." But nowhere was regime change - deposing Mr. Qaddafi - an explicit, agreed-upon goal. It became a de facto one: NATO officials said the population could not be secure if it thought Mr. Qaddafi would come back to power. Soon, they were chasing the leader around the Libyan desert.
Eventually he was found - pulled from a ditch and shot. Washington did not exactly protest. But while there was mission creep, whether the outcome was a "muddle'' depends on what the West intended. Mr. Obama made clear from the start that he did not plan to send in American ground troops or remain in Libya to try to shape the society. In fact, he stayed out - and Mr. Romney now argues that contributed to the death of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans at the consulate in Benghazi.
Mr. Obama pressed his case for removing Mr. Qaddafi from power. "Imagine if we had pulled out at that point," he said at the debate, noting that Mr. Qaddafi "had more American blood on his hands than any individual other than Osama bin Laden.
- David E. Sanger
10:27 P.M. | On China, a Partner and an Adversary on Trade
Mr. Romney went out of the way to praise China, saying that the largest country in the world wants "the economy to work and the world to be free and open."
But moments later, he once again vowed that, "On Day 1, I will label them a currency manipulator."
The dueling messages were apparently an effort to talk about China as a "partner" but also to say that it needs to follow trade rules that keep things fair.
"We can work with them. We can collaborate with them," Mr. Romney said.
That echoed what Mr. Obama said about China. He called the country "an adversary but also a potential partner in the international community if it is following the rules."
But Mr. Obama aggressively accused Mr. Romney of investing in companies that ship jobs to places like China and of opposing trade complaints about cheap Chinese tires being dumped in America.
"We put a stop to it and as a consequence saved jobs throughout America," Mr. Obama said. "Those workers don't feel that way. They feel as if they had an administration who was finally going to take them seriously."
- Michael D. Shear
10:27 P.M. | Fact-Check: 'Let Detroit Go Bankrupt'?
Mr. Obama just stated that when Mr. Romney argued in late 2008 that Detroit auto companies should be denied a government bailout and instead turn to the private marketplace, no private financing was available. This is consistent with what auto executives have said.
At the time Mr. Romney wrote his now infamous New York Times op-ed the financial markets had ground to a halt. It was November 2008, and there was little available liquidity for anyone seeking financing. There were certainly no financial institutions - not even Bain Capital, Mr. Romney's private equity firm - looking to invest to the tune of the $80 billion the car companies needed at the time.
No private companies would come to the industry's aid, and the only path through bankruptcy would have been Chapter 7 liquidation, not the more orderly Chapter 11 reorganization that the company ultimately followed, people inside and outside the car companies have said.
In fact, the task force asked Bain if it was interested in investing in General Motors' European operations, according to one person with direct knowledge of the discussions.
Bain declined, this person said, speaking anonymously to discuss private negotiations.
- Jeremy W. Peters
10:22 P.M. | Fact-Check: Troops on the Ground in Syria
Mr. Romney said at the debate that "we don't want to have military involvement" in Syria. And with that statement, he essentially put himself in a place pretty close to where President Obama and Mr. Biden have been: that America's options are limited if putting ground troops into the country is off the table.
The essence of Mr. Romney's argument was that the Obama administration had acted too slowly, and given Russia a veto at the United Nations. But that veto - which the Russians have as a member of the Security Council - wasn't about taking military action against Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president who is clinging to power. It was about sanctions.
So in the end, the two sides seemed to come out in the same place: the only event that would prompt America to go into Syria was the need to secure its chemical weapons stockpiles. Anything short of that was not worth the risks.
- David E. Sanger
10:18 P.M. | Fact-Check: Leaving Afghanistan in 2014?
Mr. Obama said at the debate that he wanted to "transition out of Afghanistan in a responsible way." But when is the United States leaving? In every major conversation with the Afghans and the Pakistanis, American officials talk about their plans for an "enduring presence" of American troops - mostly behind high walls - who would stay in Afghanistan for years to come.
None of this is exactly a state secret. The opening paragraph of the White House on the summit meeting last May in Chicago among NATO nations in Afghanistan, for which the United States provides the lion's share of the troops, reads: "NATO Heads of State and Government agreed to an enduring partnership between NATO and Afghanistan that would last beyond the transition of full security responsibility for Afghanistan" from the international security force to Afghan forces.
"At the Chicago Summit, leaders reaffirmed this partnership, sending a clear message to the Afghan people that as they stand up to take responsibility for their own country, they will not stand alone," it said.
No one says, at least officially, how big that enduring force would be. But the internal estimates cited by American officials in recent interviews run from 10,000 to 15,000 troops. That would include a counterterrorism force, probably made up of special forces and training forces. They would be there to keep the Afghan security forces on track and to act as a trip wire to keep the Taliban from taking Kabul, if they ever threatened the capital again. It includes drone operators, so that the United States can keep patrolling the skies and, on occasion, launch missile attacks inside Pakistan or in Afghan territory.
And, least discussed of all, it includes bomb-search teams and other specialists to keep an eye on Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. There is no bigger concern inside the Obama administration than how to respond if a Pakistani weapon or nuclear material goes loose, and after a 2009 scare - when the White House briefly thought the Pakistani Taliban might have gotten nuclear material - President Obama has been insistent that the United States be in a position to respond quickly, according to interviews with current and former administration officials.
Of course, the "enduring presence" has not been agreed to yet by the Afghan government. It could fall apart, as a continuing presence in Iraq did. But many in the administration believe that President Karzai will have little choice, given the weakness of his own forces.
- David E. Sanger
10:17 P.M. | Israel as Our 'Greatest Ally'
In this debate, Mr. Obama has been careful to describe Israel as "our greatest ally in the region." This is a change from his appearance on "60 Minutes" last month in which he described Israel as "one of our closest allies in the region." That was a characterization that Romney aides quickly attacked, arguing that it showed a lack of support and loyalty to Israel. But by mentioning twice Monday night that Israel is the closest friend of the United States in that region, Mr. Obama seems to be going out of his way to avoid describing Israel the way he did last month.
- Richard A. Oppel Jr.
10:15 P.M. | Fact-Check: Romney's Bipartisan Success
Earlier in the debate, Mr. Romney said that bipartisan cooperation with an overwhelmingly Democratic legislature allowed him as Massachusetts governor to balance the state's budget for four straight years and propel the state's schools to first in the nation on standardized tests. Many experts, however, say those claims are less than fully credible.
Mr. Romney's assertion that he and the legislature came together to balance Massachusetts's budget omits the fact that the state constitution requires a balanced budget. And despite his statement that bipartisan cooperation with the legislature helped propel Massachusetts schools to first in the nation, most experts agree that the state's academic successes are rooted in school reform promoted a decade earlier by another Republican governor, William F. Weld.
Mr. Romney did propose education reforms during his term as governor from 2003 to 2007. But by and large, they failed to become law. "I don't think he put any major effort into sweeping education legislation that would be his," said Paul Grogan, who as head of the Boston Foundation headed an education reform commission created by Mr. Romney. Asked what happened to the report that his commission produced, he replied: "Nothing much. It didn't go anywhere."
- Michael Wines
10:15 P.M. | The Caucus Click: Watching the Debate in China
- Sim Chi Yin
10:13 P.M. | Fact-Check: 'Apology Tour'
Mitt Romney stated that President Obama went on a foreign "apology tour." Is this true? News organizations have repeatedly found the claim that Mr. Obama has apologized for American values and principles to be inaccurate.
While Mr. Obama has admitted American failings at times - and, like President George W. Bush, has apologized for specific acts of American wrongdoing abroad - he has never explicitly apologized for American values or principles.
Republicans have sought to use a number of excerpts from Mr. Obama's speeches or interviews to make their case that he has. One of the most commonly used is a 2009 speech in France in which Mr. Obama said that "there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive." But critics typically ignore what Mr. Obama said next: "But in Europe, there is an anti-Americanism that is at once casual but can also be insidious. Instead of recognizing the good that America so often does in the world, there have been times where Europeans choose to blame America for much of what's bad." In other words, Mr. Obama was saying that the United States and Europe had at times each dealt unfairly with each other - he never said he was sorry for American values or diplomacy.
In February, Mr. Obama did apologize to the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, after American military personnel were involved in burning copies of the Koran, an episode that spawned violence throughout Afghanistan. But his expression of regret came after Marine Gen. John R. Allen, the American commander in Afghanistan, had already apologized. It also brought to mind the apology then-President Bush made in 2004 to King Abdullah of Jordan for abuses at Abu Ghraib prison.
In an interview in February with Fox News, Mr. Romney seemed to object to the Koran-burning apology, saying, "For us to be apologizing at a time like this is something which is very difficult for the American people to countenance."
- Richard A. Oppel Jr.
10:11 P.M. | Obama Responds to Romney on 'Apology Tour'
There is almost nothing that makes Mr. Obama angrier than the accusation that he went on an "apology tour" early in his administration.
And Mr. Romney went there.
Responding the Mr. Obama's defense of his foreign policy in the region, Mr. Romney accused the president of taking "what I've called an apology tour."
Mr. Obama's eyes flashed with anger that was palpable. He said that nothing Mr. Romney said was true.
Mr. Obama said that the "apology tour" accusation was "probably the biggest whopper that has been told during the course of this campaign."
Mr. Romney refused to relent, saying that Mr. Obama had flown to the Middle East - and skipped a trip to Israel in the process.
He said the president told the world that "America had been dismissive and derisive." He looked at the president and said, "America has not dictated to other nations."
In response, Mr. Obama shot back that as a candidate, he had taken a trip to visit troops abroad, unlike Mr. Romney. He also said that he visited Israel - and its Holocaust museum - and noted that Mr. Romney had met with donors in Israel.
The president also described visiting an Israeli border town that suffered repeated missile attacks from terrorists.
"That's how I've used my travels," the president said. "The central question st this point is going to be who is going to be credible to all parties involved?"
- Michael D. Shear
10:05 P.M. | Fact-Check: Sanctions on Iran
Mr. Obama has a lot of history on his side with his assertion that Iran's economy is being crippled by sanctions imposed over the past few years and that Iran's oil sales have plummeted. Mr. Romney called for tightening them more. [#x2028]
"We put in the toughest, most crippling sanctions ever," Mr. Obama said.
Until Mr. Obama came to office, the United Nations sanctions on Iran were pretty ineffective. There were travel bans on some scientists linked to the missile and nuclear programs, and restrictions on some banks. Sales of sensitive equipment were blocked. But the sanctions did not go after the heart of the Iranian economy: oil sales. Mr. Obama toughened them, step by step, making it hard for Iran to get access to dollars, to get international loans and even to deliver oil. He pressed some of Iran's biggest customers to buy oil elsewhere. Even today, scores of loaded Iranian oil tankers are bobbing off the country's coast, with nowhere to go.
[#x2028]
The result is that the sanctions in place today are far greater than they were under President George W. Bush. But could they be tighter still, even[#x2028] "crippling," to use the phrase Mr. Romney likes? (He borrowed it from Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.)
Certainly they could - but only[#x2028] if other countries agree. Because the United States has not had diplomatic relations or any significant trade with Iran for more than three decades, this is all a matter of persuading allies and others, and giving them an alternative to Iranian oil. Mr. Romney has not said how he would do that.[#x2028][#x2028]
What Mr. Obama can't say is that while he ratcheted up the sanctions, he also expanded the covert program to sabotage Iran's nuclear centrifuges - a highly classified program called Olympic Games. It introduced cyberweapons - a computer worm - to destabilize the machinery, buying a bit more time for sanctions to work - but not much. The Iranians have now recovered, however, and are producing new nuclear fuel at a steady rate, despite sanctions and sabotage.
- David E. Sanger
10:05 P.M. | Fact-Check: How Close Is Iran to a Bomb?
Mr. Romney said at the debate that Iran was "four years closer to a nuclear weapon." How close is that?
The answer depends on three factors. The first is how long it would take Iran to manufacture bomb-grade uranium. The second is how long it would take to fashion that uranium into a weapon - without getting caught, and getting bombed, along the way. And the third is how long it would take to make the weapon small enough to fit atop a Shahab III, Iran's longest-range missile.
Right now the Iranians have enough low-enriched and medium-enriched uranium on hand to make five or six bombs - but it would require further enrichment, and they would almost certainly be caught by international weapons inspectors, who visit Iran's enrichment facilities every few weeks.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel argued in a recent speech in front of the United Nations that Iran would be ready to make a short, perhaps undetectable sprint to a bomb by next spring. American officials agree, but say the sprint would be hard to hide. So far, Iran's stockpile of 20 percent enriched uranium - the closest to bomb grade - is short of a single bomb, and the amount was reduced recently because some was diverted to fuel a research reactor used for medical purposes. But Iran is working to make more.
Then comes the next part of the process: "weaponizing." The physics is not that hard, but again, the risk of detection is fairly high. Obama administration officials say the United States would almost certainly detect what was happening. The Israelis are not so sure - especially because weapons labs can be hidden in caves, tunnels or university laboratories.
Even then, Iran would have only a crude bomb - something it might put on a cargo ship, but nothing that could be aimed with precision. That process would take a year or more, and involve engineers who would most likely have to redesign Iran's missile warheads. "We'd see them coming," one senior intelligence official said.
But that does not guarantee they could be stopped: The United States saw China, India, Pakistan and North Korea becoming nuclear powers, and decided in each case that it was not worth a war to stop them.
- David E. Sanger
10:02 P.M. | Fact-Check: The Size of the Navy
On military matters, Mr. Romney repeated a challenge to the Obama administration that he has used with repeated intensity: that the United States Navy is the smallest since 1917. Yes, today's Navy is much smaller than in past generations. But Navy commanders also point out that each individual warship at sea today is far more capable than any individual predecessor in that class of vessel. The commander in chief, Mr. Obama, made the same point in the debate, saying that today's Navy includes aircraft carriers and nuclear-powered submarines far beyond comparison to the fleet early in the last century.
"You mention the Navy, for example, and the fact that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916," Mr. Obama said to Mr. Romney. "Well governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets."
Even so, greater numbers of warships do allow greater presence. But the American economy, the global economy - and Congress, which includes advocates of both increased military spending and of Pentagon cuts - all get a of vote.
Mr. Romney has made what he calls the nation's underfinanced military a centerpiece of his argument that Mr. Obama has failed to safeguard American strength abroad.
How many trillions of dollars are at stake remains in dispute. Mr. Obama and his vice president, Joseph R. Biden Jr., say Mr. Romney wants to add $2 trillion to military spending, a figure that Mr. Romney's advisers have rejected as exaggerated. The $2 trillion figure is reached by calculating Mr. Romney's pledge to spend 4 percent of gross domestic product on the military, which government budget experts put at about $1.8 trillion. Mr. Romney's advisers point out that this extra spending would not be immediate, but over many years.
In the debate. Mr. Romney did not use, or counter, the $2 trillion figure. He said he would add $1 trillion to the Pentagon budget, by restoring current cuts and preventing deeper spending reductions under sequestration. He seems to have gotten that number by adding together the $450 billion-plus defense spending cuts proposed by the Obama administration, over the next decade, with the approximately $500 billion in cuts that would be required if Congress fails to reach a budget accord.
But that second cut, under a program called sequestration, has not happened yet - and both Democrats and Republicans are trying to avoid it. Mr. Obama responded by pledging that sequestration would be avoided, and he stressed that the Joint Chiefs of Staff had signed off on current budget proposals.
- Thom Shanker and Elisabeth Bumiller
10:02 P.M. | From Obama, a Sarcastic Retort
The president offered one of the most sarcastic retorts seen during any of the four debates, responding to Mr. Romney's desire for an increase in the number of naval ships for the United States.
Looking directly at Mr. Romney, Mr. Obama scoffed at the notion.
"We also have fewer horses and bayonets because the nature of our military has changed," the president said. "We have these things called aircraft carriers, where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines."
Mr. Obama was not finished. He described Mr. Romney's desire for increased naval ships as short-sighted and not in the long-term interests of the military.
"So the question is not a game of Battleship where we are counting ships," Mr. Obama said. "It's what are our capabilities?"
- Michael D. Shear
9:54 P.M. | Fact-Check: Romney's Shifting Tone on Iran
Mr. Romney's remark that he wants to use "peaceful and diplomatic means" to persuade Iran not to pursue its nuclear program was a striking departure from the more hawkish tone he has used throughout the campaign.
Mr. Romney urged preparations for war against Iran last year in an opinion piece that he wrote in The Wall Street Journal. "Si vis pacem, para bellum,'' he wrote. "That is a Latin phrase, but the ayatollahs will have no trouble understanding its meaning from a Romney administration: If you want peace, prepare for war."
And it was only a few weeks ago that Mr. Romney called for more muscle-flexing aimed at Iran - saying he would "restore the permanent presence of aircraft carrier task forces in both the Eastern Mediterranean and the Gulf region" - in a speech on Oct. 8 at the Virginia Military Institute.
"For the sake of peace, we must make clear to Iran through actions - not just words - that their nuclear pursuit will not be tolerated," he said.
And Mr. Romney has long been dismissive of Mr. Obama's attempts to use diplomacy to persuade Iran to abandon its weapons programs.
"In his first TV interview as president, he said we should talk to Iran," Mr. Romney said in his speech at the Republican National Convention. "We're still talking, and Iran's centrifuges are still spinning."
He spoke out against bilateral negotiations in 2007, saying: "But until there are indications that high-level engagement would do anything other than reward bad behavior, I don't believe that we should be engaging Iran in direct, bilateral negotiations over their nuclear weapons program. Iran's nuclear intransigence is repulsive to the entire world, and we shouldn't let Iran try to position it as an Iran versus a U.S. thing."
He continued to be dismissive of the diplomatic approach in his 2010 book "No Apology."
"President Obama sends a signal that he is eager to negotiate at any time, any place, without conditions; the effect of this is to cede all of the power and leverage to our enemies,'' he wrote. "Time and again, President Obama's open hand has been met with a clenched fist.''
Mr. Romney made a similar point in the secretly-recorded videotape of a Florida fund-raiser in which he made headlines for his remark that 47 percent of Americans pay no income taxes and see themselves as victims.
"The president's foreign policy, in my opinion, is formed in part by a perception he has that his magnetism and his charm and his persuasiveness is so compelling, that he can sit down with people like Putin and Chavez and Ahmadinejad and they'll find that we're such wonderful people that they'll go on with us," Mr. Romney said.
"And they'll stop doing bad things. It's an extraordinarily naïve perception, and it led to huge errors in North Korea, in Iraq, obviously in Iran, in Egypt, around the world. My own view is that the centerpiece of American foreign policy has to be strength."
And last year Mr. Romney spoke about the possibility of a military strike against Iran in an interview with Fox News. When Bret Baier of Fox News asked Mr. Romney last year what kind of military action he would consider against Iran, Mr. Romney said, "There's a lot more information I need to have to know what type of military strike would be appropriate and effective."
"Would you be prepared to do it unilaterally if need be?" Mr. Baier asked.
"Of course,'' Mr. Romney replied.
Kitty Bennett contributed to this report.
- Michael Cooper
9:56 P.M. | The Caucus Click: Watching the Debate in Pakistan
- Max Becherer
9:56 P.M. | Fact-Check: Defense Cuts
Has President Obama promised large cuts to the military? The looming cuts to the military that Mr. Romney alluded to were not the president's doing. They are the bipartisan product of a messy deal he reached last year with House Republicans to raise the debt ceiling and avert default.
While Mr. Romney often attacks Mr. Obama for the across-the-board defense cuts that are currently scheduled to begin in January, the cuts - which Congress may very well intervene to block - were a result of a bipartisan law: the Budget Control Act of 2011, which Mr. Romney's running mate, Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, supported.
The law had its origins in the debt ceiling debate of 2011. When the White House asked Congress for the authority to borrow more money to pay for spending that Congress had already authorized, Republicans in the House of Representatives, including Mr. Ryan, balked at raising the debt limit without a guarantee of big spending cuts.
With the threat of default looming, a compromise was reached: Congress agreed to raise the debt limit in exchange for deficit-reduction measures, and a Congressional "supercommittee" was formed to hammer out the details. To spur the committee to act, the deal included what some officials described at the time as a hammer: the law said that failing to reach a deal would trigger $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts over the next decade that neither side wanted, with roughly half coming from the military.
Mr. Romney criticized the deal at the time, but Mr. Ryan praised it, issuing a statement calling it "a victory for those committed to controlling government spending."
But even facing the prospect of the automatic spending cuts, the supercommittee failed to reach a deal. Now the automatic cuts are scheduled to begin in 2013 - unless Congress and the president agree to avert them after the election.
"It will not happen," Mr. Obama said of the cuts at the debate.
- Michael Cooper
9:50 P.M. | Fact-Check: Debt as a National Security Risk
In the debate, Mr. Romney cited the United States' growing debt as a major national security risk.
Many analysts share that assessment, including retired Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "I believe the single biggest threat to our national security is our debt, so I also believe we have every responsibility to help eliminate that threat," he said last year. "We must, and will, do our part."
The general thrust of the argument is that the United States' huge deficits and debt might force cuts to its spending on human and built infrastructure, as well as research and development. The debt might also undermine confidence overseas in the United States' ability to lead.
It's a broad argument about national priorities. But on the more specific question of whether the amount of United States debt held by China poses a threat, the Pentagon has said, generally, no.
- Annie Lowrey
9:49 P.M. | Fact-Check: Massachusetts Test Scores
Mr. Romney said that grade-school students in Massachusetts, where he served as governor, took the national lead in test scores, because "Republicans and Democrats came together on a bipartisan basis." Mr. Obama countered, "but that was 10 years before you took office." They are both right.
The National Assessment of Educational Progress commonly called the nation's report card, does show that Massachusetts took the top spot shortly after Mr. Romney took office in 2003. But education experts have attributed that to a 1993 school reform law passed under another Republican governor, William Weld, and Mr. Romney, himself, has given that law much of the credit for his state's progress.
- Richard Pérez-Peña
9:47 P.M. | Enter Bush and Cheney
Mr. Obama name-checked the former president and vice president, accusing Mr. Romney of praising George W. Bush as a good economic steward and Dick Cheney as good in foreign policy.
That may be the first time Mr. Cheney's name popped up during a debate this year. The former vice president was one of Mr. Obama's chief foreign policy critics during the early part of Mr. Obama's term.
That faded a bit as Mr. Cheney underwent heart surgery. But in recent months, the former vice president has recovered and begun his harsh critiques of the current president's approaches.
Mr. Bush, by contrast, has largely stayed out of the fray, although his policies have been at the heart of the debate over the direction the country should go during the next four years, as The Times's John Harwood wrote on Monday.
- Michael D. Shear
9:45 P.M. | Fact-Check: A Quick Note on Geography
A small note on global geography to Mr. Romney.
During a discussion concerning the bloodshed in Syria - and Iran's role - Mr. Romney said: "Syria is Iran's only ally in the Arab world. It's their route to the sea."
Yes, Syria and Iran are allies. But Iran has a lengthy and sovereign coastline that stretches along the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, and then linking to the Arabian Sea - which, in turn, leads to the Indian Ocean and onward to the world's high seas.
- Thom Shanker
9:43 P.M. | Fact-Check: Obama Reaction to Iran Uprisings
Mr. Romney said President Obama had been "silent" in the face of Iran's opposition uprising in 2009 and 2010. That is a common criticism with some truth, but it is not the whole story.
As Iranians took to the streets to protest how the vote was held that re-elected Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the first such public uprising in recent memory in Iran, Mr. Obama waited for days to say anything. Then he was lukewarm in his public support of the protesters, though he eventually used strong language to condemn the force used against them.
On June 15, 2009, as reports on protests and their brutal suppression grew, Mr. Obama said that he was watching the situation and that it was "up to Iranians to make decisions about who Iran's leaders will be," adding that "we respect Iranian sovereignty and want to avoid the United States' being the issue inside of Iran." He also said: "I am deeply troubled by the violence that I've been seeing on television. I think that the democratic process - free speech, the ability of people to peacefully dissent - all those are universal values and need to be respected."
By June 26, he was using stronger language: "The violence perpetrated against them is outrageous," Mr. Obama said. "And despite the government's efforts to keep the world from bearing witness to that violence, we see it, and we condemn it." Six months later, in December, he said, "For months, the Iranian people have sought nothing more than to exercise their universal rights. Each time they have done so, they have been met with the iron fist of brutality."
Mr. Obama's aides have acknowledged that his initial reaction was slow and understated, but they said he feared that any public expression of support would enable the mullahs to claim that the uprising was the work of the C.I.A., and crush it. There's a lot of history there: back in the 1950s the C.I.A. did help stage a coup in Iran, bring to power the shah.
Publicly, the White House insists it got it right. Privately many of the president's aides have their doubts. And when the next protests came, in Egypt in 2011, Mr. Obama quickly sided with the protesters, after younger members of his staff said he had to get "on the right side of history.''
- Scott Shane
9:41 P.M. | A Focus on the (U.S.) Economy
Another big question Monday night: which candidate would seek to move first from the official topic of the debate - foreign policy - back to these shores and to the economy. Point: Mr. Romney, who went to joblessness. Mr. Obama came back a few minutes later to talk about reducing the deficit.
As a result, 30 minutes into the debate, the candidates are debating the economy and Mr. Romney is going through his five-point economic program, while Mr. Obama is criticizing Mr. Romney's record as governor of Massachusetts on economic development and education. "We didn't have a chance to talk about this in the last debate," Mr. Obama said.
This was perhaps inevitable. The real big differences between these two candidates are over domestic issues, and every poll suggests that the economy, education and jobs are the top concerns of the voters. (No knock on the Middle East here, by the way.)
- Adam Nagourney
9:40 P.M. | The Caucus Click: Watching, and Decided, in Ohio
- Michael F. McElroy
9:36 P.M. | Fact-Check: Arming Syrian Rebels
On the question of whether to arm the Syrian rebels, President Obama and Mr. Romney have a genuine difference of opinion. Mr. Obama has steadfastly refused to give the Syrian rebels heavy weapons to take out President Bashar al-Assad's fighter jets and tanks, and even light arms have been transferred at the behest of two neighboring Arab states, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
Mr. Romney said at the debate that he wanted to make sure that responsible groups in Syria receive the arms that they need to defend themselves. Mr. Obama said that the administration was mobilizing support for the opposition there but that it wanted to make sure that "we're not putting arms in the hands" of people who could eventually turn them against the United States or its allies in the region.
Administration officials argue it would be madness to give heavier arms to the rebels, because some of the groups are feared to be linked to Al Qaeda. "We did this once before,'' one of Mr. Obama's top defense advisers said, referring to the arming of the mujahedeen in Afghanistan in the 1980s, fighters who later took on the United States.
Mr. Romney is far more willing to allow the rebels - at least those who "share our values'' - to get those arms, as he indicated at a speech at the Virginia Military Institute. But he stopped short of saying the United States would provide those arms directly.
Lurking over these last few weeks until the election is a ground truth: the arms that have flowed to the anti-Assad insurgents so far have gone overwhelmingly to the hardline jihadists. Efforts by the director of central intelligence, David Petraeus, and others have so far failed to come up with an effective way to vet the rebels, that is, sorting out extremists from secularists. There is no reason to believe it would be any easier in a Romney administration. Figuring out friend from foe in the arms bazaar along the Turkish-Syrian border is virtually impossible, American officials say, and once the arms are transferred, they are hard to track.
- David E. Sanger
9:34 P.M. | Bringing Foreign Policy Back Home
Mr. Obama has twice sought to guide the foreign policy discussion back to the economy at home.
In answer to a question about Egypt, Mr. Obama said America must repair its own economy even as it looks abroad.
"There are some things we are going to have to do at home as well," Mr. Obama said. "We've neglected developing our own economy."
Earlier, the president sought to do the same thing during a discussion about Libya.
"We can't continue to do nation-building in those regions," Mr. Obama said, without doing some "nation-building at home."
After the president's Egypt answer, Mr. Romney jumped on the bandwagon, saying that "we have weakened our economy" at home while dealing with issues abroad.
- Michael D. Shear
9:29 P.M. | Fact-Check: Romney on Russia
Mr. Obama attacked Mr. Romney for describing Russia as America's "No. 1 geopolitical foe." "When you were asked what was the biggest geopolitical threat facing America, you said Russia, not Al Qaeda, you said Russia," Mr. Obama told Mr. Romney during the debate. "And the 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back." Mr. Romney did characterize Russia that way, although he also cited other more immediate security threats.
Mr. Romney's characterization of Russia is one that has puzzled some Republican foreign policy experts - like Colin Powell, who said, "Come on, Mitt, think," - as well as some of Mr. Romney's own foreign policy advisers.
More recently, Mr. Romney seemed to soften his language a bit, saying in a radio interview that Russia is a "geopolitical adversary" but not describing the country as America's top foe. But Mr. Romney's concerns about Russia are deep seated. He believes that President Vladimir V. Putin will use political repression to further tighten his grip on power. And, more broadly, he argues that Russia will use its vast natural resources wealth to dominate much of Eurasia.
But some experts say that analysis is backward: They say that Mr. Putin and Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev have been using high petroleum and mineral prices to support domestic and defense programs, and that those programs are now vulnerable to volatility or even stagnation in commodity prices. Mr. Romney's critics also say he ignores important help that Russian leaders have provided, like supporting a United Nations heavy-arms embargo on Iran; canceling a surface-to-air missile system sale to Iran; and allowing supplies to be sent through Russia to NATO troops in Afghanistan.
- Richard A. Oppel Jr.
9:25 P.M. | Fact-Check: A Status of Forces Agreement?
President Obama suggested that Mr. Romney was mistaken in seeking to keep 10,000 American troops in Iraq. But the Obama administration initially sought to do just that - and ultimately never managed to negotiate an agreement to allow any American troops in Iraq.
Mr. Obama sought to negotiate a Status of Forces Agreement that would have allowed United States troops to stay in Iraq after 2011. Initially, the Obama administration was prepared to keep up to 10,000 troops in Iraq. Later, the Obama administration lowered the figure to about 5,000 troops - some 3,500 of which would be continuously based in the country while the remainder would periodically be rotated through. The role of the American forces would be to train Iraqi troops, patrol Iraq's skies and help Iraqi commandos fight Al Qaeda.
Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki indicated that he might be willing to work out an agreement to allow some American troops to stay. But the Iraqis did not agree to an American demand that such an agreement be submitted to their parliament for approval, a step the Obama administration insisted was needed to ensure that any American troops that stayed would be immune from prosecution under Iraqi law.
Mr. Obama relied on Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. as well as American officials in Iraq to negotiate the agreement. The president spoke to Mr. Maliki only twice during the negotiations - at the start and at the end of the talks. Also, the Obama administration did not begin formal talks with the Iraqis until June 2, 2011, which did not leave much time for negotiation.
The Obama administration says that it was willing to keep some troops in Iraq, but the Iraqis, reflecting their concerns over sovereignty, failed to agree to the necessary immunities.
After the talks broke down, the Obama administration withdrew the remaining American troops in December 2011, the deadline set for withdrawing all American forces from Iraq under the Status of Forces Agreement that was concluded by George W. Bush and Mr. Mailiki in 2008.
Iran has taken advantage of the absence of American forces to fly hundreds of tons of military equipment through Iraqi airspace to Syria.
- Michael R. Gordon and Scott Shane
9:26 P.M. | Candidates Attack and Critique Credentials
President Obama offered an early, forceful critique of Mr. Romney's foreign policy credentials, accusing his rival of "wrong and reckless" foreign policy that is "all over the map."
Coming out quickly to assert his national security credentials, the president repeatedly hammered Mr. Romney as not ready to take over as commander in chief.
"Every time you've offered an opinion, you've been wrong," Mr. Obama said. "Not only were you wrong, but you were confusing in sending mixed messages to our troops and to our allies."
Mr. Romney said the president's characterizations of his record "don't happen to be accurate." And he sought to make Mr. Obama's critique a negative in the debate.
"Attacking me is not an agenda," Mr. Romney said. "Attacking me is not talking about how we are going to deal with the challenges of the Middle East."
But Mr. Romney's approach in the first few minutes of the debate was far less aggressive, suggesting that American policy in the Middle East should be one of seizing opportunities, not making war.
"We can't kill our way out of this mess," Mr. Romney said.
- Michael D. Shear
9:21 P.M. | Candidates Take Aggressive Stance From the Start
The predictions were that the format of this debate - both candidates sitting down; the subject being foreign policy; the desire of both the president and Mr. Romney to convey the demeanor commander-in-chief - would lead to this being a slightly more decorous debate than last one. So far, that does not appear to be true. No finger-pointing yet, but Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney are talking over each other, challenging each other's facts and veracity, as Mr. Obama comes in - again - seemingly intent on not giving an inch to Mr. Romney after his disastrous first debate.
And Mr. Obama, once again, has come armed with the sound-bites that he once disdained. "The Cold War has been over for 20 years," he said, criticizing Mr. Romney for identifying Russia as the top international foe to the United States. "But, Governor, when it comes to our foreign policy, you seem to want to import the foreign policies of the 1980s, just like the social policies of the 1950s and the economic policies of the 1920s."
- Adam Nagourney
9:17 P.M. | Fact-Check: The Strength of Al Qaeda
Mr. Romney said Al Qaeda remained "an enormous threat," and Mr. Obama said his administration had "decimated" its leadership. Who is right? Both are.
The Obama administration has waged a secret war of drone strikes and commando raids against Al Qaeda in roughly a dozen countries and claimed victory in killing not only Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda's founder, but also much of the group's top leadership. Last year Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta declared that the United States was "within reach of strategically defeating Al Qaeda'' and that the American focus had narrowed to only 10 or 20 crucial leaders in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.
In January, the nation's top intelligence official, James R. Clapper, testified that continued pressure would likely reduce Al Qaeda's core leadership in Pakistan to "largely symbolic importance" by 2015.
But even as Al Qaeda central has come under intense pressure in Pakistan, its ideology has spread and given birth to dangerous affiliates in Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere. Michael G. Vickers, the undersecretary of defense for intelligence, has said that even if the United States should kill all of the group's leadership, "you still have Al Qaeda, the idea."
The Qaeda affiliate in Yemen, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, is viewed as the most immediate threat and remains very dangerous, Mr. Clapper said, because political instability has allowed it to seize large areas of southern Yemen. In North Africa, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb has stepped up kidnapping for ransom and has been bolstered by rebels returning from Libya with heavy weapons.
Last month Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton suggested that there was a link between Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and the attack at the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, that killed the United States ambassador and three others. Officials have said the question of any Al Qaeda involvement would be settled only after the F.B.I. completed a criminal investigation, which could take months.
- Elisabeth Bumiller
9:12 P.M. | Fact-Check: Conditions on Foreign Aid
On foreign aid, Mitt Romney has been much more explicit than President Obama: he would make aid to Egypt, and other "Arab Spring'' states, conditional on how they formed their governments. He has not said what the conditions would be, but aides have: the country has to be tolerant of other religions, enshrine basic human rights, educate girls, preserve peace treaties (especially Egypt's treaty with Israel) and move toward Western forms of justice.
Mr. Obama has been less specific, but his aides note that cutting aid can become a two-way street. For example, the $1.3 billion in military aid given annually to the Egyptian military was the price of the peace treaty with Israel. Cut the aid and it might be easier to jettison the treaty.
- David E. Sanger
9:12 P.M. | New Ad From Conservatives to Follow Debate
BOCA RATON, Fla. - A provocative ad that imagines what the world will be like in 2030 through the eyes of a menacing Chinese professor will hit the air on Monday night right after the final presidential debate concludes.
A reprise of a popular commercial that first ran in 2010, the ad features the professor speaking in Chinese to his students as English subtitles flash on the screen.
Two conservative groups, the Americans for Prosperity Foundation and Citizens Against Government Waste, are spending $2 million this week to run it.
"The ancient Greeks, the Roman empire, the British empire and the United States of America: They all make the same mistakes, turning their back on the principles that made them great," the professor says. "America tried to tax and spend itself out of a great recession. Enormous so-called 'stimulus' spending, massive changes to health care, government takeovers of private industries and crushing debt."
Then the professor cracks a sinister smile and chuckles: "Of course we owned most of their debt. So now they work for us." His class erupts in laughter.
- Jeremy W. Peters
9:00 P.M. | Expect a Question on Negotiations With Iran
The question of whether the United States should engage in direct negotiations with Iran is almost certain to come up, thanks to a report in The Times that such talks are being considered by both sides.
Mr. Obama's administration pushed back against the report, saying, "It's not true that the United States and Iran have agreed to one-on-one talks or any meeting after the American elections."
Iran has also denied that direct talks are in the works.
But Mr. Schieffer, the moderator of the debate, is almost certain to ask Mr. Obama and his challenger, Mr. Romney, about whether such talks should proceed, and if so, under what circumstances.
Mr. Romney declined over the weekend to say whether such talks are a good idea. In 2007, he warned against direct negotiations with Iran, saying that "until there are indications that high-level engagement would do anything other than reward bad behavior, I don't believe that we should be engaging Iran in direct, bilateral negotiations over their nuclear weapons program."
He added in 2007: "Iran's nuclear intransigence is repulsive to the entire world, and we shouldn't let Iran try to position it as an Iran versus. a U.S. thing."
Since then, Mr. Romney has been more bellicose toward Iran as he has sought to characterize Mr. Obama as having been too weak in dealing with the leaders of the country.
"Si vis pacem, para bellum," Mr. Romney wrote in an editorial in The Wall Street Journal last year. "That is a Latin phrase, but the ayatollahs will have no trouble understanding its meaning from a Romney administration: If you want peace, prepare for war."
- Michael D. Shear
8:51 P.M. | A Look at the Foreign Policy Advisers
On the stage Monday night, the two candidates will be speaking.
But their words will echo their foreign policy advisers, the small cadre of national security experts they have each assembled to guide their thinking.
Who are these folks?
The Times's David Sanger wrote what may be the definitive piece about Mr. Romney's advisers, who include John R. Bolton, the former United Nations ambassador; Richard S. Williamson, a former Ronald Reagan official; Jim Talent, a former Missouri senator; and Liz Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney.
One of the most visible advisers for Mr. Romney? Dan Senor, a former spokesman for the American coalition in Iraq who is close to Mr. Romney. The Cable blog, at foreignpolicy.com, also has a list of Romney advisers.
Mr. Obama's inner circle is easier to see. As president, it's the one he has assembled in the White House.
Among his advisers: Tom Donilon, the national security adviser; Dennis McDonough, the deputy national security adviser; John Brennan, Mr. Obama's chief counterterrorism aide; and Susan Rice, the United Nations ambassador.
Most visible of late? Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, who has been playing Mr. Romney in debate preparations.
- Michael D. Shear
8:44 P.M. | Fielding Questions Sitting Down
President Obama has joked that he took a nap behind the lectern in the first debate
Freed from that constraint in the second debate, Mr. Obama and his rival, Mitt Romney, veered toward each other - literally and repeatedly.
So what about Monday night?
This time, both candidates will be seated, more like their vice presidential running mates were during their debate two weeks ago.
How that will change things is anyone's guess. Both camps are certain to have warned the candidates about the danger of the split screen, which showed a grinning Mr. Biden and a thirsty Mr. Ryan during their exchange.
The seated position should make it more difficult for the two men to be as physically demonstrative toward each other. But it also could make it harder to appear dominating, or presidential, while seated.
For Mr. Obama, the risk is that he loses the assertive posture he took in the second debate, treating the moment more like one of the television interviews he has done so often during the last several years.
In Mr. Romney's case, being seated could make it tougher to project a presidential, commander-in-chief image.
- Michael D. Shear
8:41 P.M. | The Caucus Click: More Pre-Debate Jenga for Romney
- Stephen Crowley
8:32 P.M. | Post Card From Boca Raton
BOCA RATON, Fla. - In the Mediterranean-style Mizner Park downtown, the grass is cropped as close as a golf green and three watch sellers, Van Cleef and Arpels, Hublot and Jaeger-LeCultre, sit side by side.
This is a town of "amazing wealth, you just shake your head sometimes," said Melissa Berg, who was doing some midday shopping.
Boca Raton has twice earned a place in the political narrative this year, as the host of Monday night's presidential debate and earlier as the setting of a high-donor dinner where Mr. Romney uttered his 47 percent remark.
No question, it's a rich town. Forbes ranked three of its gated communities among the 10 most expensive in the United States in 2004. But it also a place where middle-class families move for the good public schools, and relatively affordable housing is within walking distance of the beach.
"We're ordinary people,'' said a man in orange swim trunks leaving the beach at Spanish River Park on Monday afternoon. He did not want to give his name. "I drive a Honda, my wife drives a Mazda," he said.
He plans to vote to re-elect the president. "President Obama is for the guy in the middle class trying to work their way through it and pay the bills every month," he said.
Carole Gotthilf, a 25-year-resident, said Boca residents were "very strong Obama for a long time; I think there's mixed emotions now."
The president won Palm Beach County, where Boca Raton is located, with a commanding 61.5 percent in 2008. He seems unlikely to enjoy that margin again.
"He's done a good job," said Ms. Gotthilf, who was looking at shoes through a window at Mizner Park. "People around me who agreed with me at one point now disagree ferociously."
Ms. Berg, 53, a real estate agent in the luxury division of a local firm, said she was "a Republican at heart" who supported Mr. Romney, but she worried about his proposal to replace Medicare with a voucher-like system. She went to hear Mr. Romney at a big rally a couple of weeks ago in hopes he would describe his plans. "They don't really say all that much at rallies," she said. "I just want a direct answer."
It was a blustery day at the beach, with a purple flag warning to keep out of the water. Scattered bathers lay in the sun. A sign said the street lights on Ocean Boulevard were now switched off for the season to protect nesting sea turtles.
Alan Hernandez, 77, and Jane Foster, 70, a couple who each retired last week - he cleaned the hulls of luxury yachts; she worked in administration for a nearby city - said Boca was not as friendly as when they moved here years ago. They, too, mentioned the wealth. "You stop at a light and say, whoa, that's a Bentley on my right," Mr. Hernandez said. Ms. Foster said she was "not intimidated, we've been here longer than them."
Who did they plan to vote for? "I have a feeling that either one, you're going to say, 'What was I thinking?'," Mr. Hernandez said.
- Trip Gabriel
8:15 P.M. | Florida, Florida, Florida
States like Virginia, Iowa and, especially, Ohio, may be getting all of the attention of late. But that doesn't mean Florida - with its haul of 29 electoral votes - isn't still the big prize.
Monday night's debate in Boca Raton is a symbol of that importance.
The debate may not be focused on the issues that most interest Florida's voters - the economy, the housing market, Social Security and Medicare. But it's no accident that the concluding debate is here.
And while the candidates themselves hunkered down for last-minute debate preparations on Monday, their best surrogates took advantage of being here.
"This election will be closer than the last one," the first lady Michelle Obama said Monday at a rally in Davie, Fla. "That's the only guarantee. And it could all come down to what happens in just a few key battleground states like right here in Florida."
Over the weekend, Mr. Romney himself rallied supporters in Daytona Beach.
"Are you ready for four very different years?" Mr. Romney asked the crowd. "We can endure 18 more days of the agenda of President Obama, but we cannot endure four more years, that's why we're going to replace him."
The president and Mr. Romney have been battling fiercely in Florida, which decided the election in 2000 and has remained ideologically split since then. Polls suggest Mr. Romney has momentum in the state, though the growth in the Latino vote, which is expected to go heavily for Mr. Obama, could be key.
- Michael D. Shear
8:08 P.M. | Debate Questions Most Likely Left Unasked
They have been asked about the economy, Libya, health care, student loans and gas prices.
But if Monday night's debate sticks to its stated theme of foreign policy, Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney will have withstood three general election debates without answering a direct question about arguably the two most polarizing social issues of our time: abortion and same-sex marriage.
Martha Raddatz of ABC News, the moderator of the vice presidential debate, asked Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Representative Paul D. Ryan about abortion, putting it in the context of faith: "I would like to ask you both to tell me what role your religion has played in your own personal views on abortion."
But neither Jim Leher of PBS, Candy Crowley of CNN or any of the town hall participants asked Mr. Romney or Mr. Obama about the issues.
(The two candidates' views on contraception arose during the last debate, but not because of a specific question about the topic - it stemmed from a inquiry about women and workplace inequality.)
Granted, their positions on abortion and same-sex marriage are not exactly hidden - but for those who do not follow politics closely, the nuances of their views on both may remain a mystery.
So will either man be asked about abortion or gay marriage before a national audience before election day? It seems unlikely, unless an audience member at one of their rallies asks between now and Nov. 6.
- Michael Barbaro
8:04 P.M. | Foreign Policy Debate Format Explained
Like the first presidential debate, Monday night's face-off will be divided up into segments, chosen by the moderator, Bob Schieffer, the host of CBS News's "Face the Nation" program.
Here are the broad topics that Mr. Schieffer has picked:
* America's Role in the World
* Our Longest War - Afghanistan
* Red Lines - Israel and Iran
* The Changing Middle East and the New Face of Terrorism - I
* The Changing Middle East and the New Face of Terrorism - II
* The Rise of China and Tomorrow's World
The debate commission says those topics will not necessarily be discussed in that order. And the topics are broad enough to encompass a broad range of specific issues.
- Michael D. Shear
8:01 P.M. | Foreign Policy Debate Puts Focus on Leadership
For 90 minutes Monday night, President Obama and Mitt Romney will clash over specific foreign policy issues, their differences heightened by a debate intended to draw out sharp contrasts ahead of Election Day in two weeks.
But for viewers, the specifics may be mostly background noise as they search for the answer to a gauzy question: Who would be the better leader?
In polls this year, voters have practically screamed at the top of their lungs how little they care about foreign policy. In recent polls of three battleground states, Colorado, Virginia and Wisconsin, fewer than 10 percent of voters in each state said national security was the most important issue to them, ranking below the economy, deficit and health care.
And yet, both campaigns have spent plenty of time and money in an effort to claim the mantle of who is better able to lead. Top strategists for both Mr. Romney and Mr. Obama seem to believe that foreign policy will help shape those perceptions. Read more ...
- Michael D. Shear
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October 22, 2012 Monday
Casting Dual Roles, at Treasury and the Fed
BYLINE: ANDREW ROSS SORKIN
SECTION: BUSINESS
LENGTH: 1468 words
HIGHLIGHT: If Mitt Romney wins the presidency, he has already pledged he will replace Ben Bernanke, whose term as Federal Reserve chairman ends in January 2014, in just over 15 months. Mr. Bernanke, however, has told close friends that even if Mr. Obama wins, he probably will not stand for re-election.
For the last couple of months, there has been a parlor game on Wall Street and in Washington about who will become the next Treasury secretary. After all, Timothy F. Geithner has made it clear he plans to be out of that office at the end of the year whether President Obama is re-elected or not.
But there is another wrinkle in the parlor game calculus: Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, is likely to need a successor, too. If Mitt Romney wins the presidency, he has already pledged he will replace Mr. Bernanke, whose term as chairman ends in January 2014, in just over 15 months. However, Mr. Bernanke has told close friends that even if Mr. Obama wins, he probably will not stand for re-election.
That would be a one-two punch, with two of the most important jobs in the nation up for grabs. And over the last couple of years, especially at the depth of the financial crisis, the relationship between the two people in those roles has been increasingly important. They are the equivalent of roles in a buddy movie.
Lots of names are regularly bandied about for both positions. But they are not always thought about in tandem. So here is a field guide to handicapping the next Treasury secretary and Federal Reserve chairman:
The top Democratic name that pops up when discussing the Treasury position is usually Erskine Bowles, the former White House chief of staff under President Bill Clinton who reinvented himself with his Simpson-Bowles bipartisan plan to reduce the deficit. The business community, on both sides, appear to love the plan and say they love him.
About a year ago, when Mr. Geithner first told the president that he wanted to step down - before the president persuaded him to stick around for another year - Mr. Bowles was at, or near, the top of the list, according to people involved in the process. That may have changed, however: Mr. Bowles has privately criticized the president to business leaders as he has sought to gain support for his plan.
Some of that criticism has made its way back to the president, these people said, so it is unclear how strongly Mr. Obama would support him.
Another, perhaps more intriguing idea has made the rounds: Mr. Bowles as a Romney appointee. Several supporters of Mr. Romney have pitched him and his team on the idea. An appointment of Mr. Bowles under Mr. Romney would be a quick and clever way to show that he wants to reach across the aisle and find bipartisan ways to comprise.
Among the names on Wall Street that are thrown around, virtually none has a real shot, if for no other reason than, well, they work on Wall Street. Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, once considered a contender, is off the list. He recently told Vanity Fair, "I intend to be here for many more years," adding, "and I will not run for office."
Laurence Fink, chief executive of BlackRock, the asset management juggernaut, has been a big supporter of the president and has told friends he would love the job, but people close to the administration say it is unlikely he would get it, given his title and his firm's previous relationship as an adviser to the Treasury.
The same most likely can be said of Roger Altman, chairman of Evercore Partners and a former deputy Treasury secretary, who is well liked by the administration but may be unable to shed the "investment banker" baggage.
And then there is Kenneth Chenault, the chief executive of American Express. Consider him a dark horse candidate, but perhaps the only person connected to the world of finance who would have a shot. His name was put on a list last summer when Mr. Geithner was considering leaving, people briefed on the list said. Given his history - an African-American who made his way up the ranks at American Express starting in 1981 - he could be the perfect mix of finance background and market experience, but one step removed from Wall Street banker.
The chances of an executive from what people in Washington call a "real company" - as in, not a financial business - also do not appear good. The one name that is buzzed about most, Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook, is likely to be off the table after Facebook's problematic I.P.O.
Here's a wild card: Dan Doctoroff, chief executive of Bloomberg L.P. and a former deputy mayor of New York under Mayor Michael Bloomberg. He is hardly campaigning for the job, but his name was put on an internal list at the Treasury Department last summer, these people said, though it is unclear whether he would want the position.
So who is most likely to get the job under President Obama? Drum roll, please. Jacob Lew.
Huh? If you're a business person, you might be asking, Mr. Lew who? That is probably the biggest knock against him, which gives everyone else on the list a chance. Mr. Lew is Mr. Obama's chief of staff, which makes him very confirmable. A former lawyer and career technocrat, he does not have much of a business background - he was briefly chief operating officer of Citigroup's Alternative Investments unit, between the Clinton and Obama administrations - but the president is very comfortable with him, and that can go a long way.
Now, on to the role of Federal Reserve chairman under President Obama.
It is slim pickings. At the top of the list is Lawrence Summers, Treasury secretary under President Clinton and director of the National Economic Council for President Obama. He's a serious economist who knows his numbers and has a worldview that is similar to the president's. He would be expected to continue the loose money policy of Mr. Bernanke.
But one of the knocks against Mr. Summers is that he has a reputation for not playing well with others. He has had his own run-ins with the president. And if you consider the Treasury secretary and Federal Reserve chairman as a tag team, you would have to be confident that whomever you pick for Treasury secretary would get along well with Mr. Summers.
There are a couple of other names in the Democratic economist world, but virtually all of them would be long shots: Janet L. Yellen, the vice chairwoman of the Federal Reserve. She would be the first woman to run the Federal Reserve and could provide some continuity. Alan Krueger, an economist who was briefly an assistant secretary of the Treasury for economic policy under President Obama, is less of a classic choice, but is considered highly by the president.
If you want to be really daring, let's add one more name to the list, perhaps the perfect candidate from the president's perspective: Mr. Geithner. He would have had a year to recover from his current position and may have tired of the speaking circuit. Given his former role as the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York during the financial crisis, he would bring steadiness to the job with Mr. Bernanke's departure, and a level of comfort for the president.
Now, if Mr. Romney wins the presidency, the chessboard for possible appointments for Treasury secretary and Federal Reserve chairman becomes a little more crowded.
Glenn Hubbard, who headed the Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush and is a top adviser to Mr. Romney, is often mentioned as a top candidate for the Federal Reserve job - and the Treasury secretary job. It is likely that he would get one of the two.
So the question is, who gets the other? If Mr. Hubbard takes the Treasury secretary job, the other candidates for Federal Reserve chairman are N. Gregory Mankiw, who also headed the Council of Economic Advisers, and John B. Taylor, a Stanford economist, though he is considered more of a long shot.
If Mr. Hubbard gets the Federal Reserve job, however, the Treasury role becomes wide open.
Robert B. Zoellick, former president of the World Bank, is said to be among the names in the hopper for the Treasury secretary job. (He was previously a managing director at Goldman Sachs, but his role at the World Bank may have cleansed him of his Wall Street association and Mr. Romney is less concerned about ties to finance given his own background.)
Also on the list is Rob Portman, the senator from Ohio, who has become very close to Mr. Romney and knows a spreadsheet: he was director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Bush. Whether Mr. Romney would be willing to give up Mr. Portman's seat in the Senate is a question mark.
Finally, there is Mike Leavitt, the former governor of Utah, who is a close confidant and adviser to Mr. Romney. He is likely to get a big role in Mr. Romney's cabinet.
Oddly enough, given Wall Street's support for Mr. Romney, there are very few bankers or other business people on his short lists.
Whoever gets these two roles, let's hope this buddy movie isn't too much of a thriller.
Candidates Debate Rise of China; China Debates Reform
2 Senators Call for Greater Bank Capital Requirements
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October 22, 2012 Monday
FINAL EDITION
GOP has edge in overall cash on hand;
Candidates, parties have raised $2 billion for both campaigns
BYLINE: Fredreka Schouten, and Christopher Schnaars, USA TODAY
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 1A
LENGTH: 529 words
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, the Republican Party and a constellation of outside GOP groups entered the final campaign stretch with a nearly $46million cash advantage for the last-minute advertising and get-out-the-vote push in this nail-biter election, a USA TODAY analysis of new campaign reports shows.
The candidates and political parties collectively have raised close to $2billion through the end of September, giving Romney and President Obama ample cash to devote legions of staffers to swing states. Both men and their allies readied a fresh round of advertising over the weekend ahead of tonight's third and final debate in Boca Raton, Fla.
A Romney ad released Sunday describes him as a bipartisan problem solver as Massachusetts governor. A new Obama ad in Ohio, a manufacturing state with 18 Electoral College votes, faults Romney for not supporting the federal auto bailout.
"There's certainly no shortage of cash to do the things they need to do between now and Election Day," said Costas Panagopoulos, a Fordham University political scientist. "As helpful as money can be in an election, it can also have the potential to backfire given how concentrated it is in battleground states.
"In places that have been targeted for months, there are some people who just can't wait for this election to be over," he said.
The campaign-finance reports filed over the weekend show Obama's camp spent heavily to deploy staffers throughout the country and to blister Romney on the airwaves in September. The president's campaign employed 974 staffers to Romney's 434 last month and outspent Romney by more than 2-to-1 on advertising, mailings and postage.
Filings show Romney rewarded his staffers with bonuses, handing out more than $217,000 to 10 top aides last month. The biggest check, $37,500, went to political director Rich Beeson. The payments marked the second round of bonuses to staffers for helping Romney secure his party's nomination. More than $207,000 in bonuses had been paid out in August.
The Republican has ramped up his advertising spending in recent weeks, aided by a fundraising surge after his strong performance in the first of three presidential debates on Oct.3. Romney raised more than $27million online during the first two weeks of October -- more than the campaign had previously collected on the Internet in a single previous month, campaign aides said this weekend.
"Our campaign has the resources and organization to win," Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul said.
Obama campaign officials said the president scored the most lucrative day of campaign fundraising of his political career Oct.17, a day after the candidates' second, feisty debate at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y. The campaign said it has amassed more than 4million donors.
Campaign spokesman Adam Fetcher said the money is being plowed into the ground game, which he said is leading to large numbers of Democrats turning out to vote early in swing states. In a bid to promote early voting, Obama plans a whirlwind campaign tour, starting Wednesday, that will take him to six battleground states in 48 hours and end with him casting an early ballot in Chicago.
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The Fix
October 22, 2012 Monday 10:45 PM EST
Democratic strategist Paul Begala: Obama has given up on winning North Carolina
BYLINE: Sean Sullivan
LENGTH: 600 words
Make sure to sign up to receive "Afternoon Fix" every day in your e-mail inbox by 5(ish) p.m.!
EARLIER ON THE FIX:
Washington Post/ABC News poll: The good news for Obama
Washington Post/ABC News poll: The good news for Romney
Post-ABC tracking poll: Obama 49 percent, Romney 48 percent
George McGovern's 5 most memorable moments
The 3rd presidential debate - in 5 charts
Early vote tightens in swing states
The newspaper endorsement battle - in one chart
What if debates don't matter?
The "style vs substance" debate on debates (VIDEO)
Mitt Romney TV ad plugs Richard Mourdock in Indiana Senate race
8 takeaways from the NBC-Wall Street Journal poll
WHAT YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED:
* A new Suffolk University poll showed President Obama and Mitt Romney tied at 47 percent among likely Ohio voters, while a new Quinnipiac University/CBS News survey showed Obama leading Romney 50 percent to 45 percent among those likeliest to vote in the Buckeye State.
*Romney is heard but not seen in a new ad for Saratoga Springs (Utah) Mayor Mia Love's (R) congressional campaign. Love's ad uses photos of Romney, along with audio of a robocall the Republican presidential nominee cut for her. Love is challenging Rep. Jim Matheson (D) in what polls show is a competitive race.
* Rep. Todd Akin's (R-Mo.) Senate campaign doesn't appear to be backing away from his weekend comparison of Sen. Claire McCaskill (D) to a dog. Akin spokesman Rick Tyler tweeted: "If Claire McCaskill were a dog, she'd be a" Bullsh-su. Meanwhile, Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) will campaign for Akin next week.
* Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D) holds a slight, 49 percent to 44 percent lead over former governor Tommy Thompson (R) in the Wisconsin Senate race, according to a poll conducted for Baldwin's campaign by Diane Feldman. The survey of 801 likely voters was conducted from Oct. 18-21.
WHAT YOU SHOULDN'T MISS:
* Obama's campaign has given up on winning North Carolina, Democratic strategist Paul Begala, an adviser to the pro-Obama super PAC Priorities USA Action said in an interview Monday. "Yes. I am not supposed to say that Wolf, but I work for, as you mentioned, the pro-Obama super PAC, and I am being paid to help re-elect the president. But if you look at where he is going and where he is spending money - yes, it looks like Gov. Romney is likely to carry North Carolina."
* Obama's pre-debate meal is the same as last time - steak and potatoes.
* One of the names beginning to circulate as a potential Democratic challenger to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) in 2014 is 33-year-old Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes. Grimes said in an interview that "there has been a lot of encouragement not only here in the commonwealth but also nationally" to run.
* Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna (R) and former congressman Jay Inslee (D) are tied at 46 percent, according to a poll conducted by Strategies 360, a Democratic-leaning firm that has conducted independent surveys in the state. The poll of 500 likely Washington voters was conducted from Oct. 17-20.
THE FIX MIX:
Voting Gangnam Style - with Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.)!
With Aaron Blake
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Election 2012
October 22, 2012 Monday 8:16 PM EST
Obama arrives in Florida, tours debate site
BYLINE: Jerry Markon
LENGTH: 182 words
President Obama has arrived in Florida and toured the site of Monday night's presidential debate.
Air Force One landed at Palm Beach International Airport at 1:22 p.m, and the president's motorcade proceeded to Lynn University in Boca Raton, where his battle with Republican candidate Mitt Romney will be held.Scattered Obama supporters waving signs appeared along the route to greet him, but there were also numerous Romney/Ryan signs. After touring the debate site Obama headed to a nearby hotel, where he will continue his preparations before arriving back at the debate site Monday night.
For dinner Obama will have steak and potatoes, the same meal he ate before the last debate.
Pres Obama will spend time with old friends this afternoon & have pre-debate dinner with Mrs Obama: steak and potatoes again, we're told.
- Mark Knoller (@markknoller) October 22, 2012
White House advisers who flew in with the President have had little to say, but the Obama campaign on Monday released a new television ad and numerous statements criticizing Romney's foreign policy credentials.
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October 22, 2012 Monday 8:12 PM EST
White House faces decision on lifting ethanol-blending rule
BYLINE: Kevin G. Hall
SECTION: A section; Pg. A13
LENGTH: 907 words
The Obama administration must decide in the coming weeks whether it will temporarily lift requirements to blend ethanol into the nation's gasoline supply.
The issue has been largely dormant on the campaign trail, but it is critical to the success or failure of the next generation of biofuel plants, now under construction, which will not rely on corn to make fuel.
A public-comment period ended in early October, and the administration must decide by Nov. 13 whether to temporarily suspend the Renewable Fuel Standard, created in 2005 and modified in 2007 to help the ethanol industry get off the ground by requiring its use in gasoline.
Ethanol is required to be blended into gasoline to help keep pollution down, and it has the added benefit of lowering dependence on crude oil, about half of it imported and the other half produced domestically.
The governors of Arkansas, North Carolina and several other states want the ethanol mandate suspended amid rising corn prices brought about by this summer's punishing drought. Governors of corn states are opposed.
The administration is widely expected to reject the request for a one-year suspension of ethanol mandates, but the move is just an opening salvo in a much larger fight that's coming in the next Congress over the Renewable Fuel Standard. That debate comes just as the ethanol industry readies to launch commercial-scale, next-generation biofuels.
Also at issue: Whether mandates, passed in 2005 when oil demand was at its peak, are realistic given falling energy consumption, a boom in low-cost natural gas production, rising corn prices and improvements in the fuel efficiency of cars.
The ethanol industry this year lost federal subsidies that had surpassed $20 billion as part of deficit-reduction efforts. And the mandates requiring future use of ethanol in the fuel supply are both complex and controversial. They currently call for ethanol to make up 10 percent of the nation's fuel supply, or about 13.2 billion gallons. But that volume is scheduled to grow to 15 billion gallons by 2015 and 36 billion gallons by 2022. The 36 billion gallons, half of which must come from non-corn sources, would still represent just 7 percent of anticipated future U.S. fuel consumption.
The mandates were passed before the deep financial crisis and improvements in fuel efficiency. At the time, gasoline demand was expected in the neighborhood of 160 billion gallons annually. It's far from that now.
"It was never supposed to be '130 billion gallons and falling.' And it will continue to fall because of the CAFE [corporate average fuel economy] standards," which require in years ahead more miles per gallon from automobile manufacturers, said Kevin Book, an energy analyst for researcher ClearView Energy Partners. "The actual pool [of gasoline] is getting smaller as requirements [for ethanol use] are getting larger."
This contradiction is called the "blend wall," akin to a perfect storm facing ethanol producers right as the next-generation product is about to come to market. By 2022, at least half of the nation's ethanol must come from non-corn sources, and that depends on next-generation cellulosic ethanol.
"We're in the age of cellulosic. The key question still is going to be increased volume and a competitive price," said Daniel Yergin, the Pulitzer Prize-winning oil historian and author of "The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power," and its recent sequel, "The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World."
Oil companies, which sell less product when ethanol is blended, want to roll back the blending requirements. Ethanol producers, who consume about 40 percent of the nation's corn crop, argue that the solution is raising the amount of ethanol required to be blended into fuel somewhere in the ballpark of 15 percent or 20 percent. The Environmental Protection Agency has approved sale of gasoline composed of 15 percent ethanol, or E15, for use in newer cars. It is not required, however.
President Obama has made ethanol a key part of his "all of the above" strategy for energy production. Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney released a white paper on agriculture on Oct. 9, also supporting the existing Renewable Fuel Standard.
Most ethanol produced in the United States is made from corn, but several expensive bio-refineries are under construction to produce cellulosic ethanol. These refineries will use as their feedstock corn stover, essentially the leftover corn stalk after corn cobs have been harvested. In the future, this product won't compete with food crops.
What happens with the fuel standard is also a jobs issue. Not only is the ethanol market huge for corn growers, but it also creates all sorts of related jobs, from farm products to the truck drivers who deliver corn around the clock to ethanol plants.
"It's an economic issue, and we simply want the issue to be decided based upon the facts. We want people to think about those unanticipated consequences," said Chris Standlee, executive vice president of Abengoa Bioenergy in Chesterfield, Mo., which operates six bio-refineries capable of producing 400 million gallons of ethanol annually.
"What happens if you take actions to reduce that - not only what happens now to the economy and health of rural America, but a year from now if ethanol is reduced and oil prices go back to $150 a barrel? That's not good for anybody."
- McClatchy Newspapers
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October 22, 2012 Monday 8:12 PM EST
GM's alive. Obama's hopes here may not be.
BYLINE: Rosalind S. Helderman
SECTION: A section; Pg. A07
LENGTH: 1687 words
For more than 50 years, the economic fate of this tiny town in northwest Ohio has been inextricably linked to the health of General Motors, its largest employer.
And so when two local lawyers put up a billboard in the cornfield across from Defiance's GM plant with a picture of the GM logo above the word "alive" and a photo of Osama bin Laden above the word "dead," you might have expected nods of approval.
Instead, in this deeply conservative corner of the state not far from the Indiana border, the billboard - and two others posted in town - have proved highly controversial.
For Democrats, this may be the town President Obama helped save with the auto bailout. But, in a twist, Defiance and places like it could end up saving Mitt Romney in all-important Ohio.
That's because Obama won Ohio four years ago in part by peeling off support in Republican-leaning parts of the state such as Defiance. Now, Romney is making a play to get those voters back, hoping that, here on the brightening side of the recession, the election is not all about the economy, and that juiced GOP turnout might swing a state that no Republican president has ever lost.
Romney has made Ohio a particular focus since the first debate - he or vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan have appeared at 14 events since then.
He is talking to Ohioans such as Defiance city manager Jeffrey Leonard, who voted for Obama in 2008 but now says he is "very disappointed" in the president and undecided about his vote.
Leonard said he understands intimately what the loss of the GM plant would have meant for his city. But he does not believe the government should be in the business of protecting private executives from their own mistakes. "Guess what. When you have poor management, you should accept the consequences," he said. "No exceptions for GM. No exceptions."
The government's bailout of GM and Chrysler has generally proved popular in Ohio, where one in eight jobs is connected to the auto industry.
On Friday, Obama began airing an Ohio ad in which auto workers talk about how they would have been affected had GM gone under, declaring that Romney, who opposed government aid for the industry, is "not one of us."
The bailout has been a staple of Obama's campaign in the state and one reason his poll numbers have remained more solid in the Buckeye State than other battlegrounds where support has slid in recent days.
But in this town that has been arguably helped by GM's recent resurgence more than anywhere else in Ohio, even Obama's most ardent supporters fear the bailout cannot puncture hardened partisan divisions and stop Romney's march.
"People's attitudes have become very firm," said Joseph O'Neil, who joined his law partner and their wives to design and fund the billboards. "It's gotten to the point where it's very hard to change."
'If it wasn't for the bailout'
For many of GM's workers in Defiance, the company's turnaround has meant a personal turnaround as well.
"There are guys in there working 12 hours a day, seven days a week. It's a lot of overtime in there," said Chris Mendez, 37, a GM electrician laid off for nearly 10 months in 2009 and now back on the job.
"There's no doubt in my mind. If it wasn't for the bailout, I don't know where I'd be at," said Mendez, who will be voting for Obama. "If it was up to Mitt Romney, we would have gone under."
The symbol of GM's new stability in Ohio is the Chevy Cruze, a small sedan manufactured not far from Youngstown.
And at the heart of the Cruze is its engine, poured at the GM foundry in Defiance.
The largest auto-related foundry in the world, the Defiance plant at one time employed 5,000. That number has shrunk over the years, part of a national contraction of what was once the country's largest employer.
Before the 2008 economic crash, 1,700 worked at the plant. As car sales dropped off and GM slid toward insolvency, the plant slowed down. Residents say hundreds were laid off. GM would not confirm how many employees lost their jobs but confirmed that permanent layoff notices were issued in 2009.
The economic impact on the town of 17,000 - and the 40,000 people in the surrounding county of the same name - was immediate. Residents stopped paying their electrical bills, then their mortgages. The grocery stores emptied. The town reopened its settled annual budget and cut $1 million out of $6 million in planned spending.
"If you can imagine, the banks, the lending community, the car dealerships, the restaurants - places that depend on people spending money - everything came to a halt. It just came to a halt," said Bob Armstrong, a former GM employee now in his third term as mayor of Defiance.
On the day in June 2009 that GM declared bankruptcy, accepting billions in government help as part of a restructuring process, Armstrong called the plant manager and asked what the future would hold for Defiance. Nobody knew, the plant manager told him.
Then he stopped into Kissner's Restaurant, a tavern operated continuously on Defiance's main street since 1903 - by the same family since 1928. "What's going to happen?" people called out to him as he walked in, he recalled.
Both of Armstrong's parents worked at the plant. His son was one of those laid off in 2009. For the first time since the GM plant opened in 1948, Defiance contemplated a future without it. "We could have been a ghost town," the mayor said.
But GM emerged from bankruptcy after just over a month. While the government still owns significant GM stock, the company paid back $8 billion in loans ahead of schedule, part of $67 billion it received in government aid, and it posted record profits last year.
The auto bailout is popular in Ohio; registered voters said by a 2 to 1 margin in a September Washington Post poll that it had been mostly good for Ohio's economy.
It's been a weapon that Obama has used persistently against Romney, who argued in a November 2008 column that government should not extend the company loans.
In Defiance, the plant is humming again, its workforce above 1,300 and growing.
Whether Obama should get credit for Defiance's turnaround - whether GM really needed government help to recover and whether the bailout issue alone should determine votes - are topics of heated dispute.
For many plant workers, particularly those active in the United Auto Workers local, the answer is clear.
"The way I look at it is that he had my back when I was going to lose my job. So I have his back," said Sherilyn Baker, 39, a factory worker whose children received reduced-price lunches at school for the first time when she was laid off from GM for six months in 2009.
But Baker acknowledged that it is an uphill climb. Her sister will vote for Romney. Even at the plant, opinions are bitterly divided. She said two workers nearly came to blows recently in the plant cafeteria over whether to support Obama or Romney.
Conservative corner of state
A hint about this area's political leanings can be found in the front lawn of a Catholic school not far from town hall - a marble tablet, fronted by a bed of flowers, erected in memory of the innocent victims of abortion.
This is a heavily Catholic and deeply religious area - abortion is the issue that pushed Baker's sister to the Republican Party. Some storefronts and homes have posted signs that read "Defend Religious Liberty" and "Protect the First Amendment," references to the Obama administration's tangle with Catholic hospitals about providing coverage for contraception for employees.
This could spell trouble for Obama, who won only 44 percent of the vote in Defiance County in 2008 - still six points better than Sen. John F. Kerry's showing in 2004. Closing the gaps in GOP strongholds was part of what allowed Obama to win 51.3 percent of the vote in Ohio. He was the first Democrat to top 50 percent since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964.
While Bill Clinton won Ohio in 1992 and 1996, in both cases H. Ross Perot attracted significant support, keeping the winner under 50 percent.
Each morning for more than five decades, the day has begun the same way in Defiance - with farmers bellying up to the bar at Kissner's and an evolving group of businessmen gathering around what they refer to as simply "the big table."
They gossip about town affairs, talk politics and tease one another. A favorite target is Mayor Armstrong, jabbed routinely for his tendency to hand out combs imprinted with his name instead of business cards - an idea born of a long-ago career as a barber - and even more often for his Democratic politics.
Like most of Defiance, the big table mostly votes Republican.
"The guy who's in there is absolutely not taking care of the economy. In fact, he's killing the economy," said big-table regular Larry Woods, 56, an insurance salesman.
At this table, the most pressing issue of the election is federal spending and the nation's rising tide of red ink. And while they agree a GM plant closure would have a devastating impact on their town, they believe the company could have survived without aid that hit the government's bottom line.
"Wouldn't they just have filed Chapter 11, just like other companies?" Woods asked. "It might have taken a little longer, but I assume the same thing would have happened."
The company's stock has been sliding lately, they note. And those at the big table say the bailout helped the union but shafted small GM suppliers and stockholders.
"To me, it was just political payback," said Joe Leever, 61, who owns a glass and glazing company.
Said Tom Hubbard, 57, who owns the town's printing shop: "They ended up going through a structured bankruptcy anyway, but the union ended up owning them."
Obama does not need the big table; it didn't support him in 2008, either. But he could use David Shomberg, 45, whose father worked at GM but now says he doesn't know anyone well at the plant.
Shomberg, a plastics-factory worker, voted for Obama in 2008. But now he's undecided. He's leaning toward Obama, but he is concerned about federal debt and trouble overseas.
"Mitt might sway me," he said.
heldermanr@washpost.com
Scott Clement contributed to this report
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October 22, 2012 Monday 8:12 PM EST
For Romney, a bit of deja vu ahead of debate
BYLINE: Ned Martel
SECTION: Style; Pg. C01
LENGTH: 840 words
Mitt Romney has been there before: entering a third, crucial debate in a topsy-turvy contest.
Ten years ago, he battled Democrat Shannon O'Brien in his bid to land the open governor's job in Massachusetts. On Monday, he'll face off against President Obama in the final showdown before the November vote.
The circumstances are strangely similar: Going into that last debate in Massachusetts, Romney had eroded O'Brien's lead but had to make up for a few bad moments in the second. The final confrontation, on Oct. 29, 2002, was his last opportunity to dominate the race. And he seized it, using what have by now become familiar tactics that he has deployed during this year's presidential run.
In Massachusetts, the candidates were seated at a round table with the moderator, NBC's Tim Russert, across from them. "It was very close quarters," recalled O'Brien, then the 43-year-old state treasurer. Romney "looked me in the eye." Right after she reprised a famous Ted Kennedy zinger calling Romney's abortion position "multiple choice," the GOP candidate glowered, talked about his mother's belief in access to abortion and scolded O'Brien for interrupting him.
"I do not take the position of a pro-life candidate," he said to his rival. "I am for a woman's right to choose. And your effort to create fear and deception here is unbecoming."
This was followed by a testy exchange in which O'Brien scoffed: "You don't have a record. It's one of waffling." Romney held up his hand: "Shannon, I think this debate should be raised just one notch. Stop trying to scare people."
Romney's "unbecoming" comment and his apparent lecturing of O'Brien reverberated inside Suffolk University Law School, where the debate was held, and resounded in the local papers. Although the Republican insisted that his use of the word was gender-neutral, O'Brien supporters such as then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Teresa Heinz, wife of Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), called him out on the comment.
The debate proved pivotal, and the damage was done - to O'Brien. Earlier in the debate, O'Brien had fumbled a question about abortion. Russert noted that the state required minors to obtain parental consent before getting a tattoo, but not before undergoing an abortion. The moderator added that he had called a local tattoo parlor to confirm. The question sounded sort of cheeky, so O'Brien ran with it. "Would you like to see my tattoo?" O'Brien asked Russert, who responded, "This is a very serious issue."
"I made a stupid joke," O'Brien recalled in an interview. Russert "got mad and kind of hit me between the eyes."
In the holding rooms where the candidates' staffs were watching, each side knew it was witnessing a transformation of the debate and the overall race. "At that moment, I knew we had won," said Ben Coes, a top Romney aide in 2002. "She just had one of those unfortunate moments where she mishandled a very serious question."
The debate was momentous for Romney's team, Coes said. "A month out, we were 10 points behind," Coes said. Romney convened some of his top aides - strategist Mike Murphy as well as loyalists who remain trusted advisers today, including longtime confidant Robert F. White, Eric Fehrnstrom and Beth Myers. They met in his basement in Belmont, Mass., to map out an ad strategy to close the gap. And they planned debate-prep sessions, including a few in soundstages to replicate the television studio, Coes recalled. Myers stood in for O'Brien.
"She even looks like Shannon," Coes said.
O'Brien has conceded that she felt confused by too many directives: Smile! Parry! Use humor! Be yourself! She was tired from the relentless pace of the campaign. And now, years later, she acknowledges that she flubbed her chance to become the first elected female governor of her state.
"I came across as being mean," said O'Brien, now living in Whitman, Mass., and consulting for tech companies. "Frankly, I don't know if I came across as very likable that night."
She has revisited the debate online and noticed her strain as she listened to what she thought were Romney policy shifts. "I was trying notto use words that rhyme with friar," she said. "I see that I'm just disgusted."
Romney capitalized on a particular difficulty O'Brien had as a female candidate. "In general for women, they need to project confidence," said Adrian Durbin, O'Brien's media consultant in the race. "Men can be more assertive, whereas women come off as abrasive." When Romney called O'Brien "unbecoming," he transmitted, in Durbin's opinion, a tone of "how dare this woman be here questioning me like this!"
O'Brien's campaign manager, Dwight Robson, saw Romney use a tactic that he has used since to great effect.
"Whether it was his unbecoming comment or some other remarks, he pretty skillfully turns the table, almost in a how-dare-you attitude," said Robson, who runs a nonprofit group that helps people with developmental disabilities. "He has a sincere demeanor about him that I think is effective in these debates."
marteln@washpost.com
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October 22, 2012 Monday 8:12 PM EST
Suddenly, close race on foreign policy
BYLINE: Anne Gearan;David A. Fahrenthold
SECTION: A section; Pg. A01
LENGTH: 1757 words
It sounded weeks ago like a mismatch.
The final presidential debate would focus on foreign policy - a sitting president who'd overseen the death of Osama bin Laden pitted against a one-term governor, so new to diplomatic thinking that he'd managed to offend a good chunk of Britain during a brief trip this summer.
Monday night's debate doesn't look like a mismatch anymore.
Instead, when President Obama meets Republican challenger Mitt Romney in Boca Raton, Fla., he will face an opponent who has already made up tremendous ground on the subject by criticizing Obama as weak, waffling and distracted by his reelection goals.
Before the two men first debated on Oct. 3, Obama held a 15-point lead over Romney on the question of who is more capable of managing foreign affairs. After Obama's listless performance, a Pew Research Center poll found that the gap had narrowed to a slender four points.
On Monday, the two candidates will share a stage for the last time. The race could not be closer: On Sunday, a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found the candidates tied, each with 47 percent of likely voters. Before the debates began, Obama led the same poll by three points.
In this debate, Obama could face the opposite of the situation many envisioned weeks before. Instead of lending him credibility, his commander-in-chief role could make him more vulnerable, opening Obama to questions about a range of unresolved crises.
Romney is likely to renew criticism of the Obama administration's reaction to a Sept. 11 attack that killed four Americans at a mission in Benghazi, Libya. And Obama also is likely to face questions about the civil war in Syria, a recent assassination in Lebanon and possible signals that Iran may be willing to bargain over the future of its nuclear program.
The White House on Saturday denied a New York Times report that said the United States and Iran had agreed in principle to hold one-on-one talks about that program. The report said Iran wanted to wait until after the election for talks to begin.
"It's not true that the United States and Iran have agreed to one-on-one talks or any meeting after the American elections," White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said in a written statement. The Reuters news service reported that Iran also had denied the report.
Libya's political risks
Foreign policy questions played a significant role in the last presidential debate, held last Tuesday on Long Island. Romney was caught flat-footed with an overly broad statement that Obama had taken two weeks to label the attack in Benghazi an "act of terror."
Romney was corrected by moderator Candy Crowley: Although Obama did not directly call the attack terrorism the next day, he did say that the United States will not retreat from "acts of terror."
Since then, Romney has said little about Libya on the campaign trail. Advisers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal campaign thinking, said Romney has deliberately turned his focus away from Libya and toward the domestic economy and gas prices since the last debate.
His arguments on those issues had polled well among debate viewers last week, the advisers said. But Libya is almost certain to come up again Monday night.
Romney's advisers have said data they have collected from focus groups in the swing-state of Ohio suggest that voters, especially women, think Obama is hiding something on Libya.
Romney's allies are making that point already, raising questions about the administration's shifting explanations of the Benghazi attack and the failure to offer greater security for American workers there.
In an Internet ad released last week, the super PAC American Crossroads used the classic language of a Washington scandal: "What did the president know and when did he know it?"
Obama seems to have prepared more for the question, which he essentially dodged in the last debate. He may have previewed his answer Thursday on "The Daily Show."
"We weren't confused about the fact that four Americans had been killed," Obama said. "I wasn't confused about the fact that we needed to ramp up diplomatic security around the world right after it happened. I wasn't confused about the fact that we had to investigate exactly what happened so it gets fixed. And I wasn't confused about the fact that we're going to hunt down whoever did it ."
Obama may also try again to portray Romney as politically calculating for using the fatal attack to score points. He may also seek to make the case that Romney is unschooled in the sophisticated intelligence provided to presidents or the heavy decisions expected of them.
Senate Democrats picked up that theme over the weekend, criticizing the release by House Republicans of security details about U.S. diplomatic operations in Libya.
On Sunday, Senate Armed Service Committee Chairman Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) accused Republicans of "obvious attempts to make political hay out of this tragedy," and said the release of the names of Libyans who worked with Americans could jeopardize their lives and damage U.S. interests.
Beyond Libya, each candidate has articulated a very different role for America in the world, as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that defined the U.S. presence overseas for a decade are either finished or fading fast.
The challenge for Obama and Romney will be to explain their foreign policy priorities in ways that resonate with voters preoccupied with economic issues and a growing national debt that undermines the country's ability to act abroad.
Targeting China
China heads the list of issues that straddle foreign and domestic concerns, and both candidates are likely to steer discussion of the country's rising economic influence to the American economy.
Last week, Romney called China a "cheater" and said that on the first day of his administration he would brand China a "currency manipulator." That is a mostly symbolic snub, but one with possible trade repercussions.
Romney said the designation would "allow me as president to be able to put in place, if necessary, tariffs where I believe that they are taking unfair advantage of our manufacturers."
Obama and Romney have tried to score domestic political points with tough talk on China - mostly relating to lost American jobs - that skims over the complexities of the nations' intertwined economic relationship.
Obama claimed last week that he has put "unprecedented trade pressure on China," although he has stopped short of the steps taken by the last Democratic president, Bill Clinton, who did designate China a currency manipulator.
China denies it manipulates its currency for a trade advantage, although China's central bank nudged the yuan higher against the dollar following last week's debate.
Too much criticism could sour the delicate political relationship with China just as that country chooses a new 10-year leader, and risks reducing U.S. leverage to win Chinese support on the U.N. Security Council for tough sanctions against Iran and other policy priorities.
"The presidential campaign reflects an alarming scenario in which China-bashing has become a ritual," China's state-run news service, Xinhua, said Wednesday.
Both candidates are also likely to address Europe's debt crisis, a drag on the already precarious U.S. economic recovery. Europe's economic malaise is increasingly seen as a U.S. national security problem, and one Obama tried to blunt earlier this year with intensive negotiations with the continent's leaders.
Looking beyond the American economy, debate moderator Bob Schieffer of CBS News may ask Romney about his contention earlier this year that Russia is the United States' "No. 1 geopolitical foe."
The comment was viewed by many as a Cold War relic, and Russia bristled at Romney's pledge that if elected he would beef up a missile defense shield in Europe.
The U.S. relationship with Russia has improved in tone if not in substance under Obama, but it remains a wary partnership at best.
On Syria, Obama is likely to denounce President Bashar al-Assad, who still counts on Russian support, but pledge no new U.S. help to oust him.
Romney has said Obama has been too timid in dealing with Assad, while being too hard on Israel next door when it comes to talking peace with the Palestinians. And Romney has endorsed arming the Syrian rebels.
"In Syria, I will work with our partners to identify and organize those members of the opposition who share our values and ensure they obtain the arms they need to defeat Assad's tanks, helicopters, and fighter jets," Romney said in a foreign policy address earlier this month at the Virginia Military Institute.
Obama has declined to take that step, arguing that heavier weapons could inflame a civil war already spilling past its borders and end up in the hands of rebels the United States knows little about. The United States is providing communications gear and other logistical and humanitarian help, short of "lethal aid."
Similar tacks on Iran
Romney's policy on Iran appears very similar to Obama's in substance. Romney has criticized Obama for failing to curtail Iran's nuclear enrichment program, but he has favored the same set of international sanctions that Obama has secured.
Obama and Romney say Iran must not be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon, something Iran's leadership denies pursuing. But Romney has aligned himself more closely with Israel's shorter timeline for acting against it, saying he would deny Iran the "capability" of developing a nuclear weapon.
During an address last month at the U.N. General Assembly, Obama repeated his view that there is still time to negotiate with Iran. But he has not endorsed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's appeal for a global "red line" for military intervention.
Former Pentagon undersecretary Michele Flournoy, an Obama campaign adviser, said the debate is an opportunity for Obama to showcase national security experience Romney does not have.
"We've seen that Romney does not hesitate to look for opportunities to use crises like Libya for political gain," Flournoy said.
Obama can also point out that Romney has offered few policy prescriptions that differ from Obama's, she said.
Romney has suggested that he might relax Obama's strict timeline for withdrawing troops from Afghanistan in 2014, after 13 years of war, but has said little about how he would deal differently with Afghan leaders, the Taliban or neighbor Pakistan.
anne.gearan@washpost.com
fahrentholdd@washpost.com
Philip Rucker contributed to this report.
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The Fact Checker
October 22, 2012 Monday 4:14 PM EST
A 'greatest hits' of misleading Romney claims;
A new Romney campaign ad puts in one place five claims that have been previously debunked.
BYLINE: Glenn Kessler
LENGTH: 1191 words
"If Barack Obama is reelected, what will the next four years be like? One, the debt will grow from 16 trillion to 20 trillion dollars. Two, 20 million Americans could lose their employer-based health care. Three, taxes on the middle class will go up by $4,000. Four, energy prices will continue to go up. And five, $716 billion in Medicare cuts that hurt current seniors."
- Voiceover in new Mitt Romney campaign ad titled "The Obama Plan"
We have often said that politicians in both political parties will stretch the truth if they think the misleading claim will move voters. As we enter into the final weeks of this bruising presidential campaign, we expect to hear all sorts of poll-tested, factually-challenged messages again and again - simply because the campaigns have data that shows these claims resonate with votes.
In that vein, a new ad released by the Romney campaign is almost a "greatest hits" version of claims that have been thoroughly debunked by fact checkers, including this column. Let's spin the record once again!
The Facts
"The debt will grow from 16 trillion to 20 trillion dollars"
Here, the Romney campaign is using "gross debt," which includes U.S. Treasury bonds held by Social Security and Medicare. Generally, what matters for the federal budget is the publicly held debt, particularly the percentage of debt compared to the overall economy (gross domestic product.) The House GOP budget plan authored by Romney's running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan, for instance focuses on its impact on publicly-held debt, no gross debt.
Even taking the Ryan budget plan at face value, it would do little better than the Obama plan over four years - gross debt would rise to $19 trillion in four years. Moreover, as we have often noted, a good chunk of the increase in the deficit under Obama was due to the Great Recession.
"Twenty million Americans could lose their employer-based health care."
This is the worst case scenario in a recent Congressional Budget Office report, and thus using this "20 million" figure is fairly misleading.
The most positive scenario in the CBO analysis has 3 million people being added to employer coverage. "On balance, the number of people obtaining coverage through their employer would be about 3 million lower in 2019 under the legislation than under prior law," the CBO concludes.
It's worth noting that the baseline scenario - 3 million fewer people - represents just 2 percent of the people who now get insurance through their employers.
The CBO cautions that there is a "tremendous amount of uncertainty" about how employers and employees will respond to the legislation. "One piece of evidence that may be relevant is the experience in Massachusetts, where employment-based health insurance coverage appeared to increase after that state's reforms," the CBO noted.
Of course, Mitt Romney, as governor, ushered in health-care legislation that served as a model for Obama's health plan
"Taxes on the middle class will go up by $4,000."
The first time the Romney campaign made this claim, it earned three Pinocchios. But it just gets worse each time this bogus claim gets reasserted.
Obama has no plan to raise taxes on the middle class (just as Romney has no such plan, though the Obama campaign has asserted that is the logical consequence of trying to make his tax cut revenue neutral by eliminating popular tax deductions.)
Instead, this claim is drawn from a dry report from the American Enterprise Institute, titled "A Simple Measure of the Distributional Burden of Debt Accumulation." The study tries to calculate the burden of servicing the national debt by various income groups, examining what would happen under current law, current policies and Obama's budget.
(Current law refers to policies that are supposed to happen, such as expiring tax cuts; current policy reflects the fact that Congress has said it will not let certain tax cuts expire.)
Among the three scenarios, there's actually not much difference, and the Obama administration's budget falls right in the middle. In other words, the study shows how much lower taxes could be if the nation did not keep adding to the debt load; it does not show, as the ad suggests, that Obama has some sort of secret plan to raise taxes.
Presumably, a Romney budget would fall in the same range, but he has not provided enough detail on his budget so the AEI analysts said they could not evaluate it.
"Energy prices will continue to go up"
What's the source on this? The Romney campaign based this claim about "energy" on just one fact: Gasoline prices have more than doubled from $1.85 per gallon to $3.82 per gallon during Obama's presidency.
But this is a misleading comparison because cost of gas had plunged to an artificially low level at the start of Obama's presidency because of the Great Recession.
What was the price of gas the week of Sept. 15, 2008, before the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers triggered the economic crisis? It was $3.84 - virtually the same price as today, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Three months later, the price of gasoline had plunged to half that level.
"$716 billion in Medicare cuts that hurt current seniors"
We're getting tried of writing about this claim, which stems from efforts to restrain Medicare spending in the Obama health care law.
The $716 billion figure comes from the difference over 10 years (2013-2022) between anticipated Medicare spending (what is known as "the baseline") and the changes that the law makes to reduce spending. Year over year spending on Medicare would continue to go up.
The savings mostly are wrung from health-care providers, not Medicare beneficiaries - who, as a result of the health-care law, ended up with new benefits for preventive care and prescription drugs.
Still, some argue that those provider cuts will eventually result in poorer patient care. Medicare actuary Richard S. Foster has cast doubt on whether these reductions can be sustained because, by his estimate, about 15 percent of hospitals "could find it difficult to remain profitable, and, absent legislative intervention, might end their participation in the program (possibly jeopardizing care for beneficiaries)."
Incidentally, the House Republican budget plan crafted by Ryan retains virtually all of the Medicare "cuts" contained in the health-care law. Romney has pledged to reverse these cuts even while saying he will look for ways to trim the cost of Medicare.
The Pinocchio Test
As we once wrote about one of Obama's ads about Romney's career at Bain Capital: "On just about every level, this ad is misleading, unfair and untrue... Simply repeating the same debunked claims won't make them any more correct."
For similar recidivism, the Romney campaign earns Four Pinocchios.
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Election 2012
October 22, 2012 Monday 1:27 PM EST
Ad watch: Obama camp touts troop drawdowns
BYLINE: Rachel Weiner
LENGTH: 101 words
Obama for America, "Rebuilding"
What it says: "President Obama ended the Iraq war. Mitt Romney would have left 30,000 troops there and called bringing them home tragic."
What it means: On the day of the foreign policy debate. President Obama's campaign is using Mitt Romney's criticism of the way troops have been withdrawn from Iraq and Afghanistan to suggest that the Republican would extend both wars.
Who will see it: No word on the size of the buy; right now the campaign is likely hoping to get some online attention for the spot pre-debate.
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The Fix
October 22, 2012 Monday 12:50 PM EST
8 takeaways from the NBC-Wall Street Journal poll
BYLINE: Chris Cillizza;Aaron Blake
LENGTH: 1533 words
The latest NBC-Wall Street Journal poll - released Sunday - has President Obama and Mitt Romney tied at 47 percent among likely voters, an improvement for the former Massachusetts governor from three weeks ago.
That the national head-to-head is tied, however, isn't huge news, as plenty of recent data has shown a Romney bump beginning around the first presidential debate that has transformed the race into a dead heat - at least nationally.
Inside the NBC-WSJ poll, however, there are all sorts of fascinating findings about the electorate and what people think of the choice before them in 15 days time. We broke out 8 of the data points we were most struck by below. You can peruse the entire poll yourself here. (And stay tuned for a look at what the NBC-WSJ poll tells us about Romney's alleged woman problem later today in this space.)
1. Elections have consequence: Fifty-five percent of those sampled said that who won the election on Nov. 6 would make a "great deal of difference" in the lives of their families, while just 9 percent said the outcome would make "very little" difference. The "great deal" number is higher than at this time in 2004 (45 percent said who won would make a major difference) and dwarfs those who said the same in 1996 (21 percent). The message in the numbers is simple: people are under no illusion that Obama and Romney offer vastly different approaches to the next four years and believe that the choice that is made will have major consequences in their lives.
2. No wave building: After three straight wave elections - 2006, 2008 and 2010 - there appears to be little chance of a major upheaval in the House this time around. Forty-four percent said their Member deserved to be re-elected while 41 percent said it was time to give someone else a chance. That's the first time the "re-elect my member" number has been higher than the "someone else" number in NBC-WSJ polling since October 2004.
3. Polarization, thy name is 2012: Remember those quaint times when people - even some partisans! - seemed to think that divided government might be the best possible approach? Not anymore. Asked their preferred outcome of the 2012 election, 44 percent said they wanted a Democratic president and Democratic-controlled Congress while 41 percent said they wanted a Republican president and GOP Congress. A minuscule 8 percent said they wanted Romney as president and a Democratic-led Congress (3 percent) or a second Obama term with a Republican-led Congress (5 percent).
4. The Romney uncertainty gap: We wrote in our Monday newspaper column that Romney still faces doubts among a fair number of voters about whether he can do the job - particularly as it relates to foreign affairs. In the NBC-WSJ poll, one in five voters (21 percent) described themselves as "uncertain and wondering" about whether Romney would do a good job as president - eight points higher than said the same about Obama. That gap is actually smaller than the one the last two challengers to sitting presidents faced; both John Kerry in 2004 and Bob Dole in 1996 had an 11-point higher uncertainty number than the incumbent they were trying to unseat. Both lost.
5. The debates have been a draw: Roughly half of the NBC-WSJ sample (47 percent) said the two presidential debates had made no difference in how they would vote, and roughly the same number said they made them more likely to back Romney (27 percent) and Obama (24 percent). Need more evidence that debates may be much ado about nothing? In 2004, roughly one in three voters said the debates made them more likely to back Kerry, while just 13 percent said the same of Bush. And we know how that one turned out.
6. Stretching the truth? Both candidates do it: Four in 10 voters said that both Obama and Romney are "embellishing and misstating facts," while 25 percent said the former Massachusetts governor was the bigger truth-stretcher and 21 percent said the incumbent took more liberties with the truth. That finding will be a bit of sour medicine for many Democrats who have insisted that, in each of the three debates (two presidential, one vice presidential), Republicans simply lied their way through the proceedings. The public - or at least a plurality of it - thinks both sides have done it.
7. Romney doesn't need to be more specific: The Obama attacks on Romney - both in the debates and more broadly - have centered on the idea that the Republican nominee simply won't level with people about what specifically he would do if elected. But, there's little evidence that voters agree with that notion, as nearly six in 10 (57 percent) said that Romney and running mate Paul Ryan "have a message and you know what they would do if elected." That's roughly equivalent to the 61 percent of voters who said the same about Obama and Vice President Biden.
8. Obama's lack of a mandate: Even if Obama manages to win a second term on Nov. 6, the NBC-WSJ poll suggests that people don't want more of what they got over the last four years. Sixty-two percent of those polled said Obama should make "major" changes in a second term, while 31 percent said he should make "minor" modifications and 4 percent said the second Obama term should be like the first one. That more than six in 10 voters would want major change in a second Obama term also makes clear why the incumbent finds himself in such a tough race at the moment.
Iran report sparks debate: The New York Times reported Sunday that the U.S. government has agreed in principal to one-on-one talks with Iran over its nuclear program, and the report quickly became a flashpoint in the national political dialogue.
"I think the Iranians are trying to take advantage of our election cycle to continue to talk," Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said in an interview on "Fox News Sunday." Graham added: "The time for talking is over."
Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), meanwhile, suggested that the news represented progress and the effectiveness of the current sanctions.
"This month of October, the currency in Iran has declined 40 percent in value. There is unrest in the streets of Tehran, and the leaders in Iran are feeling it. That's exactly what we wanted the sanctions program to do," Durbin said.
Expect to hear plenty about this at tonight's debate.
Akin compares McCaskill to a dog: Todd Akin did it again.
The Missouri GOP Senate candidate, who saw his chances of victory plummet and his party abandon him after his comment about "legitimate rape" rarely causing pregnancy, has now compared his opponent, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), to a dog.
"So she goes to Washington, D.C. - and it's a little bit like one of those dogs, you know, 'fetch' - she goes to Washington, D.C., and gets all of these taxes and red tape and bureaucracy and executive orders and agencies and she brings all of this stuff and dumps it on us in Missouri," Akin said at a fundraiser Saturday night.
Akin is the second male Senate candidate to say something off-color about a woman in recent days; in Arizona, Democratic Senate candidate Richard Carmona apologized after joking that his male debate moderator was "prettier" than Candy Crowley.
Fixbits:
A new CBS News/Quinnipiac University poll in Ohio shows Obama maintains a slight lead, but it has shrunk. He leads Romney 50 percent to 45 percent.
Obama is up with a new ad highlighting differences between himself and Romney over the wars in Iraq and Afghaninstan.
Romney gets a very big endorsement from the Columbus Dispatch.
More than half of Americans say the national debt has had a "major impact" on their family's financial situation, according to a new poll from the conservative-leaning group Public Notice.
Clear Channel is taking down billboards in urban areas of Wisconsin and Ohio that warned residents that "Voter fraud is a felony." The billboards came from an anonymous group and were seen by some as an effort to suppress the vote in heavily Democratic areas.
The GOP super PAC American Crossroads raised $11.7 million in September.
Former Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern died Sunday. He was 90.
Romney appears in a new ad for Indiana GOP Senate candidate Richard Mourdock, who finds himself in a closer-than-expected race.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg (I) uses the word "socialism" to describe Elizabeth Warren. Bloomberg is backing Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.).
The Billings Gazette endorses Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.).
The GOP group YT Network is up with a new ad hitting Rep. Mark Critz (D-Pa.) by using Obama's "cling to guns and religion" comments from the 2008 campaign.
Must-reads:
"Romney's situation ahead of debate recalls his race for governor" - Ned Martel, Washington Post
"Monday's Debate Puts Focus on Foreign Policy Clashes" - David E. Sanger, New York Times
"In close presidential race, foreign-policy debate likely to prove pivotal" - Chris Cillizza, Washington Post
"Top 10 blown calls of the 2012 election" - Maggie Haberman, Politico
"Obama's record: Environmental agenda pushes sweeping attack on air pollution" - Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post
"Wall St. May Not Cheer, but Obama's Been Good for Stocks" - Jeff Sommer, New York Times
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October 22, 2012 Monday
Suburban Edition
White House faces decision on lifting ethanol-blending rule
BYLINE: Kevin G. Hall
SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A13
LENGTH: 903 words
The Obama administration must decide in the coming weeks whether it will temporarily lift requirements to blend ethanol into the nation's gasoline supply.
The issue has been largely dormant on the campaign trail, but it is critical to the success or failure of the next generation of biofuel plants, now under construction, which will not rely on corn to make fuel.
A public-comment period ended in early October, and the administration must decide by Nov. 13 whether to temporarily suspend the Renewable Fuel Standard, created in 2005 and modified in 2007 to help the ethanol industry get off the ground by requiring its use in gasoline.
Ethanol is required to be blended into gasoline to help keep pollution down, and it has the added benefit of lowering dependence on crude oil, about half of it imported and the other half produced domestically.
The governors of Arkansas, North Carolina and several other states want the ethanol mandate suspended amid rising corn prices brought about by this summer's punishing drought. Governors of corn states are opposed.
The administration is widely expected to reject the request for a one-year suspension of ethanol mandates, but the move is just an opening salvo in a much larger fight that's coming in the next Congress over the Renewable Fuel Standard. That debate comes just as the ethanol industry readies to launch commercial-scale, next-generation biofuels.
Also at issue: Whether mandates, passed in 2005 when oil demand was at its peak, are realistic given falling energy consumption, a boom in low-cost natural gas production, rising corn prices and improvements in the fuel efficiency of cars.
The ethanol industry this year lost federal subsidies that had surpassed $20 billion as part of deficit-reduction efforts. And the mandates requiring future use of ethanol in the fuel supply are both complex and controversial. They currently call for ethanol to make up 10 percent of the nation's fuel supply, or about 13.2 billion gallons. But that volume is scheduled to grow to 15 billion gallons by 2015 and 36 billion gallons by 2022. The 36 billion gallons, half of which must come from non-corn sources, would still represent just 7 percent of anticipated future U.S. fuel consumption.
The mandates were passed before the deep financial crisis and improvements in fuel efficiency. At the time, gasoline demand was expected in the neighborhood of 160 billion gallons annually. It's far from that now.
"It was never supposed to be '130 billion gallons and falling.' And it will continue to fall because of the CAFE [corporate average fuel economy] standards," which require in years ahead more miles per gallon from automobile manufacturers, said Kevin Book, an energy analyst for researcher ClearView Energy Partners. "The actual pool [of gasoline] is getting smaller as requirements [for ethanol use] are getting larger."
This contradiction is called the "blend wall," akin to a perfect storm facing ethanol producers right as the next-generation product is about to come to market. By 2022, at least half of the nation's ethanol must come from non-corn sources, and that depends on next-generation cellulosic ethanol.
"We're in the age of cellulosic. The key question still is going to be increased volume and a competitive price," said Daniel Yergin, the Pulitzer Prize-winning oil historian and author of "The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power," and its recent sequel, "The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World."
Oil companies, which sell less product when ethanol is blended, want to roll back the blending requirements. Ethanol producers, who consume about 40 percent of the nation's corn crop, argue that the solution is raising the amount of ethanol required to be blended into fuel somewhere in the ballpark of 15 percent or 20 percent. The Environmental Protection Agency has approved sale of gasoline composed of 15 percent ethanol, or E15, for use in newer cars. It is not required, however.
President Obama has made ethanol a key part of his "all of the above" strategy for energy production. Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney released a white paper on agriculture on Oct. 9, also supporting the existing Renewable Fuel Standard.
Most ethanol produced in the United States is made from corn, but several expensive bio-refineries are under construction to produce cellulosic ethanol. These refineries will use as their feedstock corn stover, essentially the leftover corn stalk after corn cobs have been harvested. In the future, this product won't compete with food crops.
What happens with the fuel standard is also a jobs issue. Not only is the ethanol market huge for corn growers, but it also creates all sorts of related jobs, from farm products to the truck drivers who deliver corn around the clock to ethanol plants.
"It's an economic issue, and we simply want the issue to be decided based upon the facts. We want people to think about those unanticipated consequences," said Chris Standlee, executive vice president of Abengoa Bioenergy in Chesterfield, Mo., which operates six bio-refineries capable of producing 400 million gallons of ethanol annually.
"What happens if you take actions to reduce that - not only what happens now to the economy and health of rural America, but a year from now if ethanol is reduced and oil prices go back to $150 a barrel? That's not good for anybody."
- McClatchy Newspapers
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October 22, 2012 Monday
Met 2 Edition
GM's alive. Obama's hopes here may not be.
BYLINE: Rosalind S. Helderman
SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A07
LENGTH: 1680 words
DATELINE: IN DEFIANCE, OHIO
For more than 50 years, the economic fate of this tiny town in northwest Ohio has been inextricably linked to the health of General Motors, its largest employer.
And so when two local lawyers put up a billboard in the cornfield across from Defiance's GM plant with a picture of the GM logo above the word "alive" and a photo of Osama bin Laden above the word "dead," you might have expected nods of approval.
Instead, in this deeply conservative corner of the state not far from the Indiana border, the billboard - and two others posted in town - have proved highly controversial.
For Democrats, this may be the town President Obama helped save with the auto bailout. But, in a twist, Defiance and places like it could end up saving Mitt Romney in all-important Ohio.
That's because Obama won Ohio four years ago in part by peeling off support in Republican-leaning parts of the state such as Defiance. Now, Romney is making a play to get those voters back, hoping that, here on the brightening side of the recession, the election is not all about the economy, and that juiced GOP turnout might swing a state that no Republican president has ever lost.
Romney has made Ohio a particular focus since the first debate - he or vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan have appeared at 14 events since then.
He is talking to Ohioans such as Defiance city manager Jeffrey Leonard, who voted for Obama in 2008 but now says he is "very disappointed" in the president and undecided about his vote.
Leonard said he understands intimately what the loss of the GM plant would have meant for his city. But he does not believe the government should be in the business of protecting private executives from their own mistakes. "Guess what. When you have poor management, you should accept the consequences," he said. "No exceptions for GM. No exceptions."
The government's bailout of GM and Chrysler has generally proved popular in Ohio, where one in eight jobs is connected to the auto industry.
On Friday, Obama began airing an Ohio ad in which auto workers talk about how they would have been affected had GM gone under, declaring that Romney, who opposed government aid for the industry, is "not one of us."
The bailout has been a staple of Obama's campaign in the state and one reason his poll numbers have remained more solid in the Buckeye State than other battlegrounds where support has slid in recent days.
But in this town that has been arguably helped by GM's recent resurgence more than anywhere else in Ohio, even Obama's most ardent supporters fear the bailout cannot puncture hardened partisan divisions and stop Romney's march.
"People's attitudes have become very firm," said Joseph O'Neil, who joined his law partner and their wives to design and fund the billboards. "It's gotten to the point where it's very hard to change."
'If it wasn't for the bailout'
For many of GM's workers in Defiance, the company's turnaround has meant a personal turnaround as well.
"There are guys in there working 12 hours a day, seven days a week. It's a lot of overtime in there," said Chris Mendez, 37, a GM electrician laid off for nearly 10 months in 2009 and now back on the job.
"There's no doubt in my mind. If it wasn't for the bailout, I don't know where I'd be at," said Mendez, who will be voting for Obama. "If it was up to Mitt Romney, we would have gone under."
The symbol of GM's new stability in Ohio is the Chevy Cruze, a small sedan manufactured not far from Youngstown.
And at the heart of the Cruze is its engine, poured at the GM foundry in Defiance.
The largest auto-related foundry in the world, the Defiance plant at one time employed 5,000. That number has shrunk over the years, part of a national contraction of what was once the country's largest employer.
Before the 2008 economic crash, 1,700 worked at the plant. As car sales dropped off and GM slid toward insolvency, the plant slowed down. Residents say hundreds were laid off. GM would not confirm how many employees lost their jobs but confirmed that permanent layoff notices were issued in 2009.
The economic impact on the town of 17,000 - and the 40,000 people in the surrounding county of the same name - was immediate. Residents stopped paying their electrical bills, then their mortgages. The grocery stores emptied. The town reopened its settled annual budget and cut $1 million out of $6 million in planned spending.
"If you can imagine, the banks, the lending community, the car dealerships, the restaurants - places that depend on people spending money - everything came to a halt. It just came to a halt," said Bob Armstrong, a former GM employee now in his third term as mayor of Defiance.
On the day in June 2009 that GM declared bankruptcy, accepting billions in government help as part of a restructuring process, Armstrong called the plant manager and asked what the future would hold for Defiance. Nobody knew, the plant manager told him.
Then he stopped into Kissner's Restaurant, a tavern operated continuously on Defiance's main street since 1903 - by the same family since 1928. "What's going to happen?" people called out to him as he walked in, he recalled.
Both of Armstrong's parents worked at the plant. His son was one of those laid off in 2009. For the first time since the GM plant opened in 1948, Defiance contemplated a future without it. "We could have been a ghost town," the mayor said.
But GM emerged from bankruptcy after just over a month. While the government still owns significant GM stock, the company paid back $8 billion in loans ahead of schedule, part of $67 billion it received in government aid, and it posted record profits last year.
The auto bailout is popular in Ohio; registered voters said by a 2 to 1 margin in a September Washington Post poll that it had been mostly good for Ohio's economy.
It's been a weapon that Obama has used persistently against Romney, who argued in a November 2008 column that government should not extend the company loans.
In Defiance, the plant is humming again, its workforce above 1,300 and growing.
Whether Obama should get credit for Defiance's turnaround - whether GM really needed government help to recover and whether the bailout issue alone should determine votes - are topics of heated dispute.
For many plant workers, particularly those active in the United Auto Workers local, the answer is clear.
"The way I look at it is that he had my back when I was going to lose my job. So I have his back," said Sherilyn Baker, 39, a factory worker whose children received reduced-price lunches at school for the first time when she was laid off from GM for six months in 2009.
But Baker acknowledged that it is an uphill climb. Her sister will vote for Romney. Even at the plant, opinions are bitterly divided. She said two workers nearly came to blows recently in the plant cafeteria over whether to support Obama or Romney.
Conservative corner of state
A hint about this area's political leanings can be found in the front lawn of a Catholic school not far from town hall - a marble tablet, fronted by a bed of flowers, erected in memory of the innocent victims of abortion.
This is a heavily Catholic and deeply religious area - abortion is the issue that pushed Baker's sister to the Republican Party. Some storefronts and homes have posted signs that read "Defend Religious Liberty" and "Protect the First Amendment," references to the Obama administration's tangle with Catholic hospitals about providing coverage for contraception for employees.
This could spell trouble for Obama, who won only 44 percent of the vote in Defiance County in 2008 - still six points better than Sen. John F. Kerry's showing in 2004. Closing the gaps in GOP strongholds was part of what allowed Obama to win 51.3 percent of the vote in Ohio. He was the first Democrat to top 50 percent since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964.
While Bill Clinton won Ohio in 1992 and 1996, in both cases H. Ross Perot attracted significant support, keeping the winner under 50 percent.
Each morning for more than five decades, the day has begun the same way in Defiance - with farmers bellying up to the bar at Kissner's and an evolving group of businessmen gathering around what they refer to as simply "the big table."
They gossip about town affairs, talk politics and tease one another. A favorite target is Mayor Armstrong, jabbed routinely for his tendency to hand out combs imprinted with his name instead of business cards - an idea born of a long-ago career as a barber - and even more often for his Democratic politics.
Like most of Defiance, the big table mostly votes Republican.
"The guy who's in there is absolutely not taking care of the economy. In fact, he's killing the economy," said big-table regular Larry Woods, 56, an insurance salesman.
At this table, the most pressing issue of the election is federal spending and the nation's rising tide of red ink. And while they agree a GM plant closure would have a devastating impact on their town, they believe the company could have survived without aid that hit the government's bottom line.
"Wouldn't they just have filed Chapter 11, just like other companies?" Woods asked. "It might have taken a little longer, but I assume the same thing would have happened."
The company's stock has been sliding lately, they note. And those at the big table say the bailout helped the union but shafted small GM suppliers and stockholders.
"To me, it was just political payback," said Joe Leever, 61, who owns a glass and glazing company.
Said Tom Hubbard, 57, who owns the town's printing shop: "They ended up going through a structured bankruptcy anyway, but the union ended up owning them."
Obama does not need the big table; it didn't support him in 2008, either. But he could use David Shomberg, 45, whose father worked at GM but now says he doesn't know anyone well at the plant.
Shomberg, a plastics-factory worker, voted for Obama in 2008. But now he's undecided. He's leaning toward Obama, but he is concerned about federal debt and trouble overseas.
"Mitt might sway me," he said.
heldermanr@washpost.com
Scott Clement contributed to this report
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October 22, 2012 Monday
Suburban Edition
For Romney, a bit of deja vu ahead of debate
BYLINE: Ned Martel
SECTION: STYLE; Pg. C01
LENGTH: 840 words
Mitt Romney has been there before: entering a third, crucial debate in a topsy-turvy contest.
Ten years ago, he battled Democrat Shannon O'Brien in his bid to land the open governor's job in Massachusetts. On Monday, he'll face off against President Obama in the final showdown before the November vote.
The circumstances are strangely similar: Going into that last debate in Massachusetts, Romney had eroded O'Brien's lead but had to make up for a few bad moments in the second. The final confrontation, on Oct. 29, 2002, was his last opportunity to dominate the race. And he seized it, using what have by now become familiar tactics that he has deployed during this year's presidential run.
In Massachusetts, the candidates were seated at a round table with the moderator, NBC's Tim Russert, across from them. "It was very close quarters," recalled O'Brien, then the 43-year-old state treasurer. Romney "looked me in the eye." Right after she reprised a famous Ted Kennedy zinger calling Romney's abortion position "multiple choice," the GOP candidate glowered, talked about his mother's belief in access to abortion and scolded O'Brien for interrupting him.
"I do not take the position of a pro-life candidate," he said to his rival. "I am for a woman's right to choose. And your effort to create fear and deception here is unbecoming."
This was followed by a testy exchange in which O'Brien scoffed: "You don't have a record. It's one of waffling." Romney held up his hand: "Shannon, I think this debate should be raised just one notch. Stop trying to scare people."
Romney's "unbecoming" comment and his apparent lecturing of O'Brien reverberated inside Suffolk University Law School, where the debate was held, and resounded in the local papers. Although the Republican insisted that his use of the word was gender-neutral, O'Brien supporters such as then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Teresa Heinz, wife of Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), called him out on the comment.
The debate proved pivotal, and the damage was done - to O'Brien. Earlier in the debate, O'Brien had fumbled a question about abortion. Russert noted that the state required minors to obtain parental consent before getting a tattoo, but not before undergoing an abortion. The moderator added that he had called a local tattoo parlor to confirm. The question sounded sort of cheeky, so O'Brien ran with it. "Would you like to see my tattoo?" O'Brien asked Russert, who responded, "This is a very serious issue."
"I made a stupid joke," O'Brien recalled in an interview. Russert "got mad and kind of hit me between the eyes."
In the holding rooms where the candidates' staffs were watching, each side knew it was witnessing a transformation of the debate and the overall race. "At that moment, I knew we had won," said Ben Coes, a top Romney aide in 2002. "She just had one of those unfortunate moments where she mishandled a very serious question."
The debate was momentous for Romney's team, Coes said. "A month out, we were 10 points behind," Coes said. Romney convened some of his top aides - strategist Mike Murphy as well as loyalists who remain trusted advisers today, including longtime confidant Robert F. White, Eric Fehrnstrom and Beth Myers. They met in his basement in Belmont, Mass., to map out an ad strategy to close the gap. And they planned debate-prep sessions, including a few in soundstages to replicate the television studio, Coes recalled. Myers stood in for O'Brien.
"She even looks like Shannon," Coes said.
O'Brien has conceded that she felt confused by too many directives: Smile! Parry! Use humor! Be yourself! She was tired from the relentless pace of the campaign. And now, years later, she acknowledges that she flubbed her chance to become the first elected female governor of her state.
"I came across as being mean," said O'Brien, now living in Whitman, Mass., and consulting for tech companies. "Frankly, I don't know if I came across as very likable that night."
She has revisited the debate online and noticed her strain as she listened to what she thought were Romney policy shifts. "I was trying not to use words that rhyme with friar," she said. "I see that I'm just disgusted."
Romney capitalized on a particular difficulty O'Brien had as a female candidate. "In general for women, they need to project confidence," said Adrian Durbin, O'Brien's media consultant in the race. "Men can be more assertive, whereas women come off as abrasive." When Romney called O'Brien "unbecoming," he transmitted, in Durbin's opinion, a tone of "how dare this woman be here questioning me like this!"
O'Brien's campaign manager, Dwight Robson, saw Romney use a tactic that he has used since to great effect.
"Whether it was his unbecoming comment or some other remarks, he pretty skillfully turns the table, almost in a how-dare-you attitude," said Robson, who runs a nonprofit group that helps people with developmental disabilities. "He has a sincere demeanor about him that I think is effective in these debates."
marteln@washpost.com
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October 22, 2012 Monday
Suburban Edition
Suddenly, close race on foreign policy
BYLINE: Anne Gearan;David A. Fahrenthold
SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A01
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It sounded weeks ago like a mismatch.
The final presidential debate would focus on foreign policy - a sitting president who'd overseen the death of Osama bin Laden pitted against a one-term governor, so new to diplomatic thinking that he'd managed to offend a good chunk of Britain during a brief trip this summer.
Monday night's debate doesn't look like a mismatch anymore.
Instead, when President Obama meets Republican challenger Mitt Romney in Boca Raton, Fla., he will face an opponent who has already made up tremendous ground on the subject by criticizing Obama as weak, waffling and distracted by his reelection goals.
Before the two men first debated on Oct. 3, Obama held a 15-point lead over Romney on the question of who is more capable of managing foreign affairs. After Obama's listless performance, a Pew Research Center poll found that the gap had narrowed to a slender four points.
On Monday, the two candidates will share a stage for the last time. The race could not be closer: On Sunday, a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found the candidates tied, each with 47 percent of likely voters. Before the debates began, Obama led the same poll by three points.
In this debate, Obama could face the opposite of the situation many envisioned weeks before. Instead of lending him credibility, his commander-in-chief role could make him more vulnerable, opening Obama to questions about a range of unresolved crises.
Romney is likely to renew criticism of the Obama administration's reaction to a Sept. 11 attack that killed four Americans at a mission in Benghazi, Libya. And Obama also is likely to face questions about the civil war in Syria, a recent assassination in Lebanon and possible signals that Iran may be willing to bargain over the future of its nuclear program.
The White House on Saturday denied a New York Times report that said the United States and Iran had agreed in principle to hold one-on-one talks about that program. The report said Iran wanted to wait until after the election for talks to begin.
"It's not true that the United States and Iran have agreed to one-on-one talks or any meeting after the American elections," White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said in a written statement. The Reuters news service reported that Iran also had denied the report.
Libya's political risks
Foreign policy questions played a significant role in the last presidential debate, held last Tuesday on Long Island. Romney was caught flat-footed with an overly broad statement that Obama had taken two weeks to label the attack in Benghazi an "act of terror."
Romney was corrected by moderator Candy Crowley: Although Obama did not directly call the attack terrorism the next day, he did say that the United States will not retreat from "acts of terror."
Since then, Romney has said little about Libya on the campaign trail. Advisers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal campaign thinking, said Romney has deliberately turned his focus away from Libya and toward the domestic economy and gas prices since the last debate.
His arguments on those issues had polled well among debate viewers last week, the advisers said. But Libya is almost certain to come up again Monday night.
Romney's advisers have said data they have collected from focus groups in the swing-state of Ohio suggest that voters, especially women, think Obama is hiding something on Libya.
Romney's allies are making that point already, raising questions about the administration's shifting explanations of the Benghazi attack and the failure to offer greater security for American workers there.
In an Internet ad released last week, the super PAC American Crossroads used the classic language of a Washington scandal: "What did the president know and when did he know it?"
Obama seems to have prepared more for the question, which he essentially dodged in the last debate. He may have previewed his answer Thursday on "The Daily Show."
"We weren't confused about the fact that four Americans had been killed," Obama said. "I wasn't confused about the fact that we needed to ramp up diplomatic security around the world right after it happened. I wasn't confused about the fact that we had to investigate exactly what happened so it gets fixed. And I wasn't confused about the fact that we're going to hunt down whoever did it ."
Obama may also try again to portray Romney as politically calculating for using the fatal attack to score points. He may also seek to make the case that Romney is unschooled in the sophisticated intelligence provided to presidents or the heavy decisions expected of them.
Senate Democrats picked up that theme over the weekend, criticizing the release by House Republicans of security details about U.S. diplomatic operations in Libya.
On Sunday, Senate Armed Service Committee Chairman Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) accused Republicans of "obvious attempts to make political hay out of this tragedy," and said the release of the names of Libyans who worked with Americans could jeopardize their lives and damage U.S. interests.
Beyond Libya, each candidate has articulated a very different role for America in the world, as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that defined the U.S. presence overseas for a decade are either finished or fading fast.
The challenge for Obama and Romney will be to explain their foreign policy priorities in ways that resonate with voters preoccupied with economic issues and a growing national debt that undermines the country's ability to act abroad.
Targeting China
China heads the list of issues that straddle foreign and domestic concerns, and both candidates are likely to steer discussion of the country's rising economic influence to the American economy.
Last week, Romney called China a "cheater" and said that on the first day of his administration he would brand China a "currency manipulator." That is a mostly symbolic snub, but one with possible trade repercussions.
Romney said the designation would "allow me as president to be able to put in place, if necessary, tariffs where I believe that they are taking unfair advantage of our manufacturers."
Obama and Romney have tried to score domestic political points with tough talk on China - mostly relating to lost American jobs - that skims over the complexities of the nations' intertwined economic relationship.
Obama claimed last week that he has put "unprecedented trade pressure on China," although he has stopped short of the steps taken by the last Democratic president, Bill Clinton, who did designate China a currency manipulator.
China denies it manipulates its currency for a trade advantage, although China's central bank nudged the yuan higher against the dollar following last week's debate.
Too much criticism could sour the delicate political relationship with China just as that country chooses a new 10-year leader, and risks reducing U.S. leverage to win Chinese support on the U.N. Security Council for tough sanctions against Iran and other policy priorities.
"The presidential campaign reflects an alarming scenario in which China-bashing has become a ritual," China's state-run news service, Xinhua, said Wednesday.
Both candidates are also likely to address Europe's debt crisis, a drag on the already precarious U.S. economic recovery. Europe's economic malaise is increasingly seen as a U.S. national security problem, and one Obama tried to blunt earlier this year with intensive negotiations with the continent's leaders.
Looking beyond the American economy, debate moderator Bob Schieffer of CBS News may ask Romney about his contention earlier this year that Russia is the United States' "No. 1 geopolitical foe."
The comment was viewed by many as a Cold War relic, and Russia bristled at Romney's pledge that if elected he would beef up a missile defense shield in Europe.
The U.S. relationship with Russia has improved in tone if not in substance under Obama, but it remains a wary partnership at best.
On Syria, Obama is likely to denounce President Bashar al-Assad, who still counts on Russian support, but pledge no new U.S. help to oust him.
Romney has said Obama has been too timid in dealing with Assad, while being too hard on Israel next door when it comes to talking peace with the Palestinians. And Romney has endorsed arming the Syrian rebels.
"In Syria, I will work with our partners to identify and organize those members of the opposition who share our values and ensure they obtain the arms they need to defeat Assad's tanks, helicopters, and fighter jets," Romney said in a foreign policy address earlier this month at the Virginia Military Institute.
Obama has declined to take that step, arguing that heavier weapons could inflame a civil war already spilling past its borders and end up in the hands of rebels the United States knows little about. The United States is providing communications gear and other logistical and humanitarian help, short of "lethal aid."
Similar tacks on Iran
Romney's policy on Iran appears very similar to Obama's in substance. Romney has criticized Obama for failing to curtail Iran's nuclear enrichment program, but he has favored the same set of international sanctions that Obama has secured.
Obama and Romney say Iran must not be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon, something Iran's leadership denies pursuing. But Romney has aligned himself more closely with Israel's shorter timeline for acting against it, saying he would deny Iran the "capability" of developing a nuclear weapon.
During an address last month at the U.N. General Assembly, Obama repeated his view that there is still time to negotiate with Iran. But he has not endorsed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's appeal for a global "red line" for military intervention.
Former Pentagon undersecretary Michele Flournoy, an Obama campaign adviser, said the debate is an opportunity for Obama to showcase national security experience Romney does not have.
"We've seen that Romney does not hesitate to look for opportunities to use crises like Libya for political gain," Flournoy said.
Obama can also point out that Romney has offered few policy prescriptions that differ from Obama's, she said.
Romney has suggested that he might relax Obama's strict timeline for withdrawing troops from Afghanistan in 2014, after 13 years of war, but has said little about how he would deal differently with Afghan leaders, the Taliban or neighbor Pakistan.
anne.gearan@washpost.com
fahrentholdd@washpost.com
Philip Rucker contributed to this report.
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October 21, 2012 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
Pornography and Politics
BYLINE: By BROOKS BARNES.
Scene Stealers is a new monthly column by Brooks Barnes, a staff writer in the Los Angeles bureau of The New York Times.
SECTION: Section ST; Column 0; Style Desk; SCENE STEALERS; Pg. 2
LENGTH: 1144 words
LOS ANGELES
IT'S tough to be bashful when you're a pornography titan. So Larry Flynt, even at age 69, doesn't really try. He runs Hustler magazine, a chain of strip clubs and a slew of additional businesses, including a $33 million on-demand movie service acquired just last week, from a 10-story tower in Beverly Hills, his name prominently displayed on top.
He wears a seven-carat diamond ring, and his other fingers are adorned with fat rubies and emeralds. His wheelchair, a necessity since a 1978 assassination attempt left him paralyzed from the waist down, is plated in gold. His other ride? A black chauffeur-driven Bentley with extra tinting and vanity plates: HUSTLR.
So it stands to reason that Mr. Flynt would pick one of the showiest restaurants in Los Angeles, Culina at the Four Seasons, as his signature spot. He has eaten breakfast or lunch there most days for at least a decade, camping at Table 29, smack in the center of the room. The same waitress, Valerie Benchetrit, usually takes his order (''I know how you like your salt, Mr. Flynt''), and Culina recently added a menu item in his honor: Larry Flynt's Salad, $27, with Dungeness crab, shrimp, chopped vegetables, egg and garbanzo beans.
''They at first tried to skimp on the seafood,'' Mr. Flynt said, ''and I told the chef: 'Don't even try it. Fill that bowl with goodies.' ''
Having seen Mr. Flynt stop traffic at the Four Seasons more than once -- sometimes literally, since managers let the Bentley idle in the driveway while he eats -- I grew curious about his routine. What was it about this restaurant at this particular hotel? (Paris Hilton did make her sex tape there, but even so.) Why every day? Why garbanzo beans?
Mr. Flynt, it turns out, has a lot on his mind these days, none of which, or at least very little, involves food. (To answer the restaurant questions: the Four Seasons is close to his office, he's a creature of habit and who doesn't like a good garbanzo bean?) Over breakfast one day last month, Mr. Flynt touched on topics ranging from presidential politics to the sorry state of pornography to interior design.
That is, when he wasn't being tended to by one of his two bodyguards, Jose, who popped up without notice to offer a selection of toothpicks, stimulate his boss's circulation by lifting him up by the armpits, provide medication and brush Mr. Flynt's hair.
Really.
There were actually a lot of interruptions. At one point, a surgically enhanced woman in her early 20s, squeezed into itty-bitty shorts, came teetering over in stilettos. ''I just moved here from Indiana to be an actress, and you are, like, my idol,'' she said with a giggle. And there was Jose again, this time carrying a cellphone and whispering in his boss's ear.
Gov. Jerry Brown of California was on the line. Mr. Flynt apologized and took the call, saying that the governor, pushing a Nov. 6 ballot measure to increase taxes, probably wanted money for the campaign. ''Governor! You must not have a lot to do if you're calling me,'' Mr. Flynt said, falling silent as he listened the response.
''Have your girl call my office with the information,'' Mr. Flynt said after a couple of minutes. He hung up and took a moment to contemplate his food (three soft-boiled eggs, a stack of bacon and black coffee) before remarking dryly of the phone call, ''Exactly what I was afraid of.''
Mr. Flynt is a fan of California's governor, but don't get him started on Mitt Romney. In fact, Mr. Flynt was preparing to have a little fun, saying he planned to take out newspaper ads offering up to $1 million for information about Mr. Romney's unreleased tax returns. (The ads ran in The Washington Post and in USA Today; The New York Times, Mr. Flynt said, rejected the ad.)
''I'm a total political junkie,'' he said, adding that he thought Michelle Obama, who had spoken the night before our conversation at the Democratic National Convention, ''was very, very good.'' But he doesn't have a good feeling about the election. ''I'm not sure Obama can win,'' Mr. Flynt said. ''There is racism at work against him. It's disgusting, but nobody has the guts to talk about it.''
Mr. Flynt knows a thing or two about freedom of speech, having won a landmark Supreme Court case in 1988 over a Hustler cartoon of the evangelist Jerry Falwell. The suit, which clarified that public figures could not recover damages for offensive parodies, had wide implications for the media -- which is why Mr. Flynt thinks he has trounced Hugh Hefner, the Playboy founder, in terms of legacy.
''History will be a lot kinder to me, I predict,'' Mr. Flynt said, with ''due respect to Hef.''
He continued: '' 'Saturday Night Live,' Jon Stewart, Jay Leno, Letterman. You had better believe their attorneys are telling them, 'You can do what you do because Larry Flynt won his case.' ''
The court battle formed the core of Milos Forman's 1996 movie ''The People vs. Larry Flynt,'' which chronicled Mr. Flynt's rise from Tennessee moonshine salesman to defender of free speech. (Mr. Flynt was portrayed by Woody Harrelson.)
As for pornography, ''it's not what it used to be,'' Mr. Flynt said with a sad look in his eye. Hustler magazine is still profitable, but his company now makes most of its money from pay-per-view pornography in more than 55 countries, a Hustler clothing line and other licensed businesses.
He has been focused lately on opening a casino on the Las Vegas Strip, having succeeded with one in Gardena, Calif. He plans to open 10 Hustler stores, which sell sex toys and lingerie in a glossy, high-end environment.
''The concept is to take the adult bookstore and turn it into Saks Fifth Avenue,'' he said.
SPEAKING of quality: Mr. Flynt recently filed a federal trademark infringement suit against two of his nephews, who had started selling adult movies under the name Flynt. The Hustler creator argued that his brand was being sullied with ''inferior products.'' He won.
''People don't want their porn to look tacky,'' he said.
He then dived into a dissertation about the female anatomy that is not suitable for print -- or, for that matter, breakfast. He concluded by repeating one of his signature lines. ''I always thought that a woman's vagina had as much personality as her face,'' he said, adding, ''What do you think?''
Um.
Fortunately, Mr. Flynt didn't really want an answer. His mind was back on his eggs -- and the restaurant's new décor. The lime-green chairs were a mistake, he said. ''It's a cold color,'' he said. ''If you want to appeal to people, you want warm, rich colors.'' He recently had a similar conversation with his marketing staff over a proposed advertising campaign.
''It was pink and powder blue,'' Mr. Flynt said, chewing on a piece of bacon. ''I told them it was the dumbest idea ever. We're not selling diapers. Give me a burgundy. Give me a burnt orange.''
With that, he was ready to roll: ''Jose!''
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October 21, 2012 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
Cash Flood Fuels Fight to the End In Leaning States
BYLINE: By JEFF ZELENY; Jim Rutenberg contributed reporting from New York, and Ashley Parker from Daytona Beach, Fla.
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1317 words
ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. -- At this late stage of the presidential race, President Obama and Mitt Romney are being spared one decision that has weighed heavily on many candidates in previous campaigns: choosing which hard-to-win battleground states to abandon.
Having rejected public financing for the general election, both candidates are free to spend as much money in the closing 16 days as they can raise. That allows them to continue advertising and motivating voters across the entire spectrum of competitive states, a roster that could expand rather than contract.
Mr. Obama is still investing in North Carolina and competing as intensely as ever in Florida, a state that Republicans portray as shifting into their grasp. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. arrived here in St. Augustine on Saturday to rally Democrats, while his wife, Jill, visited Minnesota to guard against Republican inroads there.
Mr. Romney is still fighting hard for Ohio in the face of polls showing him lagging there, while leaving open the option of making a last-minute run at industrial states like Pennsylvania and Michigan, which have long been considered safely in the Obama column. On Saturday, he sent his running mate, Representative Paul D. Ryan, to Pittsburgh.
Both presidential candidates confront a volatile electoral map, with Mr. Romney working to stitch together a coalition of states across the South and West that could get him close to the 270 electoral votes needed to win and then pick off the rest of what he needs from his rival's terrain.
The president, who swept to victory with 365 electoral votes four years ago, is taking a defensive posture to protect Iowa, Ohio and Wisconsin in the Midwest. Yet he has not given up on other states, and on Wednesday he intends to prove the point by starting a round-the-clock, 48-hour sprint through six crucial states spanning four time zones. To promote early voting, he will cast his own ballot in Chicago.
''We're not going to bunker in one or two states,'' David Plouffe, a senior adviser to the president, said in an interview. ''We are keeping all scenarios in play.''
The campaign is trying to reverse a decline in the enthusiasm that surrounded Mr. Obama four years ago. The campaign trip this week, which aides said would include the president's calling undecided voters from Air Force One, is the latest high-profile bid to promote his candidacy.
A gathering sense of momentum is also keeping several options alive for Mr. Romney, even though his aides acknowledge that his best chance for reaching 270 electoral votes is wresting at least one of those three Midwestern states from Mr. Obama, along with winning Florida, North Carolina and Virginia.
As the candidates prepare for their third debate, on Monday in Boca Raton, Fla., the contest appears to be at its tightest point yet. Their final encounter, focused on foreign policy, may not move the race as the first debate did, so both sides are relying on muscular get-out-the-vote operations focusing on women and a sliver of undecided voters who could determine the outcome.
''There is a challenging path to 270 for both candidates right now,'' said Gov. Bob McDonnell of Virginia, a state chairman of the Romney campaign. ''The mood among the Republican base is incredibly optimistic, but it all depends who wins Ohio. The map gets a little tougher for both candidates if they don't win Ohio.''
Interviews with advisers to both campaigns, along with party officials and strategists across all contested states, suggest that both candidates have opportunities and vulnerabilities.
A leading path for Mr. Obama: victories in Iowa, Ohio and Wisconsin, along with states considered safely Democratic. A win in Nevada, where early voting began on Saturday, could add insurance in case Mr. Romney puts a state like Michigan into play.
A leading path for Mr. Romney: victories in Florida, Ohio, North Carolina and Virginia, along with Iowa, Wisconsin, Nevada or Colorado, or with a suddenly successful push in Michigan or Pennsylvania.
The candidates are set to circle each other this week through most of these states. With neither campaign taking public financing -- a first since the Watergate era -- both sides can afford to keep competing in all nine states judged to be most competitive and in a handful of places that could still prove to be.
''We are not seeing hard choices being made,'' said Ken Goldstein, president of the Campaign Media Analysis Group at Kantar Media, a firm that monitors political advertising. ''With only nine states and so much money, you may not need to make hard choices.''
It was a different story four years ago, when Senator John McCain of Arizona announced that he was pulling out of Michigan for financial reasons one month before the election. The decision was openly criticized by his running mate, Sarah Palin.
This year, Mr. Romney followed Mr. Obama's lead by not accepting public financing or the accompanying spending limits, so he has faced fewer difficult decisions. Over the summer, when he was restricted to spending money he had raised for his primary campaign, Mr. Romney could not afford to expand his map and invest in Michigan or Pennsylvania, two states that Democratic presidential candidates have carried since 1988.
But in the closing chapter of the race, as contributions are coming in faster, his campaign aides said they were constantly reviewing the decision on whether to jump into either state -- as a gamble, a head fake to the Obama campaign or both.
The leading ''super PAC'' supporting Mr. Romney, Restore Our Future, has been running commercials in Michigan for weeks, which could pave the way for a last-minute investment by the Romney campaign. Pennsylvania does not allow widespread early voting, which gives the campaign an opening until the end.
Less than one month after many Republicans feared their ticket was falling short, renewed confidence is apparent among party activists. Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan swept onto a stage in Daytona Beach on Friday night before a boisterous crowd, an indication of Republican enthusiasm not as apparent four years ago as Mr. McCain struggled.
''Have you been watching the Obama campaign lately?'' Mr. Romney asked. ''They have absolutely no agenda for the future. No agenda for America. No agenda for a second term.''
Mr. Biden countered in St. Augustine, pushing Democrats to match the rising Republican energy, saying: ''With you, we can take Florida. If we take Florida, this election is over.''
Mr. Obama, too, is spending more time firing up the Democratic base -- nearly all of his recent campaign stops have been on college campuses -- and fighting to guard states he won comfortably four years ago. His aides are bracing for his margins to be smaller in suburban and rural areas, so they are increasing their efforts in cities.
The psychology of the race has shifted, a prospect that advisers to Mr. Obama had long fought. They sought to define Mr. Romney as an unacceptable choice, hoping to keep enough voters who supported Mr. Obama in 2008 from seeing Mr. Romney as a plausible alternative.
But Mr. Romney is closing the race by putting a new emphasis on moderate elements of his record as Massachusetts governor. Mr. Obama is warning voters against trusting Mr. Romney, pointedly accusing him of having ''Romnesia'' by reinventing himself and his positions.
Here in Florida, the largest competitive state with 29 electoral votes, supporters of Mr. Romney say they have noticed a drastic change since the Oct. 3 debate in Denver, where his strong performance came as he stepped up his advertising in Florida.
''For a long time, the Republican rationale was 'I just want Obama to lose,' '' said Brian Ballard, a co-chairman of the Romney campaign in the state. ''He opened people's eyes at the debate. It moved the needle for the pro-Romney vote, not just that we can't have four more years of the same.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/21/us/politics/cash-flood-allows-fight-to-the-finish-for-electoral-votes.html
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GRAPHIC: GRAPHICS: Paths To 270 Votes: The final chapter of the race will play out across eight highly competitive states. The Obama campaign is still fighting for North Carolina, while the Romney campaign has not ruled out taking a last-minute run at Michigan or Pennsylvania.
Scenarios for the 8 tossup states (A20)
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October 21, 2012 Sunday
Sleight of the 'Invisible Hand'
BYLINE: JOHN PAUL ROLLERT
SECTION: OPINION
LENGTH: 1667 words
HIGHLIGHT: Republicans have been making political use of the phrase made famous in "The Wealth of Nations." But what would Adam Smith think?
Much has been made of Paul Ryan's devotion to, and timely disavowal of, Ayn Rand and her work, but little has been said about the Scottish philosopher he and Mitt Romney have cited as the ideological embodiment of what's at stake in this election. "I think Adam Smith was right," Romney affirmed in a January debate. "And I'm going to stand and defend capitalism across this country, throughout the campaign."
Capitalism is a word that Smith never used - the author of "The Wealth of Nations" had been dead for almost 50 years before it entered the language, via Karl Marx - but his most famous expression, "the invisible hand," is often taken as its proxy. Romney juxtaposes it with what he calls the "supposed informed hand of government." As he said in a speech on economics at the University of Chicago in March, "When the heavy hand of government replaces the invisible hand of the market, economic freedom is the inevitable victim."
Heady words, but hardly unusual. Few phrases in Western philosophy have embedded themselves as deeply in the vernacular as Smith's invisible hand, and no single image has ever so captivated (and occasionally inflamed) the popular mind. This has been the case for a while now - the intellectual historian Emma Rothschild called the 20th century "the epoch of the invisible hand"- but the financial crisis and the federal government's response have recently made it a cause for celebration and debate.
This development would most likely have surprised Adam Smith. The invisible hand makes only three appearances in his work, all fleeting. Blink, and you will miss them.
The most cited usage is in "The Wealth of Nations," the foundational text of modern economics, first published in 1776. The invisible hand appears once, several hundred pages into the work during a discussion of trade policy. Mercantilism, then the prevailing school of economic thought, held that the way to secure a nation's wealth was by implementing rigid protectionist polices. Smith agreed that such polices could strengthen certain sectors of an economy, but he contended that this came at the expense of "the general industry." If restrictions were lifted, every merchant would pursue the most profitable trade available to him, making the most efficient use of his own time and money. Granted, he would act with an eye only toward his personal "security" and "gain," but in so doing, he would "render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can." He would be "led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was not part of his intention," namely, to benefit society and the broader welfare of its citizens.
"[T]he system works behind the backs of the participants" is how the Nobel Prize-winning economist Kenneth Arrow described this phenomenon. Smith wouldn't have objected, though what clearly intrigued him was less the enlightened mechanism than the moral paradox. The invisible hand not only works behind the backs of participants, it succeeds despite them.
Consider Smith's use of the phrase in "The Theory of Moral Sentiments," the first of his two great works. He describes the landlord who, admiring his fields, consumes in his imagination "the whole harvest that grows upon them." Fortunately for the poor, the size of a wealthy man's stomach, if not necessarily his storehouse, is roughly equal to theirs. The rich "only select from the heap what is most precious and agreeable." The rest they "divide with the poor" such that they "are led by an invisible hand to make nearly the same distribution of the necessaries of life, which would have been made, had the earth been divided into equal portions."
Again, the system yields an outcome that is salutary and humane, but one that stands at odds with the selfish interests of participants. The wealthy, says Smith, spend their days establishing an "economy of greatness," one founded on "luxury and caprice" and fueled by "the gratification of their own vain and insatiable desires." Any broader benefit that accrues from their striving is not the consequence of foresight or benevolence, but "in spite of their natural selfishness and rapacity." They don't do good, they are led to it.
The moral paradox of the invisible hand often seems lost on those who speak loudest in its favor. Take the stubborn rhetoric of the "jobs creators." Insofar as it portrays a conspicuous group of people who act with conscious moral purpose, it bears no resemblance to the phenomenon Smith describes. We might as well call this vision of development the "visible hand" of capitalism, for it has the original theory backward. The merchants of Smith's world busy themselves seeking profit, while the idle rich build monuments to their own self-importance. We can debate the worthiness of either pursuit, but neither activity has the common good as its aim nor, for Smith, does it merit moral acclamation. Wisdom and virtue, he says, are the qualities of the person who is "at all times willing that his own private interest should be sacrificed to the public interest." Putting our own interests before and above others is nothing special. It is merely being human.
If enthusiasts of the invisible hand often overlook the moral paradox, they don't fail to appreciate the enlightened mechanism. Individuals, left to their own devices, will engage in commercial activities that ultimately establish a more affluent society than one organized by well-intentioned statesmen. "That's the American Dream," Ryan said, embracing this vision in his convention address, "That's freedom, and I'll take it any day over the supervision and sanctimony of the central planners."
For his part, Smith described this state of affairs as "the obvious and simple system of natural liberty," and he knew that it made for the revolutionary implication of his work. It shifted the way we thought about the relationship between government action and economic growth, making less means more the rebuttable presumption of policy proposals.
What it did not do, however, was void any proposal outright, much less prove that all government activity was counterproductive. Smith held that the sovereign had a role supporting education, building infrastructure and public institutions, and providing security from foreign and domestic threats - initiatives that should be paid for, in part, by a progressive tax code and duties on luxury goods. He even believed the government had a "duty" to protect citizens from "oppression," the inevitable tendency of the strong to take advantage of the ignorance and necessity of the weak.
In other words, the invisible hand did not solve the problem of politics by making politics altogether unnecessary. "We don't think government can solve all our problems," President Obama said in his convention address, "But we don't think that government is the source of all our problems." Smith would have appreciated this formulation. For him, whether government should get out of the way in any given matter, economic or otherwise, was a question for considered judgment abetted by scientific inquiry. He offered "The Wealth of Nations" in service of such an inquiry, a two-volume tome he painstakingly revised for years after it was published. Had he known that a single phrase plucked from the dense thicket of ideas would become the first and last word of his philosophy, I suspect he would have made one more revision.
And yet, Smith should have known better than to use an image, even once, that would elevate an operating assumption of his science to an article of blind faith. Before either "The Wealth of Nations" or "The Theory of Moral Sentiments," Smith used his most famous phrase in "The History of Astronomy," an essay (published posthumously) in which he observed that, in ancient times, the invisible hand of Jupiter was held responsible for "irregular events" of the heavens - comets, eclipses, meteor showers and the like. As civilization took hold, however, humans expected from the divine a cosmic reflection of their accomplishments: order, coherency, routine. They sought out theories that explained "the whole course of the universe consistent and of a piece," and to the degree that they fought to preserve the grandest of them all, the system of Ptolemy, Smith said it demonstrated "how easily the learned give up the evidence of their senses to preserve the coherence of ideas in their imagination."
The invisible hand is similarly beguiling. It claims a propitious pattern for which no one is responsible, even while everyone participates. As such, it absolves us from the conscious burden of building a common world, that work which is otherwise, at least in part, committed to politics.
That sounds nice in theory, but politics is a practical venture, and Smith distrusted those statesmen who confused their work with an exercise in speculative philosophy. Their proposals should be judged not by the delusive lights of the imagination, but by the metrics of science and experience, what President Obama described in the first presidential debate as "math, common sense and our history."
The president, himself an enthusiast of Smith, was speaking of Governor Romney's signature policy proposal, a huge tax cut that promises to spur job growth and balance the budget, while protecting the interests of the weakest and most vulnerable. The proposal, he said, fails these metrics. We cannot know what Adam Smith would make of this conclusion, but we can be sure that he would tell his admirers, all of them, that this test, and not the conformity to an abstract idea, is one on which the election should turn.
John Paul Rollert teaches business ethics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and leadership at the Harvard Extension School. He is the author of a recent paper on President Obama's "Empathy Standard" for the Yale Law Journal Online.
How Not to Choose a President
Reconsidering Obama the Pragmatist
Facts, Arguments and Politics
Bridging the Analytic-Continental Divide
A President's Religion
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(Media Decoder)
October 21, 2012 Sunday
Debate? Football? Why Not Both?
BYLINE: BRIAN STELTER
SECTION: BUSINESS; media
LENGTH: 363 words
HIGHLIGHT: A pair of ads on ESPN encourage fans to watch "Monday Night Football" along with the final presidential debate, one on a TV set and the other on a laptop or tablet computer.
Fans of political and athletic battles face quite a conundrum on Monday night.
The third and final presidential debate coincides with ESPN's "Monday Night Football" game between the Chicago Bears, from President Obama's adopted hometown, and the Detroit Lions, hailing from Mitt Romney's birthplace.
What's a patriotic American to do?
ESPN is subtly advertising a solution: watch both. Not with a picture-in-picture display on the TV screen - that's so 1990s - but with two screens, like a TV set and an iPad.
A pair of ads that started appearing on ESPN on Saturday promote the WatchESPN app, which allows subscribers of certain cable companies to watch ESPN on phones and computers at no additional charge.
"This debate will be settled on the gridiron," one of the ads says, after referencing the verbal battle that will be taking place on a stage in Boca Raton, Fla. The ad concludes, "Don't miss a minute of Monday Night Football on ESPN, the WatchESPN app and WatchESPN.com."
"Monday Night Football" is blacked out on phones because the National Football League has a separate mobile carriage deal with Verizon. So the ads for Monday night's game show a big-screen TV set transforming into a laptop computer and then a tablet computer, but not a phone.
Of course, some football fans may relegate the debate to the laptop or tablet screen while keeping the game on the big-screen TV, since ESPN's sibling ABC and dozens of other outlets are live-streaming the debate.
Recent second-screen studies by Nielsen and other measurement companies have found that many tablet and phone owners use the devices at least once a day while watching television.
This has been on display during the presidential debates, as millions of real-time reactions to comments from Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney have been recorded on Facebook and Twitter.
Surely at least a few debate-and-football watchers will have a third screen handy for reacting to both events.
In Debate, Crowley Found Herself Part of the Fray
Presidential Debate Drew More Than 70 Million Viewers
Roger Ailes Signs Up for Another 4 Years at Fox News
Breakfast Meeting: A Moderator's Lot Is Not a Happy One
Breakfast Meeting: The Power of TV Debates
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October 21, 2012 Sunday 8:12 PM EST
Romney's 'new math'for jobs plan doesn't add up
BYLINE: Glenn Kessler
SECTION: A section; Pg. A06
LENGTH: 953 words
"Let me tell you how I will create 12 million jobs when President Obama couldn't. First, my energy independence policy means more than 3 million new jobs, many of them in manufacturing. My tax reform plan to lower rates for the middle class and for small business creates 7 million more. And expanding trade, cracking down on China and improving job training takes us to over 12 million new jobs."
- Mitt Romney, "in his own words," in a campaign television ad
Romney's 12 million jobs promise has garnered a lot of attention. We became interested in this ad after a reader asked whether the campaign had provided much detail on how he would reach this total. This television ad is also prominently featured on the Romney campaign's "Jobs Plan" Web page.
The math here appears pretty simple: 7 + 3 + 2 = 12. But this is campaign math, which means it is mostly made of gossamer. Let's take a look.
The Facts
As we have noted before, the 12 million figure is not a bad bet by Romney. Moody's Analytics, in an August forecast, predicts 12 million jobs will be created by 2016, no matter who is president. And Macroeconomic Advisors in April also predicted a gain of 12.3 million jobs.
In any case, four of Romney's top economic advisers - R. Glenn Hubbard, dean of Columbia Business School; N. Gregory Mankiw, Harvard professor; John B. Taylor, Stanford professor; and Kevin A. Hassett, American Enterprise Institute scholar - co-wrote a white paper that lays out the case that Romney's spending, tax and regulatory policies would yield a more robust recovery - adding 250,000 jobs a month - that would result in 12 million jobs over four years. The analysis, which is prominently posted on the Romney campaign Web site, concludes: "If we had a recovery that was just the average of past recoveries from deep recessions, like those of 1974-1975 or 1981-1982, the economy would be creating about 200,000 to 300,000 jobs per month. . . . History shows that a recovery rooted in policies contained in the Romney plan will create about 12 million jobs in the first term of a Romney presidency."
But the specifics - 7 million plus 3 million plus 2 million - mentioned by Romney in the ad are not in the white paper. So where did that come from?
We asked the Romney campaign, and the answer turns out to be: totally different studies. . . with completely different timelines.
For instance, the claim that 7 million jobs would be created from Romney's tax plan is a 10-year number, derived from a study written by John W. Diamond, a professor at Rice University.
Diamond's study at least assesses the claimed effect of specific Romney policies. The rest of the numbers are even more squishy. For instance, the 3 million jobs claim for Romney's energy policies appears largely based on a Citigroup Global Markets study that did not even evaluate Romney's policies. Instead, the report predicted that 2.7 million to 3.6 million jobs would be created over the next eight years, largely because of trends and policies already adopted - including tougher fuel-efficiency standards that Romney has criticized and suggested he would reverse.
(After a version of this column appeared online, the principal author of the Citigroup study told Talking Points Memo in an e-mail: "I think the WP [Washington Post] story says it all. I have no comment to add.")
The 2 million jobs claim from cracking down on China is also very suspicious. This figure comes from a 2011 International Trade Commission report, which estimated that there could be a gain of 2.1 million jobs if China stopped infringing on U.S. intellectual property rights. The estimate is highly conditional and pegged to the job market in 2011, when there were higher unemployment levels. "It is unclear when China might implement the improvement in IPR protection envisioned in the analysis, and equally unclear whether the United States will face as much excess labor supply then as it does today," the report says.
The Romney campaign has already used this study, in a misleading way, to claim that Obama's China "policies cost us 2 million jobs." Now the campaign has just taken the same figure and credited the claimed job gain to itself, even though the report does not examine any of Romney's proposed policies.
"The big point is the 3 + 7 + 2 does not make up the 12 million jobs in the first four years (different source of growth and different time period)," Hubbard acknowledged in an e-mail.
The Pinocchio Test
This is a case of bait-and-switch. Romney, in his convention speech, spoke of his plan to create "12 million new jobs," which the campaign's white paper describes as a four-year goal. But the candidate's personal accounting for this figure in this campaign ad is based on different figures and long-range timelines. .
In many ways, this episode offers readers a peek behind a campaign wizard's curtain - and a warning that job-creation claims by any campaign should not be accepted at face value. The white paper at least has the credibility of four well-known economists behind it, but the "new math" of this campaign ad does not add up.
As readers know, we tend to judge more harshly claims in prepared speeches or ads that were the result of considered discussion by political aides. Clearly, some clever campaign staffer thought it would be nice to match up poll-tested themes such as "energy independence," "tax reform" and "cracking down on China" with actual job numbers. We just find it puzzling that Romney agreed to personally utter these words without asking more questions about the math behind them.
kesslerg@washpost.com
To read previous Fact Checker columns, go to washingtonpost.com/factchecker.
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October 21, 2012 Sunday 8:12 PM EST
Politics, all a-Twitter
BYLINE: Kathleen Parker
SECTION: Editorial; Pg. A15
LENGTH: 755 words
Oh, to be 12 again, the better to enjoy the presidential debates.
Or rather, the better to appreciate the Twitterverse, where America's obsessive-compulsive, attention-deficit population holds the zeitgeist hostage with tweets and memes that infantilize political discourse and reduce the few remaining adults to impolitic fantasy.
In this, the first social-media presidential election, the debates have come to resemble reality shows during which virtual audiences cast ballots (and aspersions), hiccuping their impulse-reactions to every word and movement into the intellectual vacuum we charitably call the body politic. Two debates in, the complex issues of our day have been reduced to a large yellow bird and binders full of women.
The problem isn't only with the debates themselves but also with the simultaneous critique by the world's largest party - social media. Our million-way conversation is a convention of Snarks Anonymous. The cleverest commenter gets a free, if short, ride on the Fame Wheel, usually at the expense of Mitt Romney, who, let's stipulate, is not the likeliest presidential choice of the Twitter generation.
It doesn't help that Romney is so . . . giving.
During the first debate, he delivered Big Bird, one of his targets, along with public broadcasting, for funding cuts. Such easy prey for President Obama, whose campaign launched a rejoinder sure to capture the tyke vote: Obama kills Osama bin Laden and Romney wants to kill Big Bird. It was the kind of setup that puts comedy writers out of work.
Next came the "binders full of women." Romney was answering (or avoiding) a question about the Lilly Ledbetter Act, which removed the statute of limitations for filing complaints about unequal pay, and switched to his record on hiring women. In the process of a search to fill Cabinet positions while governor of Massachusetts, he said he had "binders full of women."
Before the debate was over, the hashtag #bindersfullofwomen was ricocheting through the Twitterverse. By morning, "binders full of women" was the lead topic on talk shows and continues to be a multimedia punch line.
It would all be so very amusing if not for the subsequent media interrogatory. Was this emblematic of Romney's attitude toward women? Did Romney cause himself irreparable harm among women voters?
I defer to Time's Mark Halperin, who doubtless spoke for many of us when he said on "Morning Joe": "The binder thing is what's wrong with our politics."
Ridiculous, in other words.
In full disclosure, I should confess that I am a binder person. I have a binder for everything: family, finances, office, home, dog. I do not objectify these aspects of my life; I honor them with organizational zeal. So when Romney said that he had binders full of women, I thought, well of course.
As it turns out, at least some of his binders were provided by a women's organization that was lobbying the governor for more women in power positions. Good for them - and good for him. He did it, filling 10 of the top 20 positions in his administration with women.
By contrast, it seems fair to mention, women staffers in the Obama administration have reported feeling marginalized, according to Ron Suskind's book "Confidence Men." One even described the White House as a "hostile workplace."
But never mind.
The Obama campaign couldn't be more delighted with "Bindergate," which dovetails nicely with the narrative Obama's team created that Romney is waging war on women. Not all women see things this way, the evidence of which is the movement of women voters toward Romney, especially after the first debate. For this reason, perhaps, the Obama campaign immediately bought a Twitter ad and issued this statement: "The President talked about women as breadwinners. Romney talked about them as rsums in 'binders.'"
Actually, he spoke of them as people he wanted to hire, but again, never mind.
Romney can be awkward. His word choices are sometimes odd. But the idea that this particular phrasing was so jarring to some women that they got digital vapors is nonsense. Twitter may keep us entertained, but it can also make us ninnies.
So much ado about nothing leads one to wonder what else might be going on. Perhaps Obama foreshadowed these events in his acceptance speech at the 2008 Democratic convention when he said: "If you don't have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run from. You make a big election about small things."
File that one in your binder full of politics.
kathleenparker@washpost.com
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CLOSING IN ON THE FINISH LINE
BYLINE: Karen Tumulty
SECTION: A section; Pg. A01
LENGTH: 1492 words
There's not much that the campaigns of Barack Obama and Mitt Romney agree upon these days, except for this: The 2012 presidential election remains to be won or lost in the next 16 days because neither side has been able to close the deal with voters.
Close to three-quarters of a billion dollars in advertising - more than 80 percent of it negative - has flooded the airwaves of the battleground states. Legions of volunteers have spent tens of thousands of hours making phone calls and knocking on doors. There have been two conventions and three debates.
And yet, as the presidential race heads into this final stretch, it is ending up pretty much where it started - exceedingly tight.
So what has to be accomplished in these last two weeks? Both campaigns also agree on that.
"What we've got to do is two things and two things only: persuade the undecided, and turn our voters out," Obama campaign manager Jim Messina said. "We have a strategic advantage in size and footprint on the ground - and, even more importantly, in experience."
Those in Romney's camp, however, insist that their ground operation will not be outdone as John McCain's was four years ago. Theirs, they say, is more like the superior one that George W. Bush ran in 2004 - and with technological advantages that weren't available then, which will keep them nimble until the end.
"The quality and quantity of the data is light-years ahead of where we've ever been," said Rich Beeson, Romney's political director. "So we're going to be able to make a lot of informed decisions in this last two weeks that we've never been able to make before, because we didn't have the ability to see what we can now see."
That kind of chest-thumping is typical of the psychological warfare that comes at the end of a tough political campaign.
But there are also tangible ways to assess the end game.
Early voting is underway in many of the swing states, and absentee ballots are out in all of them. The two campaigns are combing the data on both for patterns that will show how well they are doing, as well as where they need to step up their efforts.
And more revealing than their shadow boxing is how and where the two campaigns are choosing to spend their most precious resources of time and cash.
The map
The battlefield this year is a narrow one. In fewer than a dozen states is the outcome in serious question. More than $350 million has been spent on television advertising in the biggest prizes: Florida, Ohio and Virginia.
When the Romney campaign announced last week that it would begin shifting staff out of North Carolina, it was a declaration of victory in the state once considered so up-for-grabs that the Democrats decided to hold their convention there.
"It's baked," said one top Romney strategist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss campaign strategy.
Romney's team also claims that narrowing polls suggest there may be opportunities in some states that were thought to be a lock for Obama, such as Minnesota and Michigan. And GOP vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan scheduled a stop on Saturday in Pennsylvania - a state where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by 1 million.
Obama campaign officials, of course, dispute that, and note that Romney is not spending money on advertising in those states.
"We continue to have more pathways to 270 electoral votes than they do," Messina said. "All of our pathways are still there."
The president's frenetic campaign schedule this week reinforces that contention. On Wednesday, he will launch a two-day, round-the-clock sweep through Iowa, Colorado, Nevada, Florida and Virginia, after which he will return home to Chicago to vote early. And on the way, Obama will call undecided voters from Air Force One.
Meanwhile, Obama's team is increasingly confident of its prospects in Nevada, another swing state.
The state has the highest unemployment and foreclosure rates in the country, which might have made it more receptive to Romney. But Nevada has seen enormous growth in its Latino population, which polls suggest will vote overwhelmingly for Obama. The president also stands to benefit from the reach of Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid's organization there and from the disarray of the state GOP.
The message
Romney's and Obama's closing arguments are beginning to take shape.
Although Obama was largely hailed as the winner of last week's raucous presidential debate in New York, Romney's team was getting another message from a focus group of undecided voters who watched from Cleveland.
Women in particular, campaign officials said, found Romney to be more "commanding" and scored him higher on the question of which candidate "has a plan to get the country back on track."
Few voters are undecided at this point, both campaigns say, and a majority of those are women, a group with which Democrats normally have a big advantage. But a number of polls since the first debate have suggested that Romney is gaining ground with female voters, particularly white suburban ones.
It is with an eye to voters such as these that the Romney campaign has recently retooled the former Massachusetts governor's stump speech. Where he once roamed the stage with a hand-held microphone, he now stations himself, more presidentially, behind a lectern.
He talks less about how Obama has failed - a recognition of the fact the voters are growing more optimistic about their economic prospects as unemployment rates edge downward - and argues instead that pro-business policies would bring about a more robust recovery.
Obama, on the other hand, has honed a sharper edge. On Friday, at a rally in Virginia, the president mocked Romney's efforts to reposition himself toward the center as "Romnesia."
"Now that we're 18 days out from the election, 'Mr. Severely Conservative' wants you to think he was severely kidding about everything he said over the last year," Obama said.
And a tough new Obama television commercial in Ohio ends with the tagline: "Mitt Romney. Not one of us."
After Monday night's final debate, there will be little persuading left to do. So the campaigns will turn almost all their energies to the unglamorous grind of making sure every supporter they can find casts a vote.
Getting out the vote
Democrats note that they have more registered voters than Republicans do in five of the most intensely contested states: Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, Nevada and Pennsylvania. Republicans hold an edge in Colorado and New Hampshire. And in three battleground states - Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin - voters do not affiliate with a party.
Democrats have also done a better job of registering new voters, although Obama strategists note that they still have to make sure they show up at the polls.
By the time Election Day arrives on Nov. 6, it is expected that more than one-third of voters will have already cast their ballots.
Early voting was a critical factor in Obama's victory four years ago. In at least four states - Colorado, Florida, Iowa and North Carolina - he had such a lead built up that he won despite losing among those who waited until Election Day to vote, according to an analysis by the Associated Press.
Romney's campaign is determined not to let that happen again and says it is narrowing Obama's early-voting advantage in some states.
In Iowa, for instance, Romney strategists think that Obama will have to have a 100,000-vote lead from early and absentee voting to win against a GOP surge on Election Day. "Right now, they're not on pace to do that," Beeson said.
Both campaigns put out memos last week claiming an advantage among early voters in Ohio. But it is hard to tell which is right, considering that Romney's figures are based on presumptions about absentee-ballot requests in a state where voters do not register by party and Obama's are based on public polls of those who have voted early and absentee.
Michael McDonald, a George Mason University professor who studies voting trends, looked at the data and determined that while Democrats have an early-voting advantage in Ohio, the Republicans are not being caught off-guard, as they were four years ago.
"Looking across the Ohio counties, it appears that early voting is up everywhere across the state," he wrote last week in the Huffington Post. "Both campaigns are hard at work through the extended early voting period."
Still, no one disputes that Obama - who did not have a primary to contend with - got a much earlier start on his ground operation and has built a far more extensive infrastructure. For instance, his campaign opened its office in Chillicothe, Ohio, late last year - nine months earlier in the cycle than it did in 2008.
"Are they better organized than John McCain? Probably," said Jeremy Bird, Obama's field director. "Are we better organized than we were in 2008? I'm sure of it."
tumultyk@washpost.com
Amy Gardner and Philip Rucker contributed to this report.
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Regional Edition
Politics, all a-Twitter
BYLINE: Kathleen Parker
SECTION: EDITORIAL COPY; Pg. A15
LENGTH: 755 words
Oh, to be 12 again, the better to enjoy the presidential debates.
Or rather, the better to appreciate the Twitterverse, where America's obsessive-compulsive, attention-deficit population holds the zeitgeist hostage with tweets and memes that infantilize political discourse and reduce the few remaining adults to impolitic fantasy.
In this, the first social-media presidential election, the debates have come to resemble reality shows during which virtual audiences cast ballots (and aspersions), hiccuping their impulse-reactions to every word and movement into the intellectual vacuum we charitably call the body politic. Two debates in, the complex issues of our day have been reduced to a large yellow bird and binders full of women.
The problem isn't only with the debates themselves but also with the simultaneous critique by the world's largest party - social media. Our million-way conversation is a convention of Snarks Anonymous. The cleverest commenter gets a free, if short, ride on the Fame Wheel, usually at the expense of Mitt Romney, who, let's stipulate, is not the likeliest presidential choice of the Twitter generation.
It doesn't help that Romney is so . . . giving.
During the first debate, he delivered Big Bird, one of his targets, along with public broadcasting, for funding cuts. Such easy prey for President Obama, whose campaign launched a rejoinder sure to capture the tyke vote: Obama kills Osama bin Laden and Romney wants to kill Big Bird. It was the kind of setup that puts comedy writers out of work.
Next came the "binders full of women." Romney was answering (or avoiding) a question about the Lilly Ledbetter Act, which removed the statute of limitations for filing complaints about unequal pay, and switched to his record on hiring women. In the process of a search to fill Cabinet positions while governor of Massachusetts, he said he had "binders full of women."
Before the debate was over, the hashtag #bindersfullofwomen was ricocheting through the Twitterverse. By morning, "binders full of women" was the lead topic on talk shows and continues to be a multimedia punch line.
It would all be so very amusing if not for the subsequent media interrogatory. Was this emblematic of Romney's attitude toward women? Did Romney cause himself irreparable harm among women voters?
I defer to Time's Mark Halperin, who doubtless spoke for many of us when he said on "Morning Joe": "The binder thing is what's wrong with our politics."
Ridiculous, in other words.
In full disclosure, I should confess that I am a binder person. I have a binder for everything: family, finances, office, home, dog. I do not objectify these aspects of my life; I honor them with organizational zeal. So when Romney said that he had binders full of women, I thought, well of course.
As it turns out, at least some of his binders were provided by a women's organization that was lobbying the governor for more women in power positions. Good for them - and good for him. He did it, filling 10 of the top 20 positions in his administration with women.
By contrast, it seems fair to mention, women staffers in the Obama administration have reported feeling marginalized, according to Ron Suskind's book "Confidence Men." One even described the White House as a "hostile workplace."
But never mind.
The Obama campaign couldn't be more delighted with "Bindergate," which dovetails nicely with the narrative Obama's team created that Romney is waging war on women. Not all women see things this way, the evidence of which is the movement of women voters toward Romney, especially after the first debate. For this reason, perhaps, the Obama campaign immediately bought a Twitter ad and issued this statement: "The President talked about women as breadwinners. Romney talked about them as rsums in 'binders.'"
Actually, he spoke of them as people he wanted to hire, but again, never mind.
Romney can be awkward. His word choices are sometimes odd. But the idea that this particular phrasing was so jarring to some women that they got digital vapors is nonsense. Twitter may keep us entertained, but it can also make us ninnies.
So much ado about nothing leads one to wonder what else might be going on. Perhaps Obama foreshadowed these events in his acceptance speech at the 2008 Democratic convention when he said: "If you don't have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run from. You make a big election about small things."
File that one in your binder full of politics.
kathleenparker@washpost.com
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October 21, 2012 Sunday
Suburban Edition
Romney's 'new math'for jobs plan doesn't add up
BYLINE: Glenn Kessler
SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A06
LENGTH: 944 words
"Let me tell you how I will create 12 million jobs when President Obama couldn't. First, my energy independence policy means more than 3 million new jobs, many of them in manufacturing. My tax reform plan to lower rates for the middle class and for small business creates 7 million more. And expanding trade, cracking down on China and improving job training takes us to over 12 million new jobs."
- Mitt Romney, "in his own words," in a campaign television ad
Romney's 12 million jobs promise has garnered a lot of attention. We became interested in this ad after a reader asked whether the campaign had provided much detail on how he would reach this total. This television ad is also prominently featured on the Romney campaign's "Jobs Plan" Web page.
The math here appears pretty simple: 7 + 3 + 2 = 12. But this is campaign math, which means it is mostly made of gossamer. Let's take a look.
The Facts
As we have noted before, the 12 million figure is not a bad bet by Romney. Moody's Analytics, in an August forecast, predicts 12 million jobs will be created by 2016, no matter who is president. And Macroeconomic Advisors in April also predicted a gain of 12.3 million jobs.
In any case, four of Romney's top economic advisers - R. Glenn Hubbard, dean of Columbia Business School; N. Gregory Mankiw, Harvard professor; John B. Taylor, Stanford professor; and Kevin A. Hassett, American Enterprise Institute scholar - co-wrote a white paper that lays out the case that Romney's spending, tax and regulatory policies would yield a more robust recovery - adding 250,000 jobs a month - that would result in 12 million jobs over four years. The analysis, which is prominently posted on the Romney campaign Web site, concludes: "If we had a recovery that was just the average of past recoveries from deep recessions, like those of 1974-1975 or 1981-1982, the economy would be creating about 200,000 to 300,000 jobs per month. . . . History shows that a recovery rooted in policies contained in the Romney plan will create about 12 million jobs in the first term of a Romney presidency."
But the specifics - 7 million plus 3 million plus 2 million - mentioned by Romney in the ad are not in the white paper. So where did that come from?
We asked the Romney campaign, and the answer turns out to be: totally different studies. . . with completely different timelines.
For instance, the claim that 7 million jobs would be created from Romney's tax plan is a 10-year number, derived from a study written by John W. Diamond, a professor at Rice University.
Diamond's study at least assesses the claimed effect of specific Romney policies. The rest of the numbers are even more squishy. For instance, the 3 million jobs claim for Romney's energy policies appears largely based on a Citigroup Global Markets study that did not even evaluate Romney's policies. Instead, the report predicted that 2.7 million to 3.6 million jobs would be created over the next eight years, largely because of trends and policies already adopted - including tougher fuel-efficiency standards that Romney has criticized and suggested he would reverse.
(After a version of this column appeared online, the principal author of the Citigroup study told Talking Points Memo in an e-mail: "I think the WP [Washington Post] story says it all. I have no comment to add.")
The 2 million jobs claim from cracking down on China is also very suspicious. This figure comes from a 2011 International Trade Commission report, which estimated that there could be a gain of 2.1 million jobs if China stopped infringing on U.S. intellectual property rights. The estimate is highly conditional and pegged to the job market in 2011, when there were higher unemployment levels. "It is unclear when China might implement the improvement in IPR protection envisioned in the analysis, and equally unclear whether the United States will face as much excess labor supply then as it does today," the report says.
The Romney campaign has already used this study, in a misleading way, to claim that Obama's China "policies cost us 2 million jobs." Now the campaign has just taken the same figure and credited the claimed job gain to itself, even though the report does not examine any of Romney's proposed policies.
"The big point is the 3 + 7 + 2 does not make up the 12 million jobs in the first four years (different source of growth and different time period)," Hubbard acknowledged in an e-mail.
The Pinocchio Test
This is a case of bait-and-switch. Romney, in his convention speech, spoke of his plan to create "12 million new jobs," which the campaign's white paper describes as a four-year goal. But the candidate's personal accounting for this figure in this campaign ad is based on different figures and long-range timelines. .
In many ways, this episode offers readers a peek behind a campaign wizard's curtain - and a warning that job-creation claims by any campaign should not be accepted at face value. The white paper at least has the credibility of four well-known economists behind it, but the "new math" of this campaign ad does not add up.
As readers know, we tend to judge more harshly claims in prepared speeches or ads that were the result of considered discussion by political aides. Clearly, some clever campaign staffer thought it would be nice to match up poll-tested themes such as "energy independence," "tax reform" and "cracking down on China" with actual job numbers. We just find it puzzling that Romney agreed to personally utter these words without asking more questions about the math behind them.
kesslerg@washpost.com
To read previous Fact Checker columns, go to washingtonpost.com/factchecker.
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Suburban Edition
CLOSING IN ON THE FINISH LINE
BYLINE: Karen Tumulty
SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A01
LENGTH: 1480 words
There's not much that the campaigns of Barack Obama and Mitt Romney agree upon these days, except for this: The 2012 presidential election remains to be won or lost in the next 16 days because neither side has been able to close the deal with voters.
Close to three-quarters of a billion dollars in advertising - more than 80 percent of it negative - has flooded the airwaves of the battleground states. Legions of volunteers have spent tens of thousands of hours making phone calls and knocking on doors. There have been two conventions and three debates.
And yet, as the presidential race heads into this final stretch, it is ending up pretty much where it started - exceedingly tight.
So what has to be accomplished in these last two weeks? Both campaigns also agree on that.
"What we've got to do is two things and two things only: persuade the undecided, and turn our voters out," Obama campaign manager Jim Messina said. "We have a strategic advantage in size and footprint on the ground - and, even more importantly, in experience."
Those in Romney's camp, however, insist that their ground operation will not be outdone as John McCain's was four years ago. Theirs, they say, is more like the superior one that George W. Bush ran in 2004 - and with technological advantages that weren't available then, which will keep them nimble until the end.
"The quality and quantity of the data is light-years ahead of where we've ever been," said Rich Beeson, Romney's political director. "So we're going to be able to make a lot of informed decisions in this last two weeks that we've never been able to make before, because we didn't have the ability to see what we can now see."
That kind of chest-thumping is typical of the psychological warfare that comes at the end of a tough political campaign.
But there are also tangible ways to assess the end game.
Early voting is underway in many of the swing states, and absentee ballots are out in all of them. The two campaigns are combing the data on both for patterns that will show how well they are doing, as well as where they need to step up their efforts.
And more revealing than their shadow boxing is how and where the two campaigns are choosing to spend their most precious resources of time and cash.
The map
The battlefield this year is a narrow one. In fewer than a dozen states is the outcome in serious question. More than $350 million has been spent on television advertising in the biggest prizes: Florida, Ohio and Virginia.
When the Romney campaign announced last week that it would begin shifting staff out of North Carolina, it was a declaration of victory in the state once considered so up-for-grabs that the Democrats decided to hold their convention there.
"It's baked," said one top Romney strategist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss campaign strategy.
Romney's team also claims that narrowing polls suggest there may be opportunities in some states that were thought to be a lock for Obama, such as Minnesota and Michigan. And GOP vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan scheduled a stop on Saturday in Pennsylvania - a state where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by 1 million.
Obama campaign officials, of course, dispute that, and note that Romney is not spending money on advertising in those states.
"We continue to have more pathways to 270 electoral votes than they do," Messina said. "All of our pathways are still there."
The president's frenetic campaign schedule this week reinforces that contention. On Wednesday, he will launch a two-day, round-the-clock sweep through Iowa, Colorado, Nevada, Florida and Virginia, after which he will return home to Chicago to vote early. And on the way, Obama will call undecided voters from Air Force One.
Meanwhile, Obama's team is increasingly confident of its prospects in Nevada, another swing state.
The state has the highest unemployment and foreclosure rates in the country, which might have made it more receptive to Romney. But Nevada has seen enormous growth in its Latino population, which polls suggest will vote overwhelmingly for Obama. The president also stands to benefit from the reach of Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid's organization there and from the disarray of the state GOP.
The message
Romney's and Obama's closing arguments are beginning to take shape.
Although Obama was largely hailed as the winner of last week's raucous presidential debate in New York, Romney's team was getting another message from a focus group of undecided voters who watched from Cleveland.
Women in particular, campaign officials said, found Romney to be more "commanding" and scored him higher on the question of which candidate "has a plan to get the country back on track."
Few voters are undecided at this point, both campaigns say, and a majority of those are women, a group with which Democrats normally have a big advantage. But a number of polls since the first debate have suggested that Romney is gaining ground with female voters, particularly white suburban ones.
It is with an eye to voters such as these that the Romney campaign has recently retooled the former Massachusetts governor's stump speech. Where he once roamed the stage with a hand-held microphone, he now stations himself, more presidentially, behind a lectern.
He talks less about how Obama has failed - a recognition of the fact the voters are growing more optimistic about their economic prospects as unemployment rates edge downward - and argues instead that pro-business policies would bring about a more robust recovery.
Obama, on the other hand, has honed a sharper edge. On Friday, at a rally in Virginia, the president mocked Romney's efforts to reposition himself toward the center as "Romnesia."
"Now that we're 18 days out from the election, 'Mr. Severely Conservative' wants you to think he was severely kidding about everything he said over the last year," Obama said.
And a tough new Obama television commercial in Ohio ends with the tagline: "Mitt Romney. Not one of us."
After Monday night's final debate, there will be little persuading left to do. So the campaigns will turn almost all their energies to the unglamorous grind of making sure every supporter they can find casts a vote.
Getting out the vote
Democrats note that they have more registered voters than Republicans do in five of the most intensely contested states: Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, Nevada and Pennsylvania. Republicans hold an edge in Colorado and New Hampshire. And in three battleground states - Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin - voters do not affiliate with a party.
Democrats have also done a better job of registering new voters, although Obama strategists note that they still have to make sure they show up at the polls.
By the time Election Day arrives on Nov. 6, it is expected that more than one-third of voters will have already cast their ballots.
Early voting was a critical factor in Obama's victory four years ago. In at least four states - Colorado, Florida, Iowa and North Carolina - he had such a lead built up that he won despite losing among those who waited until Election Day to vote, according to an analysis by the Associated Press.
Romney's campaign is determined not to let that happen again and says it is narrowing Obama's early-voting advantage in some states.
In Iowa, for instance, Romney strategists think that Obama will have to have a 100,000-vote lead from early and absentee voting to win against a GOP surge on Election Day. "Right now, they're not on pace to do that," Beeson said.
Both campaigns put out memos last week claiming an advantage among early voters in Ohio. But it is hard to tell which is right, considering that Romney's figures are based on presumptions about absentee-ballot requests in a state where voters do not register by party and Obama's are based on public polls of those who have voted early and absentee.
Michael McDonald, a George Mason University professor who studies voting trends, looked at the data and determined that while Democrats have an early-voting advantage in Ohio, the Republicans are not being caught off-guard, as they were four years ago.
"Looking across the Ohio counties, it appears that early voting is up everywhere across the state," he wrote last week in the Huffington Post. "Both campaigns are hard at work through the extended early voting period."
Still, no one disputes that Obama - who did not have a primary to contend with - got a much earlier start on his ground operation and has built a far more extensive infrastructure. For instance, his campaign opened its office in Chillicothe, Ohio, late last year - nine months earlier in the cycle than it did in 2008.
"Are they better organized than John McCain? Probably," said Jeremy Bird, Obama's field director. "Are we better organized than we were in 2008? I'm sure of it."
tumultyk@washpost.com
Amy Gardner and Philip Rucker contributed to this report.
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October 20, 2012 Saturday
Late Edition - Final
Campaigning in Virginia, Obama Presses Fight for Women's Vote
BYLINE: By EMMARIE HUETTEMAN and MICHAEL D. SHEAR; Binyamin Appelbaum contributed reporting.
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FAIRFAX, Va. -- President Obama reached out to female voters in this battleground state on Friday, saying that Mitt Romney would ''turn back the clock'' on women's rights and accusing him of developing ''Romnesia'' by conveniently forgetting his most conservative positions.
''Mr. Severely Conservative wants you to think he was severely kidding about everything he said over the last year,'' Mr. Obama said. ''We've got to name this condition that he's going through. I think it's called Romnesia.''
The president mocked Mr. Romney's remarks about recruiting women to serve in his cabinet when he was governor of Massachusetts, saying, ''You don't want someone who has to ask for binders of women.'' His campaign also released a television advertisement accusing Mr. Romney of not wanting to hire schoolteachers or reduce classroom sizes for students.
Mr. Obama delivered his speech to 9,000 supporters at George Mason University here before heading to Camp David to prepare for the final presidential debate on Monday. Mr. Romney held a rally late Friday in Daytona Beach, Fla.; he was spending the weekend in the state ahead of the debate.
Mr. Romney responded at a campaign rally in Daytona Beach, Fla., late Friday, by saying that Mr. Obama's was reduced to ''silly word games.''
''Have you been watching the Obama campaign lately?'' he said. ''They've been reduced to petty attacks and silly word games. Just watch it. The Obama campaign has become the incredible shrinking campaign. This is a big country with big opportunities and great challenges, and they keep on talking about smaller and smaller things.''
Mr. Romney received the endorsement of The Orlando Sentinel on Friday, four years after the paper endorsed Mr. Obama for his first term.
Editors of the paper said, ''It verges on magical thinking to expect Obama to get different results in the next four years.''
But newspapers in Denver, Salt Lake City and Tampa, Fla., all endorsed Mr. Obama on Friday. The Salt Lake Tribune, which endorsed the president four years ago, called Mr. Romney a ''shape-shifting nominee'' and asked, ''Who is this guy, really, and what in the world does he truly believe?''
The editorial boards' decisions arrived as new data from the federal government this week showed the unemployment rates in most battleground states have fallen, in some cases significantly, during the past 12 months.
In Nevada and Florida, the unemployment rate dropped by nearly two percentage points, though joblessness in both states remained above the national average, which is 7.8 percent, according to state-by-state numbers released on Wednesday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In Nevada, the unemployment rate is now 11.8 percent, and in Florida, it is 8.7 percent.
Several other battleground states -- including Virginia, Ohio, North Carolina and Wisconsin -- saw smaller drops in unemployment. But in all of those states, the unemployment rate is well below the national average.
The economic improvement, and the perception among voters that things are getting better, has helped bolster Mr. Obama even as a strong performance in the first debate has given Mr. Romney a lift going into the final month of the race.
The fight for female voters intensified this week after the town-hall-style debate in Hempstead, N.Y., which included a question about equal pay for women that prompted a clash between the candidates over who would better serve women's needs.
That debate spilled onto the airwaves, with Mr. Romney's campaign quickly releasing an ad contending that he does not oppose contraception and believes that abortion should be legal in cases of rape and incest, and to save the life of the mother.
The Obama campaign hit back with its own ad, featuring a clip from a CNN debate in 2007 in which Mr. Romney said he would be ''delighted'' to sign a bill banning all abortions. (He went on to say that he believed the country was not ready for that.)
At the rally here, Mr. Obama criticized Mr. Romney for changing his positions on abortion, energy and other issues. Proclaiming the benefits of his health care law, the president reassured the crowd that ''Romnesia'' was curable. ''If you come down with a case of Romnesia and you can't seem to remember the policies that are still on your Web site, or the promises you've made over the six years you've been running for president,'' he said, ''here's the good news: Obamacare covers pre-existing conditions.''
Mr. Romney's campaign quickly issued a statement from Barbara J. Comstock, a Republican state lawmaker in Virginia.
''Women haven't forgotten how we've suffered over the last four years in the Obama economy with higher taxes, higher unemployment and record levels of poverty,'' Ms. Comstock said. ''What is really frightening is that we know a second term for President Obama will bring devastating defense cuts that will cost Virginia over 130,000 jobs, more burdensome regulations and the biggest tax increase in history on our small businesses and families.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/20/us/politics/obama-and-romney-intensify-fight-for-female-voters.html
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October 20, 2012 Saturday
Late Edition - Final
With Growing Willingness, Donors Come to Aid of Democratic 'Super PACs'
BYLINE: By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE and JO CRAVEN MCGINTY; Kitty Bennett, Michael Luo and Derek Willis contributed reporting.
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; THE CAUCUS; Pg. 14
LENGTH: 860 words
Three leading Democratic "super PACs" raised more money in September than in any other month this election cycle, officials said, underscoring the growing willingness of wealthy Democrats to bankroll groups whose existence they had long opposed.
Priorities USA Action, the group backing President Obama, will report raising $15.2 million in September, thanks in part to aggressive fund-raising by party leaders like former President Bill Clinton and Mayor Rahm Emanuel of Chicago. The group has already reserved millions of dollars in advertising for the closing weeks of the campaign.
Majority PAC, which supports Senate Democrats, raised $10.4 million in September and has brought in an additional $9.7 million through mid-October, officials announced on Friday, a period during which the party's chances of holding a majority in the chamber appeared to be improving. House Majority PAC, the Congressional Democrats' super PAC arm, raised $5.9 million, a figure the group said it was on pace to double this month.
"Democrats know that this race is even closer than we thought it would be, and if we're going to close this deal everybody has to get involved," said Bill Burton, a spokesman for Priorities USA.
Mr. Obama and the Democratic National Committee said they raised about $181 million in September, slightly more than Mitt Romney and the Republican National Committee, which raised $170 million, according to officials. Mr. Obama's campaign, filing on Friday, reported spending $115 million in September and ending the month with about $99 million in cash on hand for the rest of the campaign.
But heavy spending by Democrats over the spring and summer on registration, organizing, and early voting turnout has left the committee in the red, with $4.6 million in cash on hand at the end of September and debts of $20.4 million.
The Republican committee, by contrast, has amassed a huge war chest for the final days of the campaign. The party began October with $82.6 million in the bank, much of which can be spent to match Mr. Obama on the airwaves. Mr. Romney was expected to file his campaign disclosures on Saturday.
Despite fears among Republicans that Mr. Romney's political difficulties in September would hurt his fund-raising, Restore Our Future, the super PAC backing his White House bid, brought in $14 million, more than in the past two months combined, and began October with $16 million in the bank, according to disclosures filed on Friday with the Federal Election Commission.
On Thursday, the group reserved $12 million for six days of television commercials, one of the largest such reservations this election cycle.
Most super PACs are required to file detailed disclosures with the election commission by midnight Saturday, documents that will shed light on the sources of the contributions and how much money they had on hand going into October.
But early disclosures filed on Friday by Restore Our Future revealed that close to $4 million of the group's September contributions came from corporations, suggesting that businesses have begun to take full advantage of regulatory and court rulings that legalized unlimited corporate giving to independent political committees.
In some cases, the true source of the corporate money is hard to trace. An entity called KSMK Venture II, LLC, which listed an address in Peabody, Mass., contributed $200,000 to Restore Our Future on Sept. 11, bringing its total contributions to the pro-Romney super PAC to $250,000.
KSMK's listed address is the headquarters of Christian Book Distributors, a Goliath in the world of Christian book and music sales. The company's president, Ray Hendrickson, has contributed more than $70,000 to the Romney campaign and its joint fund-raising committee with the Republican National Committee.
A $200,000 donation from Meuchadim of Maine, LP, which listed an address in Hollywood, Fla., appears to be connected to Simon Falic, the chairman of Duty Free Americas, the chain of airport duty-free shops, who is a major pro-Israel donor.
The sources of other corporate donations are more obvious. Greenpoint Technologies, which contributed $250,000 to Restore Our Future, is a company based outside Seattle that builds high-end aircraft interiors for "private individuals and heads-of-state clients," according to its Web site.
Scott Goodey, Greenpoint's president and chief executive, and his wife, Julie, have contributed at least $100,000 to the Romney campaign and the Republican National Committee.
Individual donors contributed $11 million to Restore Our Future in September. Much of it came from a few wealthy Romney supporters who are mainstays of the Republican super PAC world.
Bob Perry, a Texas home builder who is one of the biggest donors to conservative candidates and causes, contributed $2 million, bringing his total donations to Restore Our Future to $9 million - more than 10 percent of the group's war chest this year.
Stanley Herzog, a Missouri construction company owner, contributed $1 million, as did Robert McNair, the billionaire owner of the Houston Texans football team.
This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.
URL: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/19/democratic-money-pours-into-super-pacs/
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October 20, 2012 Saturday
Late Edition - Final
Strategizing for the President, and Her Corporate Clients, Too
BYLINE: By ERIC LICHTBLAU and ERIC LIPTON; Kitty Bennett and Tom Torok contributed research.
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; Pg. 1
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WASHINGTON -- In the rarefied world of political consultants who straddle the line between campaign adviser and corporate strategist, Anita Dunn has few peers.
As a confidante of President Obama and a senior campaign adviser, Ms. Dunn has helped prepare him for the debates this month, plotted campaign strategy and acted as a surrogate of sorts in attacking Mitt Romney for a ''backward-looking attitude'' on issues like women's rights and health care.
She and her colleagues at SKDKnickerbocker, a communications firm, have built a growing list of blue-chip companies -- food manufacturers, a military contractor, the New York Stock Exchange and the Canadian company developing the Keystone XL pipeline -- willing to pay handsomely for help in winning over federal regulators or landing government contracts. Some clients and lobbyists who have teamed up with SKDK say they benefit from the firm's ability to provide information about the Obama administration's views.
''It is difficult to penetrate this administration,'' said Jason Mahler, a lobbyist for the computer technology company Oracle, which was part of a coalition that hired Ms. Dunn's firm to push for reduced tax rates on offshore profits. ''Anyone that has an insight into what they are thinking or their strategy or thoughts on issues we are working on is helpful, and they provided that.''
SKDK executives said that Ms. Dunn, who declined to be interviewed, was scrupulous about separating her political work from her corporate agenda, and that she followed White House ethics rules barring her from appealing on behalf of clients.
What the firm offers, said Hilary Rosen, an SKDK partner who is also a high-profile Obama ally, is help in navigating the political landscape in Washington.
''It is not that people assume we can talk to the White House to influence them on policy,'' Ms. Rosen said, ''but that we understand progressive Democrats, including the administration -- how they communicate their own message, think about their message -- and therefore we understand how things will play.''
Still, Ms. Dunn's dual roles show the limits of Mr. Obama's attempts to change the culture of Washington. Even as he pledged to curb the influence of special interests in the capital and has restricted the role of lobbyists in his administration, the president and his top aides continue to rely on political operatives like Ms. Dunn who also represent clients seeking to influence public policy.
''He's gone in the right direction,'' said James Thurber, a professor at American University, referring to measures that opened more White House records to public scrutiny and that slowed the revolving door between government and lobbying firms. ''But in the wide sweep of things, he didn't really change Washington that much.''
The rules, for example, do not apply to the army of consultants, advisers, communication strategists and others who represent clients with federal agendas. Unlike lobbyists, they are not required to disclose their activities, clients or issues, a freedom that has allowed them to become even more influential in recent years, ethics experts say. (Coincidentally, Ms. Dunn's husband, Robert J. Bauer, who was White House counsel from late 2009 to 2011, helped shape and put in place some of the ethics measures.)
Like Ms. Dunn, some other top Obama campaign advisers are both insiders and outsiders.
Erik Smith, a senior media adviser for the Obama campaign, is the founder of a communications and issue advocacy firm whose current and former clients include Citigroup, Ford, Delta Air Lines and Genentech.
Jim Margolis, another senior campaign adviser on media strategies, has an outside consulting firm that promotes his work ''at the intersection of politics, advertising and advocacy.''
And Broderick Johnson, a senior Obama aide, is a former lobbyist who has a consulting shop promising ''a wealth of public and private relationships'' that corporate clients can use ''to secure useful intelligence.'' He is taking a leave from the consulting shop while he is with the campaign.
But it is Ms. Dunn, 54, a former White House communications director, who has the highest profile. Incisive and sharp-witted, Ms. Dunn acts as a sounding board for Mr. Obama and his campaign.
''Who is a smart, aggressive woman who has been at the top of strategic battles for president, gubernatorial and Senate races? Anita Dunn would be near the top of the list,'' said Joe Trippi, a longtime Democratic consultant.
After starting her career in politics answering phones as an unpaid White House intern in the Carter administration, she ended up on Capitol Hill, working for Senator Bill Bradley before joining the firm now called SKDKnickerbocker in 1993. In the years since, she has served as a Democratic strategist and a communications specialist for Senator Tom Daschle, Representative Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats in Congress.
She was an adviser to Mr. Obama's upstart presidential bid in 2007, and has been a central player in defining his public image, taking a leave of absence from her firm in April 2009 to take over as Mr. Obama's communications director.
She left the White House in November 2009 to return to SKDK.
She and her husband, who is now the top legal adviser to Mr. Obama's campaign, form a Washington power couple who regularly attend White House social events. After leaving the administration, she continued to confer with leading officials, according to government records, including Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser; Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner; Jay Carney, the press secretary; Elizabeth Warren, who was a special adviser on consumer protection and is now a Senate candidate in Massachusetts; and Christina D. Romer, who was the chairwoman of the Council of Economic Advisers.
Ms. Dunn regularly attends closed-door political strategy briefings with top Obama aides; White House records show she has visited more than 100 times since leaving her communications job. She is now serving as a paid adviser to the Democratic National Committee.
Both the White House and the campaign defended Ms. Dunn's involvement. Eric Schultz, a White House spokesman, said the administration ''in all instances'' took steps to avoid any conflicts of interest. Adam Fetcher, a campaign spokesman, said it was ''nonsense to think'' that a communications consultant like Ms. Dunn should be precluded from doing campaign work because she had outside clients.
Her consulting firm has thrived. SKDK focused for years on media campaigns for Democratic candidates, but soon after her return from the White House, it announced a ''major expansion'' emphasizing strategic communications and advocacy work for businesses.
Nearly doubling in size to 60 employees, the firm hired a dozen Washington insiders tied to the Obama administration or the Democratic Party, including Ms. Rosen, a former lobbyist; Jill Zuckman, a senior Transportation Department official; and Doug Thornell, a former senior aide to House Democrats. And it took on corporate clients including General Electric, AT&T, Time Warner, Pratt & Whitney, Kaplan University and TransCanada, which is developing the Keystone XL pipeline.
The firm has also helped run industry coalitions seeking to influence federal policy on particular issues, working with lobbyists and other media specialists that represented companies like Oracle, Google, Disney, Pepsi and Microsoft.
Josh Isay, a managing partner at SKDK, attributed the firm's success in communicating challenging policy issues to a team that has ''decades of experience working in the highest levels of government, the news media, corporate America, labor and political campaigns.''
Sometimes the firm has been at odds with the Obama administration, as when it worked with food manufacturers and media companies in an attempt to block guidelines intended to curb food commercials for unhealthy products like sugared cereals that are aimed at children. The administration ultimately dropped the proposed limits, after the coalition successfully pushed lawmakers to oppose the plan.
Executives at SKDK said their work did not extend beyond devising ways to drive public opinion in a way that benefits the campaigns -- by setting up Facebook pages and Web sites and lining up favorable news media coverage. While SKDK promotes Ms. Dunn's prominent role as an Obama adviser on its Web site, it said it had never traded on its White House access to help clients.
''Anita would not be welcome at the White House as often as she is if she was over there selling them on issues,'' said Ms. Rosen, a frequent White House visitor herself. She and others at SKDK said the firm pointed out to clients that it did not lobby and noted the prohibitions on Ms. Dunn at the White House.
A half-dozen clients and consultants working with the firm, who asked not to be named because the work for the corporate clients was supposed to be confidential, said information provided by SKDK that was not publicly available had been instrumental in planning strategy.
Two consultants involved in the children's advertising project said Ms. Dunn provided guidance on the likelihood that the administration and the Federal Trade Commission would back away from the proposal. In helping the New York Stock Exchange seek approval for a merger with a German exchange, SKDK's associates told corporate partners that the Obama administration did not appear to have objections, participants said.
And working on behalf of Pratt & Whitney, a military contractor, SKDK told other consultants that the administration appeared unwilling to move aggressively to kill a deal forcing the company to share a multibillion-dollar jet engine contract with General Electric, several participants said.
Among its biggest assignments was representing a business coalition seeking to reduce tax rates on about $1 trillion in offshore earnings. Ms. Rosen told members of the corporate team that the Treasury Department was unwilling to go to bat for the idea, one participant recalled. SKDK and several senior Treasury officials say they never discussed the issue.
But an official with knowledge of the issue said Ms. Rosen had spoken by phone with Jake Siewert, then a senior adviser to Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, asking whether there was any chance that the administration would allow such a plan to be included in a debt deal then under discussion. Mr. Siewert told Ms. Rosen that the idea had no administration support, acccording to the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Ms. Rosen acknowledged that she probably spoke to officials at the Treasury press office to learn the administration's public position on the tax plan.
When The New York Times asked the Treasury Department last week about its contact with SKDK on the issue, that inquiry was forwarded to the firm within an hour.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/20/us/politics/anita-dunn-both-insider-and-outsider-in-obama-camp.html
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GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: President Obama with his advisers Anita Dunn, a partner in a communications firm, SKDKnickerbocker, and David Plouffe. (PHOTOGRAPH BY DOUG MILLS/THE NEW YORK TIMES) (A1)
Anita Dunn with David Axelrod in 2009, when she was White House communications director. (PHOTOGRAPH BY CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES) (A13)
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The New York Times
October 20, 2012 Saturday
Late Edition - Final
Romney as a Manager: Unhurried and Socratic
BYLINE: By MICHAEL BARBARO, SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and MICHAEL WINES.
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; THE LONG RUN; Pg. 1
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BOSTON -- As governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney could not resist burrowing into the bureaucratic weeds: He once took the statewide math and reading test for 10th graders, then startled his education commissioner by calling to say, ''I like No. 14'' and rattling off the answer.
As head of the private equity firm Bain Capital, he was so uncomfortable cutting loose struggling employees that a legend grew: executives sent in to his office to be fired emerged thinking they had been promoted.
And as a candidate for president this year, he resisted pressure from advisers to select a running mate before leaving on a high-profile trip overseas, insisting that he makes better decisions with time and reflection.
Mr. Romney's bid for the White House largely hinges on his own narrowly drawn image of himself as a chief executive: the data-splicing, cost-cutting turnaround expert. But dozens of interviews with those who have worked for him over the past 30 years -- in the Mormon Church, business, the Olympics and state government -- offer a far more textured portrait of the management style that he might bring to the presidency.
A serial chief executive, the Republican presidential nominee is steeped in management theory and eschews gut instincts. He is not so much a micromanager as a microprocessor, wading deeply into the raw data usually left to junior aides. He entrusts advisers with responsibility, but keeps them on a short leash, monitoring them through a flurry of progress reports and review sessions. Mr. Romney is, colleagues said, ''conflict-avoidant.'' His decision-making process is unhurried and Socratic, his instinct to exhaustively debate and prod.
''He was not somebody who forced decisions to be made before they needed to,'' said Geoffrey Rehnert, a longtime executive at Bain Capital.
In his approach, there are intriguing echoes of and departures from presidents past. His intensely hands-on style sets him apart from George W. Bush, the self-styled chairman of the board, and Ronald Reagan, who cared only for the big picture and left dirt-under-the-fingernails policy work to his staff. His tendency to immerse himself in the details recalls Lyndon B. Johnson, who closeted himself with Pentagon brass to personally choose targets for American bombers during the Vietnam War. His passion for mastering policy and deliberative decision-making evokes the man he wishes to replace, Barack Obama.
Each president's style resonated across his administration, establishing how staff members functioned and how the public assessed them. ''Everything flows from that Oval Office,'' said Mack McLarty, the chief of staff to Bill Clinton during his first term. ''Everyone else, the chief of staff, cabinet members, really start to adapt and work with that.''
The president's management, he said, ''is the epicenter.''
Mr. Romney has shown a genuine talent for recruiting disparate teams (luring top-flight business people into the governor's office), molding a workplace culture from scratch (as the founder of Bain Capital) and establishing priorities (as chief executive of the Olympics, he wrote down and distributed a list of ''Five Guiding Principles.'')
But the skills, habits and quirks that fueled Mr. Romney's ascent are untested in the crucible of the White House, where the crises, conflicts and challenges are unrelenting, the learning curve sharp and political instincts and personal diplomacy are invaluable.
''Some of Romney's experience probably would be useful to him. But if he thinks it's going to translate so easily into the Oval Office, I think he has a surprise coming,'' said Robert Dallek, the presidential historian.
Mr. Romney's diplomatic, low-drama approach, admired by many of his employees, has at times proved problematic for the organizations he oversees, according to interviews.
Four years ago, campaign aides said, he allowed distracting conflicts to fester within his presidential campaign when members of his advertising team split into warring factions.
As new operatives arrived, touching off a power struggle, weekly meetings devolved into angry shouting matches that stretched on for hours. ''It was absolutely perfectly horrible and I have tried to completely repress it,'' said the campaign's pollster at the time, Jan van Lohuizen. The solution seemed obvious: Mr. Romney needed to step in, untangle the egos and eliminate somebody. But he did not act. ''The problem should have been resolved,'' Mr. van Lohuizen said. ''It wasn't. He would have better off had it been.''
Colleagues from every phase of his career said that Mr. Romney loathes pushing out people with whom he works closely and will do just about anything to avoid it -- an approach that has inspired deep loyalty to him even as it has raised questions about his ability to make tough personnel calls, as presidents inevitably must. (Mr. Obama, for instance, is on his third chief of staff.)
Mr. Romney's image as a pink-slip issuing corporate raider, who drew derision for once saying he liked being able to fire those who provide him with services, stems almost entirely from his role at Bain Capital buying and selling of faraway companies, whose workers he never met. But in his own offices, ''he'd be much more apt to simply push somebody to the side and rely on advice from somebody else he perceives as better than to fire somebody,'' said Ben Coes, who ran Mr. Romney's campaign for governor in 2002.
After Mr. Romney's traveling press secretary, Rick Gorka, was caught on tape this summer cursing at reporters during a trip to Poland, he was briefly removed from the campaign trail. But he remained in his job.
Fraser Bullock, who was Mr. Romney's top Olympics aide, said his then-boss's reluctance to fire people stemmed from concern about their fate. ''He personalizes the situation, from what I saw,'' he said. ''It's 'Oh, boy, what will happen to this person? Are they going to be able to get another job?' ''
''That is why he gives people chances to recover,'' Mr. Bullock said.
That was the case with Doug Arnot, the managing director of event operations for the Salt Lake City Olympic Games. Not long after Mr. Romney was named chief executive of the games in 1999, with a mandate to clean house after a bribery scandal, Mr. Arnot was involved in a road rage incident in Salt Lake City. After repeatedly punching a pedestrian in a crosswalk, he pleaded guilty to an assault charge.
While some board members advised firing him, Mr. Romney refused after agonizing for weeks, citing Mr. Arnot's good work record and critical role.
''They gave me a chance to prove myself,'' Mr. Arnot said in an interview.
Mr. Romney did cut employees loose. As governor, he pushed out several officials whose actions reflected badly on his administration. ''In state government, my observation is that the governor had a low tolerance for people who underperformed and he wasn't reluctant to hold them to account,'' said Eric Fehrnstrom, Mr. Romney's director of communications in the Statehouse, and now a campaign adviser.
As a boss, Mr. Romney was big on small gestures. At Bain Capital, he instituted a rule that every meeting begin with a joke. At the Olympic offices in Salt Lake City, he once showed up with a griddle and apron to cook his staff a surprise pancake breakfast. And on his last campaign, he took a break from debate preparation for a game of touch football with his advisers.
Employees said he seemed to intuitively understand how to motivate people who worked long hours in high-stress jobs. He doled out generous bonuses, to be sure. But he also roamed halls, poking his head into cubicles and offices, inquiring what people were working on, quietly studying the mood.
''He would say, 'People aren't smiling enough,' '' recalled Cindy Gillespie, who worked with him at the Olympics and the governor's office.
Just a few weeks before the Olympics began, Mr. Romney starred in an office rendition of ''Romeo and Juliet.'' He played Romeo, opposite a male colleague in drag. There was no kiss, but Mr. Romney ad-libbed a few lines: ''Juliet, you are ugly as sin and need a shave to boot.''
''People just died,'' Ms. Gillespie said.
Mr. Romney's aptitude for problem-solving has a corollary: he often tries to solve them himself.
In the early 1990s, when he was the highest-ranking Mormon official in Boston, he asked Ron Scott to serve as the church communications director, a job that would require him to act as a liaison to other religious institutions and the local government. But when they talked the job over, Mr. Scott said, ''It became pretty clear that he wanted to do most of the outreach himself, and that I wouldn't have much to do.''
The urge to personally intervene is a recurring pattern. At times, it earned him plaudits, like when he temporarily took control of Boston's Big Dig tunnel project after a construction accident.
Occasionally, it could ruffle those around him. Mr. Romney's 2002 campaign run for governor did not employ a full-time speechwriter: he asked colleagues to draft them and then rewrote them, a habit he has carried over into the current presidential bid. (A frequent sight: foot-tapping aides waiting to load his revised speeches into teleprompters moments before he takes the stage.)
Mr. Romney even made time as governor to review the state Republican Party's spending, line by line. ''Well, do we really need to be spending $32,000 on a receptionist?'' Rob Gray, a friend and political adviser, recalled him saying.
Mr. Romney had a better idea.
''Couldn't we just have a voice mail system?''
The Long Run: Articles in this series are exploring the lives and careers of the candidates for president and vice president.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/20/us/politics/romney-as-a-manager-unhurried-and-socratic.html
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GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: Mitt Romney and his campaign staff. Employees say he seems to intuitively understand how to motivate people working long hours in high-stress jobs. (PHOTOGRAPH BY STEPHEN CROWLEY/THE NEW YORK TIMES)
Mr. Romney in his office at Bain Capital in Waltham, Mass., in 1993. He cites his private sector experience as a prime qualification as president. (PHOTOGRAPH BY DAVID L. RYAN/THE BOSTON GLOBE)
As chief executive of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Mr. Romney wrote down and distributed a list of ''Five Guiding Principles.'' (PHOTOGRAPH BY GEORGE FREY/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE) (A14)
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The New York Times Blogs
(FiveThirtyEight)
October 20, 2012 Saturday
Oct. 19: After Romney Gains, Should Obama Concede Florida?
BYLINE: NATE SILVER
SECTION: US; politics
LENGTH: 1807 words
HIGHLIGHT: Mitt Romney's gains in Florida call into question how vigorously the campaigns should be contesting it over the final two weeks of the campaign.
The national tracking polls on Friday showed some improvement for President Obama. He made gains in the surveys published by Rasmussen Reports, Investors' Business Daily, Gallup and Public Policy Polling, while losing ground only in the online survey published by the RAND Corporation.
Both the favorable trend toward Mr. Obama in the Gallup poll and the unfavorable one for him in the RAND poll might be regarded as examples of reversion to the mean, since both polls had been outliers relative to the consensus.
Still, it was among the better days of national polling for Mr. Obama since the Denver debate. On average between the six daily tracking polls and two other national surveys that were published on Friday, Mr. Obama held a nominal lead over Mitt Romney of 0.5 of a percentage point. The median poll, which reduces the weight given to potential outliers, had Mr. Obama up by 1.4 percentage points instead.
These figures are quite consistent with the FiveThirtyEight "now-cast," which calculates the current standing in the national popular vote based on all national and state polls. That method estimates that Mr. Obama would win the national popular vote by 0.8 of a percentage point in an election held today.
It was Mr. Romney, however, who made an overall gain in the FiveThirtyEight forecast on Friday. His chances of winning the Electoral College ticked up to 32.1 percent, from 29.6 percent on Thursday.
Part of the reason is the sharp decline in the stock market on Friday, a component of the FiveThirtyEight economic index. The economic index receives fairly little overall weight in the forecast at this late point in the election, but a sharp move in one of its components can still move the numbers some.
The more important factor, however, is that Mr. Romney had a fairly strong day in state-by-state surveys.
Mr. Romney led in 7 of the 12 polls from battleground states that we added to our database on Friday.
Furthermore, he made clear gains relative to the previous edition of the same survey in several of the polls, which in most cases predated the Denver debate, improving his standing by 4.4 percentage points on average in polls that provided for a comparison. Especially on days with a heavy volume of state polling, they tend to predominate in the FiveThirtyEight forecast.
Thus, just as in Thursday's forecast, when Mr. Obama's standing improved because of strong state polls despite middling national polls, the opposite was true for Mr. Romney on Friday.
If you look at the table above, however, you may notice a more specific theme in the state polls. We added four Florida polls to the database on Friday, and Mr. Romney led in all of them, by margins ranging from one to five percentage points.
The FiveThirtyEight forecast does not yet account for a fifth Florida poll, from SurveyUSA, which gave Mr. Obama a one-point lead there but was published overnight after we ran the forecast.
Still, Florida has been polled so densely that the overall trend has become clear: Mr. Romney has made larger-than-average gains in the state since the Denver debate, and has now become a definitive favorite there.
According to the FiveThirtyEight "now-cast" on Friday, Mr. Romney would be a 78 percent favorite to win Florida in an election held today. Projecting forward to Nov. 6 introduces a bit more uncertainty, but he's now a 69 percent favorite to carry the state on Election Day, according to the model.
Mr. Romney's gains in Florida call into question how vigorously the campaigns should be contesting it over the final two weeks of the campaign. Mr. Romney might consider relaxing his efforts there, while Mr. Obama's campaign might consider de-emphasizing the state.
Based on the FiveThirtyEight tipping-point index, Florida is now only the ninth-most-important state in the Electoral College math. There is only about a 2 percent chance that the decisive Electoral College vote will be cast in that state on Nov. 6.
This represents a significant decline: Florida had ranked as high as second on the tipping-point list at earlier stages of the race.
Why is the forecast model so willing to dismiss Florida? It reflects a combination of Mr. Obama's recent weakness in the polls there -- and his comparative strength elsewhere.
Mr. Obama remains the overall favorite in the FiveThirtyEight forecast because he leads by at least 1.8 percentage points in states with enough electoral votes for him to carry 277. The closest of these are Wisconsin, Ohio, Nevada and Iowa.
Mr. Obama could afford to lose either Nevada or Iowa from his column, which would still leave him with 271 electoral votes -- just enough to win.
He could not afford to lose both Iowa and Nevada without adding other states to replace them. Nor could he afford to lose Wisconsin or Ohio. It's still too soon -- and there is still too much intrinsic uncertainty in the polling -- to reduce the election down to these four states only.
Mr. Obama's next-best state is New Hampshire, where the forecast shows him with a tiny although much diminished advantage. Because New Hampshire has only four electoral votes, however, it comes into play only under relatively specific conditions. Were Mr. Obama to lose Wisconsin, for instance, while winning Ohio, Iowa and Nevada, also winning New Hampshire would give him 271 electoral votes. (In some other plausible scenarios, winning New Hampshire would only give Mr. Obama a 269-269 tie, which would probably go for Mr. Romney in the House of Representatives.)
Two other states, Colorado and Virginia, were virtually tied in the FiveThirtyEight forecast as of Friday. These provide Mr. Obama with some additional flexibility, since Colorado contains 9 electoral votes and Virginia 13. If he carried both states, for example, along with Iowa and Nevada, Mr. Obama could afford to lose Ohio, Wisconsin and New Hampshire and would still win the Electoral College.
There are no guarantees, obviously, in any of these states. But between the states in which Mr. Obama appears to hold a lead now (Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa and Nevada) -- themselves sufficient to provide him with a winning electoral map -- and the three others (New Hampshire, Colorado and Virginia) that are roughly tied but could serve as backup plans for him, his electoral strategy remains reasonably robust.
The potential benefit of winning Florida is that it would allow Mr. Obama to circumvent the need to thread the needle quite so tightly. Ohio, for instance, is not quite a must-win state for Mr. Romney, in view of the forecast model. (Winning without Ohio would be difficult but not impossible for Mr. Romney; the same is true for Mr. Obama.) But Florida, with its 29 electoral votes, is very much a must-win for Mr. Romney.
If winning Florida represents a high-upside case for Mr. Obama, however, it also comes at considerable expense.
Florida, because of its large population, is an expensive state to advertise in. And it is a state that probably does require a considerable advertising expenditure. Florida's population is large, but not especially dense, spread out in a number of exurban and suburban communities throughout the state. It's easier to reach voters through the airwaves there than by knocking on doors or appearing at campaign rallies.
Finally, Florida is a state in which Mr. Obama has always been swimming upstream, since it is traditionally a bit Republican-leaning and since its economy remains weaker than those of the battleground states of the Midwest. The "state fundamentals" calculation that the FiveThirtyEight forecast considers along with the polls, which projects results based on each state's past voting history, demographics, economic conditions and fund-raising totals there, estimates that the most natural result would be a win for Mr. Romney by three percentage points.
Florida also has a history of fairly accurate polling; it is not a state, like New Hampshire or Nevada, that is known for producing Election Day surprises.
All of this should call into question whether Florida represents a wise use of resources for Mr. Obama.
The same is partially true for Mr. Romney, although the situation is not quite symmetrical. If Mr. Romney were to disarm there first, while Mr. Obama's campaign continued to contest the state, Mr. Obama might improve the numbers enough to bring it closer to the national averages and improve the state's ranking on the tipping-point list. If the reverse were true -- and Mr. Romney kept pouring resources into the state while Mr. Obama did not -- it would presumably go from somewhat Republican-leaning to being even more strongly in Mr. Romney's column, but would not pass through the electoral tipping point.
Still, if the recent polls and the FiveThirtyEight forecast are right, Mr. Obama's efforts to compete in Florida mostly serve the function of a bluff. They might be enough to prevent Mr. Romney from taking the state for granted, but that doesn't necessarily mean that Florida will be central to the electoral math on Nov. 6.
There is an interesting counterpart to Florida in the form of Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania is another state in which Mr. Romney seems to have made above-average gains since the Denver debate. Still, the FiveThirtyEight forecast, and the consensus of polls in the state, put Mr. Obama about four points ahead there. Mr. Obama is more likely to win Florida than Mr. Romney is to win Pennsylvania.
And yet, Pennsylvania now ranks ahead of Florida on the FiveThirtyEight tipping-point list. It has a 6 percent chance of providing the decisive electoral vote, according to the model, against just a 2 percent chance for Florida.
Pennsylvania is close to being a must-win state for Mr. Obama, as Florida is for Mr. Romney. If Mr. Obama lost it, then even winning a number of other states -- including, for example, Ohio, Virginia, Wisconsin, Nevada and New Hampshire, as in the map below -- might not suffice to give him a winning path. (This particular combination of states would result in a 270-268 Electoral College win for Mr. Romney, for example.)
The reason that the forecast model views Pennsylvania as being more important than Florida is slightly more subtle than this, however.
Both states offer high upside for the candidates. But Mr. Romney has more incentive to pursue the high-risk path in Pennsylvania because his alternatives are worse, meaning that his opportunity costs are lower.
Mr. Romney certainly doesn't need Pennsylvania to win the election, but going for broke there is arguably a better strategy for him than having to pick off four or five states where they are now tied or where Mr. Obama holds a small lead.
Mr. Obama, conversely, just needs to hold his ground in those same states. Trying to pull Florida back into his column would represent a heavier lift -- and probably an inferior strategy given the recent polls there.
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(The Caucus)
October 20, 2012 Saturday
Ryan Campaigns in Coal Country
BYLINE: SARAH WHEATON
SECTION: US; politics
LENGTH: 544 words
HIGHLIGHT: Paul D. Ryan's appearance in Pennsylvania, added late into an existing trip to eastern Ohio, could be a sign that his strategists believe the campaign has stronger prospects there than once thought.
MOON TOWNSHIP, Pa. - Black and gold threatened to outshine the campaign staples of red, white and blue during Representative Paul D. Ryan's swing through coal country on Saturday, whether it was the yellow leaves burning through the mountain fog or the "Terrible Towels" that his supporters twirled above their heads. Normally a sign of support for the Pittsburgh Steelers, the towels distributed in an airport hangar just outside the city were instead emblazoned with the team of Romney-Ryan.
There were not enough towels for all of the more than 800 people who turned out to see Mr. Ryan on Saturday morning, so many instead held signs that read "Pennsylvania Believes" (in the usual color scheme). Mr. Ryan's appearance in Pennsylvania - added late into an existing trip to eastern Ohio - could be a sign that his strategists believe the campaign has stronger prospects there than once thought.
"Pennsylvania is going to send Mitt Romney to the White House," he told the crowd shortly after entering amid chants of "Here we go, Ryan, here we go!"
Mr. Romney's standing does appear to be creeping up, as polls show the gap between him and President Obama narrowing.
"He's here because they understand that Pennsylvania's in play," said Senator Patrick J. Toomey as he introduced Mr. Ryan.
A Republican elected in 2010, Mr. Toomey predicted that the Republican ticket would win Pennsylvania.
"We have a victory in reach that is not yet in hand," Mr. Toomey said.
He urged the crowd to reach out to the "hundreds of thousands, if not more, Democrats and independents who share our values" and might be open to persuasion.
Conveniently for Dan Shepherd, his wife, Lynn, is one of those independent voters. She voted for Hillary Rodham Clinton in the 2008 Democratic primary, and John McCain in the general election that year. This time she went with Rick Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator, in the G.O.P. primary, and especially after the debates, she is leaning strongly toward the Romney-Ryan ticket, but she wanted to hear Mr. Ryan talk about their economic plan.
"I want to make sure it's not just smoke and mirrors," said Ms. Shepherd, whose son in college worries about getting a job after graduation and whose daughter in high school wonders about paying for college.
The front page of The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette illustrated the complicated choice for Pennsylvania voters. The state's September jobless rate "eclipses" the national average, declared one headline. (Democrats blamed the Republican governor for the 8.2 percent figure, while Mr. Ryan told the crowd that the president's energy policy was costing thousands of jobs.)
Another story, reprinted from The Los Angeles Times, said, "No evidence of al-Qaida role in Libya attack" - adding fuel to the debate over whether the White House was straightforward about what was known about the attack on Sept. 11 in Benghazi.
And at the bottom of the front page was an ad for the event that Mr. Ryan would attend next, 75 miles away through the Ohio Valley. In Belmont, Ohio, Mr. Ryan urged nearly a thousand rain-soaked supporters to vote early in a state whose dominant political color is indisputably purple.
An earlier version of this post misstated Pennsylvania unemployment rate. It is 8.2 percent, not 8.6.
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October 20, 2012 Saturday 8:12 PM EST
Just being Joe, but he can pack a blow
BYLINE: Krissah Thompson
SECTION: A section; Pg. A01
LENGTH: 1018 words
Down-home and laid-back, Joe Biden has been traveling the country saying what few politicians could about their opponents, for better or worse.
Mitt Romney is "etch-a-sketchy," the vice president said this week.
Last month, he told a Hispanic audience: "Romney wants you to show your papers, but he won't show us his.''
At a campaign rally Thursday in Las Vegas, he said Paul Ryan and other young Republican leaders in Congress, nicknamed "young guns," have "their bullets aimed at you."
Biden has a long history of edgy verbal blurts - in 2007, he described then-Sen. Barack Obama as "articulate" and "clean," a comment he later said he regretted. But in the week since his blustery debate with GOP vice-presidential nominee Ryan, Biden seems to have found a slightly different niche - a more deliberate delivery of his sometimes-outrageous utterances. He offers these with a smile, relishing the stage, often punctuated by a "Whoa!"
"When Governor Romney was asked a direct question about equal pay, he started talking about binders. Whoa!" Biden said on a campaign swing this week. "The idea that he had to go and ask where a qualified woman was, he just should have come to my house. He didn't need a binder."
Within the Obama campaign, there is a cautious fear that Biden will go too far. Transcripts of his remarks are not regularly distributed, unlike President Obama's and the first lady's. And the vice president's aides have sometimes tried to steer him away from unscripted encounters with reporters.
But Biden also fills a strategic role for the campaign. With evidence that his middle-class Joe ethos has made him a beloved figure among rank-and-file Democrats, the campaign has regularly dispatched him to working-class communities, union-heavy gatherings and events aimed at Latino voters.
He has been a regular presence in Ohio, perhaps the most critical state on the electoral map. He also has traveled often to Florida and Iowa and just returned from a campaign event with union members in Las Vegas. Overall, Biden has racked up appearances at more than 100 campaign events this year.
Campaign officials have decided to let Joe be Joe. "He has an ability to connect and communicate in a clear and effective way," Obama campaign manager Jim Messina said in recent interview. "He, like the president, embodies an American success story."
Republicans say Biden has repeatedly crossed the line of decorum, and political analysts wonder whether he's gone so far as to become unpresidential.
"Today's over-the-top rhetoric by Vice President Biden is disappointing, but not all that surprising,'' Ryan spokesman Brendan Buck said after Biden's "bullets" remark this week. "In the absence of a vision or plan to move the country forward, the vice president is left only with ugly political attacks beneath the dignity of the office he occupies.''
William A. Galston, an aide to President Bill Clinton who is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said he's "never seen a less presidential demeanor from a national candidate." Biden has twice run for president and has not ruled out a third attempt in 2016.
"His role is the classic vice president's role: to attack relentlessly and to be full-throated in defense of the administration," Galston said. "It's straight out of the VP 101 class."
Biden and his supporters say he is just being honest.
"They usually don't go after you unless you're landing punches, and this is about attempting to go after him in a way because he's such an effective communicator for the middle class," Biden's son Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden (D) said in a recent interview.
Polls show both sides of the coin. More than three in four Democrats view Biden favorably, but among all registered voters, the vice president is much less popular than he was as a running mate in 2008. In a Pew Research Center for the People and the Press survey early this month, Biden was viewed favorably by 39 percent of voters and unfavorably by 51 percent. In fall 2008, more than half of voters had favorable views of him.
A survey by The Washington Post and the Pew Research Center at the end of the summer found disparate views of the vice president. Single-word descriptions of him included "good," "honest," "clown," "buffoon" and "idiot."
Biden interjects more light-hearted moments into his campaign rallies than Obama, Romney or Ryan. While he generally sticks to his themes, he is prone to ignore the teleprompter, ad-libbing as he looks directly at the crowd.
His audiences often talk back to him, energizing Biden and sending him on riffs. When he made his "young guns" comment, for example, he was responding to someone in the crowd who had shouted out, "They have guns with no bullets!"
Of his opponents, he has repeatedly said, "These guys are out of touch" while laying out the campaigns' differences on immigration, abortion rights and economic policy.
At the Republican National Convention in August, "they discovered the middle class!" Biden said to laughs. "It's like: 'My God, there it is! It's out there! There is a middle class! We are concerned about it! We share your values! Whoa! God, I didn't see you there, I don't know how I could've overlooked you these last eight years. You're right in front of me.' It was amazing."
While speaking to voters, Biden often tells the story of his father losing his job and the devastating impact that had on the family. When others tell Biden's story of becoming a widower soon after being elected to the Senate at age 29, it often prompts a visible wave of emotion across the audience.
Describing what he says are Romney's changing and disappearing policy positions, Biden repeats a question from his granddaughter: "Was it Casper the Ghost who did this, Pop?"
Biden will campaign again in Ohio next week, and voters there know what to expect.
"Joe Biden is Joe Biden, and he was elected to the Senate before the age of 30 and has been absolutely the same from the beginning of his political career to the end, if this election is the end," Galston said.
thompsonk@washpost.com
Scott Clement contributed to this report.
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Washingtonpost.com
October 20, 2012 Saturday 8:12 PM EST
Obama accuses opponent of 'Romnesia'
BYLINE: by Jerry Markon
SECTION: A section; Pg. A06
LENGTH: 970 words
President Obama introduced a new word into the American political lexicon Friday, accusing his GOP opponent, Mitt Romney, of "Romnesia" for changing positions and trying to pivot to the political center.
Before nearly 10,000 supporters at a Virginia rally, Obama smiled, joked and wagged his finger as he mocked Romney's earlier declaration that he was a "severely conservative" governor of Massachusetts.
"Now that we're 18 days out from the election, 'Mr. Severely Conservative' wants you to think he was severely kidding about everything he said over the last year," Obama said in a speech devoted almost entirely to attacking Romney, and during which he gave little indication of what he would do in a second term if reelected.
Building in intensity, Obama continued: "He's forgetting what his own positions are, and he's betting that you will, too. I mean, he's changing up so much and backtracking and sidestepping. We've got to - we've got to - we've got to name this condition that he's going through. I think - I think it's called 'Romnesia.'[#x200a]"
The crowd roared.
The Romney campaign was not amused. "America doesn't need a comedy routine; it needs a serious plan to fix the economy," Romney senior adviser Danny Diaz wrote on Twitter.
Added Amanda Henneberg, a Romney spokeswoman: "Women haven't forgotten how we've suffered over the last four years in the Obama economy with higher taxes, higher unemployment and record levels of poverty. President Obama has failed to put forward a second-term agenda - and when you don't have a plan to run on, you stoop to scare tactics."
The renewed skirmishing came as the vice-presidential candidates converged on the key swing state of Florida ahead of Monday's final presidential debate in Boca Raton, which is shaping up as critical in a race that polls show is tight nationally and in battleground states.
Vice President Biden and Romney's running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), spent their Friday rallying supporters in the Sunshine State, whose 29 electoral votes make it the biggest swing state prize. At one point, Ryan's campaign jet rolled across the tarmac in Tampa past Biden's Air Force Two.
Ann Romney and Michelle Obama, both important surrogates as the campaigns battle for an edge among female voters, have events scheduled for South Florida in the coming days. Women are a critical bloc that could determine who is elected Nov. 6, and recent polls have shown Romney cutting into Obama's lead among them.
With the economy still the key issue in the race, Obama got some potentially good news Friday: New data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that the unemployment rate dropped in 41 states last month, including many of the top swing states. Those included Florida, Colorado and Iowa. Yet Florida's rate, at 8.7 percent, remains higher than the national average, and unemployment is still high across the country.
Romney prepared for the debate Friday morning in New York before flying to Florida, where he appeared with Ryan at an evening rally in Daytona Beach.
They spoke to a crowd of thousands, who were warmed up with music by singer John Rich of the country duo Big & Rich.
Romney said Obama's reelection effort has become the "incredibly shrinking campaign."
"Have you been watching the Obama campaign lately? It's absolutely remarkable," Romney said. "They have no agenda."
But as Ryan and Romney spoke, a crowd of Obama supporters gathered and shouted "Obama, four more years!" drowning out parts of Romney's 20-minute speech.
It was Romney's commanding performance in the first presidential debate two weeks ago - along with Obama's widely panned showing - that reconfigured a race in which the president had been ahead.
Romney on Friday released a new television ad titled "Bringing People Together." It emphasized his bipartisan credentials, although some Democrats in Massachusetts say Romney worked only sporadically with them during his governorship. But the Romney campaign also apparently senses vulnerability on the subject for Obama, whose political brand in his 2008 campaign was built around his ability to transcend partisan divides.
Yet it was a highly partisan president who spoke Friday in an open field at George Mason University in the critical battleground state of Virginia. Obama drew chants of "Four more years!" as he bounded onto a podium draped with two blue signs reading "Women's Health Security."
Obama portrayed Romney as a "throwback to the 1950s" who would restrict women's rights, favor the wealthy and squeeze the middle class.
During his riff on what he called "Romnesia," Obama said: "I'm not a medical doctor, but I - but I do want to go over some of the symptoms with you because I want to make sure nobody else catches it."
The crowd hooted.
Obama then listed a series of what he called position changes by Romney, focusing on women's issues. "You know, if you say you're for equal pay for equal work, but you keep refusing to say whether or not you'd sign a bill that protects equal pay for equal work, you might have Romnesia," Obama said. "If you say women should have access to contraceptive care, but you support legislation that would let your employer deny you contraceptive care, you might have a case of Romnesia."
The president drew his loudest applause by bringing up the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. Chuckling, he said: "If you come down with a case of Romnesia and you can't seem to remember the policies that are still on your Web site, or the promises that you've made over the six years you've been running for president, here's the good news: Obamacare covers preexisting conditions.
"We can fix you up. We've got a cure. We can make you well, Virginia. This is a curable disease."
markonj@washpost.com
Nia-Malika Henderson, Felicia Sonmez and Philip Rucker contributed to this report.
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The Washington Post
October 20, 2012 Saturday
Met 2 Edition
Just being Joe, but he can pack a blow
BYLINE: Krissah Thompson
SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A01
LENGTH: 1016 words
Down-home and laid-back, Joe Biden has been traveling the country saying what few politicians could about their opponents, for better or worse.
Mitt Romney is "etch-a-sketchy," the vice president said this week.
Last month, he told a Hispanic audience: "Romney wants you to show your papers, but he won't show us his.''
At a campaign rally Thursday in Las Vegas, he said Paul Ryan and other young Republican leaders in Congress, nicknamed "young guns," have "their bullets aimed at you."
Biden has a long history of edgy verbal blurts - in 2007, he described then-Sen. Barack Obama as "articulate" and "clean," a comment he later said he regretted. But in the week since his blustery debate with GOP vice-presidential nominee Ryan, Biden seems to have found a slightly different niche - a more deliberate delivery of his sometimes-outrageous utterances. He offers these with a smile, relishing the stage, often punctuated by a "Whoa!"
"When Governor Romney was asked a direct question about equal pay, he started talking about binders. Whoa!" Biden said on a campaign swing this week. "The idea that he had to go and ask where a qualified woman was, he just should have come to my house. He didn't need a binder."
Within the Obama campaign, there is a cautious fear that Biden will go too far. Transcripts of his remarks are not regularly distributed, unlike President Obama's and the first lady's. And the vice president's aides have sometimes tried to steer him away from unscripted encounters with reporters.
But Biden also fills a strategic role for the campaign. With evidence that his middle-class Joe ethos has made him a beloved figure among rank-and-file Democrats, the campaign has regularly dispatched him to working-class communities, union-heavy gatherings and events aimed at Latino voters.
He has been a regular presence in Ohio, perhaps the most critical state on the electoral map. He also has traveled often to Florida and Iowa and just returned from a campaign event with union members in Las Vegas. Overall, Biden has racked up appearances at more than 100 campaign events this year.
Campaign officials have decided to let Joe be Joe. "He has an ability to connect and communicate in a clear and effective way," Obama campaign manager Jim Messina said in recent interview. "He, like the president, embodies an American success story."
Republicans say Biden has repeatedly crossed the line of decorum, and political analysts wonder whether he's gone so far as to become unpresidential.
"Today's over-the-top rhetoric by Vice President Biden is disappointing, but not all that surprising,'' Ryan spokesman Brendan Buck said after Biden's "bullets" remark this week. "In the absence of a vision or plan to move the country forward, the vice president is left only with ugly political attacks beneath the dignity of the office he occupies.''
William A. Galston, an aide to President Bill Clinton who is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said he's "never seen a less presidential demeanor from a national candidate." Biden has twice run for president and has not ruled out a third attempt in 2016.
"His role is the classic vice president's role: to attack relentlessly and to be full-throated in defense of the administration," Galston said. "It's straight out of the VP 101 class."
Biden and his supporters say he is just being honest.
"They usually don't go after you unless you're landing punches, and this is about attempting to go after him in a way because he's such an effective communicator for the middle class," Biden's son Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden (D) said in a recent interview.
Polls show both sides of the coin. More than three in four Democrats view Biden favorably, but among all registered voters, the vice president is much less popular than he was as a running mate in 2008. In a Pew Research Center for the People and the Press survey early this month, Biden was viewed favorably by 39 percent of voters and unfavorably by 51 percent. In fall 2008, more than half of voters had favorable views of him.
A survey by The Washington Post and the Pew Research Center at the end of the summer found disparate views of the vice president. Single-word descriptions of him included "good," "honest," "clown," "buffoon" and "idiot."
Biden interjects more light-hearted moments into his campaign rallies than Obama, Romney or Ryan. While he generally sticks to his themes, he is prone to ignore the teleprompter, ad-libbing as he looks directly at the crowd.
His audiences often talk back to him, energizing Biden and sending him on riffs. When he made his "young guns" comment, for example, he was responding to someone in the crowd who had shouted out, "They have guns with no bullets!"
Of his opponents, he has repeatedly said, "These guys are out of touch" while laying out the campaigns' differences on immigration, abortion rights and economic policy.
At the Republican National Convention in August, "they discovered the middle class!" Biden said to laughs. "It's like: 'My God, there it is! It's out there! There is a middle class! We are concerned about it! We share your values! Whoa! God, I didn't see you there, I don't know how I could've overlooked you these last eight years. You're right in front of me.' It was amazing."
While speaking to voters, Biden often tells the story of his father losing his job and the devastating impact that had on the family. When others tell Biden's story of becoming a widower soon after being elected to the Senate at age 29, it often prompts a visible wave of emotion across the audience.
Describing what he says are Romney's changing and disappearing policy positions, Biden repeats a question from his granddaughter: "Was it Casper the Ghost who did this, Pop?"
Biden will campaign again in Ohio next week, and voters there know what to expect.
"Joe Biden is Joe Biden, and he was elected to the Senate before the age of 30 and has been absolutely the same from the beginning of his political career to the end, if this election is the end," Galston said.
thompsonk@washpost.com
Scott Clement contributed to this report.
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October 20, 2012 Saturday
Met 2 Edition
Obama accuses opponent of 'Romnesia'
BYLINE: Jerry Markon
SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A06
LENGTH: 969 words
President Obama introduced a new word into the American political lexicon Friday, accusing his GOP opponent, Mitt Romney, of "Romnesia" for changing positions and trying to pivot to the political center.
Before nearly 10,000 supporters at a Virginia rally, Obama smiled, joked and wagged his finger as he mocked Romney's earlier declaration that he was a "severely conservative" governor of Massachusetts.
"Now that we're 18 days out from the election, 'Mr. Severely Conservative' wants you to think he was severely kidding about everything he said over the last year," Obama said in a speech devoted almost entirely to attacking Romney, and during which he gave little indication of what he would do in a second term if reelected.
Building in intensity, Obama continued: "He's forgetting what his own positions are, and he's betting that you will, too. I mean, he's changing up so much and backtracking and sidestepping. We've got to - we've got to - we've got to name this condition that he's going through. I think - I think it's called 'Romnesia.'â[#x20ac][#x160]"
The crowd roared.
The Romney campaign was not amused. "America doesn't need a comedy routine; it needs a serious plan to fix the economy," Romney senior adviser Danny Diaz wrote on Twitter.
Added Amanda Henneberg, a Romney spokeswoman: "Women haven't forgotten how we've suffered over the last four years in the Obama economy with higher taxes, higher unemployment and record levels of poverty. President Obama has failed to put forward a second-term agenda - and when you don't have a plan to run on, you stoop to scare tactics."
The renewed skirmishing came as the vice-presidential candidates converged on the key swing state of Florida ahead of Monday's final presidential debate in Boca Raton, which is shaping up as critical in a race that polls show is tight nationally and in battleground states.
Vice President Biden and Romney's running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), spent their Friday rallying supporters in the Sunshine State, whose 29 electoral votes make it the biggest swing state prize. At one point, Ryan's campaign jet rolled across the tarmac in Tampa past Biden's Air Force Two.
Ann Romney and Michelle Obama, both important surrogates as the campaigns battle for an edge among female voters, have events scheduled for South Florida in the coming days. Women are a critical bloc that could determine who is elected Nov. 6, and recent polls have shown Romney cutting into Obama's lead among them.
With the economy still the key issue in the race, Obama got some potentially good news Friday: New data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that the unemployment rate dropped in 41 states last month, including many of the top swing states. Those included Florida, Colorado and Iowa. Yet Florida's rate, at 8.7 percent, remains higher than the national average, and unemployment is still high across the country.
Romney prepared for the debate Friday morning in New York before flying to Florida, where he appeared with Ryan at an evening rally in Daytona Beach.
They spoke to a crowd of thousands, who were warmed up with music by singer John Rich of the country duo Big & Rich.
Romney said Obama's reelection effort has become the "incredibly shrinking campaign."
"Have you been watching the Obama campaign lately? It's absolutely remarkable," Romney said. "They have no agenda."
But as Ryan and Romney spoke, a crowd of Obama supporters gathered and shouted "Obama, four more years!" drowning out parts of Romney's 20-minute speech.
It was Romney's commanding performance in the first presidential debate two weeks ago - along with Obama's widely panned showing - that reconfigured a race in which the president had been ahead.
Romney on Friday released a new television ad titled "Bringing People Together." It emphasized his bipartisan credentials, although some Democrats in Massachusetts say Romney worked only sporadically with them during his governorship. But the Romney campaign also apparently senses vulnerability on the subject for Obama, whose political brand in his 2008 campaign was built around his ability to transcend partisan divides.
Yet it was a highly partisan president who spoke Friday in an open field at George Mason University in the critical battleground state of Virginia. Obama drew chants of "Four more years!" as he bounded onto a podium draped with two blue signs reading "Women's Health Security."
Obama portrayed Romney as a "throwback to the 1950s" who would restrict women's rights, favor the wealthy and squeeze the middle class.
During his riff on what he called "Romnesia," Obama said: "I'm not a medical doctor, but I - but I do want to go over some of the symptoms with you because I want to make sure nobody else catches it."
The crowd hooted.
Obama then listed a series of what he called position changes by Romney, focusing on women's issues. "You know, if you say you're for equal pay for equal work, but you keep refusing to say whether or not you'd sign a bill that protects equal pay for equal work, you might have Romnesia," Obama said. "If you say women should have access to contraceptive care, but you support legislation that would let your employer deny you contraceptive care, you might have a case of Romnesia."
The president drew his loudest applause by bringing up the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. Chuckling, he said: "If you come down with a case of Romnesia and you can't seem to remember the policies that are still on your Web site, or the promises that you've made over the six years you've been running for president, here's the good news: Obamacare covers preexisting conditions.
"We can fix you up. We've got a cure. We can make you well, Virginia. This is a curable disease."
markonj@washpost.com
Nia-Malika Henderson, Felicia Sonmez and Philip Rucker contributed to this report.
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October 19, 2012 Friday
Late Edition - Final
Caught Up in Voting, Ads Ask Consumers to Cast a Ballot
BYLINE: By STUART ELLIOTT
SECTION: Section B; Column 0; Business/Financial Desk; ADVERTISING; Pg. 2
LENGTH: 891 words
Each fall in even-numbered years, Madison Avenue loves to capitalize on the interest in Election Day by bedecking ads in red, white and blue and comparing the process of buying products to the political process.
Although this year is no exception, many advertisers and agencies are taking a different tack that acknowledges and reflects the increasingly partisan and divisive nature of American elections. The advertising campaigns are becoming more similar to political campaigns: urging consumers to take sides, going negative and adopting a tone that is less like the idealistic approach of a civics class and more like the sardonic mockery of a Jon Stewart.
For instance, in a commercial by BBDO New York, two candidates for City Council who meet in a FedEx Office store spend the 30 seconds insulting each other. The spot ends with one picking up his order for campaign signs urging drivers to ''Honk if you've had an affair with'' the other.
A magazine ad for the Snickers candy brand sold by Mars, which is also created by BBDO New York, sends up political rhetoric by declaring, ''I'm voting for that guy who said that thing about America.''
An effort for JetBlue Airways called ''Election Protection'' nods to the threats by devoted supporters of President Obama or Mitt Romney to leave the country if the other presidential candidate wins. The campaign, by the Mullen agency, carries the theme ''Live free or fly!'' and offers visitors to a Web site a chance to win 1,006 tickets to international destinations the airline serves, to be given to participants whose candidate loses on Nov. 6.
And ''Presidential Clippings,'' an online video series that promotes the work of Stun Creative, an agency and production company, uses look-alikes and sound-alikes for Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney to depict the two candidates trading japes and gibes when they meet while getting haircuts in a barbershop.
''Marketers are struggling to find the balance between predictable and politically incorrect,'' said Adam Hanft, chief executive at the Hanft Projects agency.
''You see more testing of the limits'' of ad content ''because it's so difficult to break through'' the clutter, Mr. Hanft said. ''The guide rails are shifting all over the place.''
Evidence of that came last week, when the Pizza Hut unit of Yum Brands modified a ''Pizza Party'' promotion that promised a free pizza each week for life to any undecided voter at the Oct. 16 presidential debate who asked the candidates whether they preferred pepperoni or sausage as a pizza topping.
Amid widespread complaints that the promotion trivialized the election, Pizza Hut modified it, opening it to all consumers who visited a Web site. ''The criticism is not why we changed and moved the campaign online,'' said Doug Terfehr, a spokesman for Pizza Hut. ''The majority of the way our consumer was reacting was very positive.''
The JetBlue campaign is the airline's first to be centered on an election, said Marty St. George, senior vice president for marketing and commercial strategy at JetBlue. It is not meant to ''cast aspersions on the process,'' he said, but rather lighten the mood.
''Giving people a fun angle, a way to laugh about this, is a public service,'' Mr. St. George said. ''If a lot of people actually did leave the country when the other guy won, we wouldn't do it.''
Besides, he added, JetBlue is giving away round-trip, not one-way, tickets.
Brad Roth, who with Mark Feldstein is principal and partner at Stun Creative, said his agency's ''sardonic'' approach to the presidential race was ''very much on purpose,'' echoing the popular culture as evidenced by programs like ''The Daily Show'' and ''The Colbert Report.''
''We felt if the comedy is strong enough and spoke to certain truths, we can be the 'fair and balanced' place for political commentary,'' Mr. Roth said.
Indeed, comic content can help differentiate ads with election themes from actual election ads, marketers say.
''We thought this would be a nice break from what we see out there,'' said Dawn Terrazas, group managing director at AFG&, which is creating a ''America's Pet Debate'' campaign for the Purina products sold by Nestlé Purina PetCare that asks consumers to choose online between cats and dogs.
''Whether you're a dog lover or a cat lover, there's a connection you can build on as animal lovers,'' she added.
Wine devotees are being asked by the Cecchetti Wine Company to decide between Pinot Noir and Pinot Grigio in a ''Vote Pinot'' campaign by the Benson Marketing Group.
''We're trying to keep it fun, all tongue in cheek,'' said Roy Cecchetti, president at the winery, compared with the more fractious tenor of the election campaign.
''There was a fight,'' he added, referring to the matchup between Mr. Romney and President Obama, ''and a debate showed up.''
John Longstreet, chief executive at Quaker Steak and Lube, a restaurant chain that sponsored a vote for a ''Mayor of Lube Nation,'' said he believed ''something lighthearted and fun'' -- referring to chicken wings as ''left wing'' and ''right wing,'' for instance -- could relieve the ''consternation and tension'' among a divided electorate. The campaign was created by Gatesman & Dave in Pittsburgh.
He might have more insight than most marketers. ''As part of a previous life,'' Mr. Longstreet said, he served two terms as the mayor of Plano, Tex.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/19/business/media/caught-up-in-voting-ads-ask-consumers-to-cast-a-ballot.html
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GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: Clockwise from top left, ''America's Pet Debate'' by Purina
the JetBlue Airways ''Election Protection'' ad
''Presidential Clippings'' uses look-alikes and sound-alikes for Barack Obama and Mitt Romney
and Snickers sends up political rhetoric by declaring, ''I'm voting for that guy who said that thing about America.''
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The New York Times
October 19, 2012 Friday
Late Edition - Final
Romney Group Making Major Advertising Push
BYLINE: By JEREMY W. PETERS
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; THE CAUCUS; Pg. 18
LENGTH: 372 words
The "super PAC" supporting Mitt Romney is making its most aggressive and expensive push yet in the advertising wars with a $12 million ad buy in nine states.
The expenditure represents a significant expansion of the group's advertising campaign and will be a major boost for Mr. Romney with only two and a half weeks to go before Election Day.
The group, Restore Our Future, had been advertising only in a handful of states in recent weeks. But its latest ad buy will include almost all of the major battleground states - Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, North Carolina, Nevada, Virginia and Wisconsin - plus Michigan, which has been relatively quiet because President Obama is believed to have a sizable advantage there.
The money is for just six days of ads starting on Tuesday and includes some huge sums, according to a firm that tracks political advertising. Restore Our Future has reserved around $1 million in airtime for Iowa and Wisconsin, an amount that ensures its message will be on television in heavy rotation there because of their smaller-sized media markets. It has also committed $2.5 million to Ohio and $2.3 million to Florida.
Restore Our Future's ads will help Mr. Romney remain competitive on the air. Until recently, the Obama campaign had been outspending the Romney campaign and its Republican allies in several battleground states. But Republicans believe that with polls showing the race tightening, and a small but potentially pivotal slice of voters still undecided, a messaging barrage in the final days before the election could make all the difference.
Carl Forti, a senior strategist for the group, said Thursday that the ads for the latest campaign are still being worked on. "Governor Romney continues to generate excitement among voters," he said, "and we plan to play a pivotal role down the stretch as voters make their final decisions."
The fact that the group was able to reserve $12 million worth of air time for just one week indicates that it has had some success capitalizing off Mr. Romney's recent rise in the polls. It ended August with just $6 million in the bank, according to its last financial disclosure.
This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.
URL: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/18/romney-super-pac-makes-12-million-ad-buy/
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October 19, 2012 Friday
Obama Says His Opponent Has a Case of 'Romnesia'
BYLINE: EMMARIE HUETTEMAN
SECTION: US; politics
LENGTH: 660 words
HIGHLIGHT: President Obama's riff, at a rally of about 9,000 supporters at George Mason University, was just one part of a strategy clearly focused to continue to appeal to women voters.
FAIRFAX, VA. - Taking liberties with his opponent's last name,President Obama fired up a campaign rally here on Friday by blaming "Romnesia" for Mitt Romney's seemingly shifting positions on women's rights and other issues.
"Now, 18 days before the election, Mr. Severely Conservative wants you to think he was severely kidding about everything he said over the last year," Mr. Obama said, before offering his admittedly nonexpert medical opinion. "We got to name this condition that he's going though. I think it's called Romnesia."
Mr. Obama's riff, before about 9,000 supporters at George Mason University, was just one part of a rally clearly focused to continue to appeal to women, a key demographic in this all-important swing state. After an introduction by Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood, Mr. Obama emphasized in his remarks that he had proven himself the best candidate for women.
"When the next president and Congress could tip the balance of the highest court in the land in a way that turns back the clock for women and families for decades to come, you don't want someone who has to ask for binders of women," Mr. Obama said, referring to Mr. Romney's remarks during Tuesday's presidential debate. "You want a president who has already appointed two unbelievable women to the Supreme Court."
Mr. Romney's campaign responded quickly, issuing a statement by Barbara Comstock, a Republican state lawmaker in Virginia.
"Women haven't forgotten how we've suffered over the last four years in the Obama economy with higher taxes, higher unemployment, and record levels of poverty," Ms. Comstock said. "What is really frightening is that we know a second term for President Obama will bring devastating defense cuts that will cost Virginia over 130,000 jobs, more burdensome regulations and the biggest tax increase in history on our small businesses and families."
Mr. Obama also criticized Mr. Romney for changing his positions on abortion, energy and other issues. Touting the benefits of his health care law, the president reassured the crowd that "Romnesia" is curable.
"If you come down with a case of Romnesia, and you can't seem to remember the policies that are still on your Web site, or the promises you've made over the six years you've been running for president, here's the good news: Obamacare covers pre-existing conditions."
Along the line snaking through the campus, volunteers repeatedly urged supporters to sign up to help, waving forms and reminding everyone within earshot that Virginia is a battleground state this year. Highlighting that fact, this rally was Mr. Obama's 16th visit to Virginia in 2012.
Evelyn Wilson arrived more than three hours before the rally to claim her spot in the stadium on a cool, damp morning. Ms. Wilson, who traveled from nearby Reston, Va., with her husband to show her support for Mr. Obama, said she had been bombarded with robocalls, including the one that alerted her to this event.
Ms. Wilson, 69, said that this election could have major implications for women's rights among other important issues.
"A Republican win could set us back more than 60 years and reverse all the things we fought for and marched for," Ms. Wilson said, citing the need to protect Roe v. Wade.
The fight for female voters intensified this week after the town-hall-style debate in New York, which included a question about equal pay for women that prompted a clash between the candidates over who could best serve women's needs.
That debate spilled onto the airwaves, with the Romney campaign immediately releasing an ad contending that Mr. Romney does not oppose contraception and believes abortion should be legal in cases of rape, incest and to save the life of the mother. The Obama campaign hit back against that argument, using a clip of Mr. Romney from a CNN debate in 2007 in which Mr. Romney said he would be "delighted" to sign a bill banning all abortions.
Michael D. Shear contributed reporting.
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(The Caucus)
October 19, 2012 Friday
With Growing Willingness, Donors Come to Aid of Democratic 'Super PACs'
BYLINE: NICHOLAS CONFESSORE and JO CRAVEN MCGINTY
SECTION: US; politics
LENGTH: 850 words
HIGHLIGHT: Three leading Democratic "super PACs" raised more money in September than in any other month this election cycle, officials said, underscoring the growing willingness of wealthy Democrats to bankroll groups whose existence they had long opposed.
9:26 p.m. | Updated Three leading Democratic "super PACs" raised more money in September than in any other month this election cycle, officials said, underscoring the growing willingness of wealthy Democrats to bankroll groups whose existence they had long opposed.
Priorities USA Action, the group backing President Obama, will report raising $15.2 million in September, thanks in part to aggressive fund-raising by party leaders like former President Bill Clinton and Mayor Rahm Emanuel of Chicago. The group has already reserved millions of dollars in advertising for the closing weeks of the campaign.
Majority PAC, which supports Senate Democrats, raised $10.4 million in September and has brought in an additional $9.7 million through mid-October, officials announced on Friday, a period during which the party's chances of holding a majority in the chamber appeared to be improving. House Majority PAC, the Congressional Democrats' super PAC arm, raised $5.9 million, a figure the group said it was on pace to double this month.
"Democrats know that this race is even closer than we thought it would be, and if we're going to close this deal everybody has to get involved," said Bill Burton, a spokesman for Priorities USA.
Mr. Obama and the Democratic National Committee said they raised about $181 million in September, slightly more than Mitt Romney and the Republican National Committee, which raised $170 million, according to officials. Mr. Obama's campaign, filing on Friday, reported spending $115 million in September and ending the month with about $99 million in cash on hand for the rest of the campaign.
But heavy spending by Democrats over the spring and summer on registration, organizing, and early voting turnout has left the committee in the red, with $4.6 million in cash on hand at the end of September and debts of $20.4 million.
The Republican committee, by contrast, has amassed a huge war chest for the final days of the campaign. The party began October with $82.6 million in the bank, much of which can be spent to match Mr. Obama on the airwaves. Mr. Romney was expected to file his campaign disclosures on Saturday.
Despite fears among Republicans that Mr. Romney's political difficulties in September would hurt his fund-raising, Restore Our Future, the super PAC backing his White House bid, brought in $14 million, more than in the past two months combined, and began October with $16 million in the bank, according to disclosures filed on Friday with the Federal Election Commission.
On Thursday, the group reserved $12 million for six days of television commercials, one of the largest such reservations this election cycle.
Most super PACs are required to file detailed disclosures with the election commission by midnight Saturday, documents that will shed light on the sources of the contributions and how much money they had on hand going into October.
But early disclosures filed on Friday by Restore Our Future revealed that close to $4 million of the group's September contributions came from corporations, suggesting that businesses have begun to take full advantage of regulatory and court rulings that legalized unlimited corporate giving to independent political committees.
In some cases, the true source of the corporate money is hard to trace. An entity called KSMK Venture II, LLC, which listed an address in Peabody, Mass., contributed $200,000 to Restore Our Future on Sept. 11, bringing its total contributions to the pro-Romney super PAC to $250,000.
KSMK's listed address is the headquarters of Christian Book Distributors, a Goliath in the world of Christian book and music sales. The company's president, Ray Hendrickson, has contributed more than $70,000 to the Romney campaign and its joint fund-raising committee with the Republican National Committee.
A $200,000 donation from Meuchadim of Maine, LP, which listed an address in Hollywood, Fla., appears to be connected to Simon Falic, the chairman of Duty Free Americas, the chain of airport duty-free shops, who is a major pro-Israel donor.
The sources of other corporate donations are more obvious. Greenpoint Technologies, which contributed $250,000 to Restore Our Future, is a company based outside Seattle that builds high-end aircraft interiors for "private individuals and heads-of-state clients," according to its Web site.
Scott Goodey, Greenpoint's president and chief executive, and his wife, Julie, have contributed at least $100,000 to the Romney campaign and the Republican National Committee.
Individual donors contributed $11 million to Restore Our Future in September. Much of it came from a few wealthy Romney supporters who are mainstays of the Republican super PAC world.
Bob Perry, a Texas home builder who is one of the biggest donors to conservative candidates and causes, contributed $2 million, bringing his total donations to Restore Our Future to $9 million - more than 10 percent of the group's war chest this year.
Stanley Herzog, a Missouri construction company owner, contributed $1 million, as did Robert McNair, the billionaire owner of the Houston Texans football team.
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The Fix
October 19, 2012 Friday 10:25 PM EST
Senate Democrats' campaign arm outraised Republican arm in September
BYLINE: Sean Sullivan
LENGTH: 792 words
Make sure to sign up to receive "Afternoon Fix" every day in your e-mail inbox by 5(ish) p.m.!
EARLIER ON THE FIX:
Gary Johnson's third-party presidential bid: A real factor or just a footnote?
An Electoral College tie - and what it would mean
Unemployment rate drops in 41 states, including most swing states
The Fix 60: The most important House races in the country
Alfred E. Smith Dinner: The top 10 quips (VIDEO)
Lugar's sour grapes straining Mourdock's Indiana Senate bid
Why you should pay attention to the Bureau of Labor Statistics website today
WHAT YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED:
* The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee outraised the National Republican Senatorial Committee during the month of September, bringing in about $16 million to the NRSC's $13 million. The DSCC also outraised the NRSC over the third quarter, hauling $29 million to the NRSC's $25 million. The DSCC ended the period with $27 million in the bank, to the NRSC's $23 million.
* President Obama and Mitt Romney are running about even in Florida, a new CNN/ORC International poll shows. Romney is at 49 percent in the survey while Obama is at 48 percent support. The survey of 681 likely Florida voters was conducted Oct. 17-18.
* Obama rolled out a new one-liner against Romney at a campaign rally in Virginia on Friday, charging the Republican's shifting positions suggests he suffers from "Romnesia."
* Fifty-one percent of Americans who watched the second presidential debate judged Obama the winner, according to a new national Gallup poll. Thirty-eight percent said Romney won, a steep decline from the 72 percent who judged him the winner of the first debate.
* Linda McMahon (R) loaned her Connecticut Senate campaign nearly $15 million during the third quarter, more than half of the $27 million she has lent herself across the entire cycle.
* Obama released a new TV ad in Ohio that contrasts Obama's support for the auto bailout with Romney's call for a "managed bankruptcy." Romney "would have just let us go under," says a man in the ad.
* Romney released a new TV ad featuring a clip from the first debate, in which the Republican casts himself as bipartisan.
WHAT YOU SHOULDN'T MISS:
* The Tampa Bay Times has endorsed Obama. The endorsement matters because it comes from the biggest paper in the arguably the most important swing area in the country. Romney also scored a Florida newspaper endorsement that matters from the Orlando Sentinel, which backed Obama in 2008.
* The Virginia Senate race has attracted $5.4 million in outside spending during the last seven days, topping all other Senate races, according to a report from the nonpartisan Campaign Finance Institute. The Wisconsin race was second, followed by Nevada, Ohio and Arizona. Rep. Brian Bilbray's (R) contest against San Diego Port Commissioner Scott Peters (D) in California's 52nd District topped the seven-day outside spending list on the House side.
* Obama leads Romney 51 percent to 43 percent in Nevada, according to a poll conducted by Mark Mellman for the liberal group Americans United For Change. Mellman conducted the survey of 600 likely Nevada voters from Oct. 15-17.
* House Majority PAC is going after Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-Tenn.) in a new TV ad featuring news clips about the report that revealed the Republican once tried to pressure a mistress to get an abortion. Before the report, DesJarlais was regarded as a safe bet for reelection against Eric Stewart (D). But Democrats appear to believe the seat is now worth contesting with money.
* Sen. Robert Casey (D-Pa.) leads Tom Smith (R) 52 percent to 39 percent, according a a poll of 604 likely Pennsylvania voters conducted for Casey's campaign by Garin-Hart-Yang Research from Oct. 15-17. The poll stands in contrast to a recently released Quinnipiac University survey conducted from Oct. 12-14 that showed Casey leading Smith 48 percent to 45 percent.
* West Virginia Republican Senate nominee John Raese applauded Daily Beast and Princeton Review's recent ranking of West Virginia University as the country's top party school in an Oct. 10 visit to the campus - days after fires and riots erupted there after a football game. "I was a '73 graduate. I should have been '72, but I stayed an extra year to work on our party rating," Raese said. "It's good to know you guys got it back to No. 1."
THE FIX MIX:
Flash mob, Star Wars-style.
With Aaron Blake
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Election 2012
October 19, 2012 Friday 9:12 PM EST
Ad watch: Obama camp says Romney 'not one of us'
BYLINE: Rachel Weiner
LENGTH: 104 words
Obama for America, Made in Ohio
What it says: "Mitt Romney would have just let us go under- just let them go... bankrupt." Over a map of Ohio, the text at the end reads, "Mitt Romney. Not One of us."
What it means: President Obama's campaign has attacked Romney over the auto bailout before, but this ad is particularly harsh. (Our Fact Checker has explained that Romney called for a "managed bankruptcy," not liquidation. But many independent analysts say that that approach would not have worked in 2008.)
Who will see it: Do you really have to ask? (It's Ohio.)
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Washingtonpost.com
October 19, 2012 Friday 8:12 PM EST
'Binders full of women' vs. Obama's one-note pitch
BYLINE: Melinda Henneberger
SECTION: A section; Pg. A02
LENGTH: 911 words
Mitt Romney has been pummeled with his own binders - you know the ones - for what seems like weeks now, and things just keep getting worse for the Fix-It-Up Chappie: There were zero female partners at Bain Capital during Romney's years there. And as it turns out, those were preexisting "binders full of women" he drew on when hiring as governor of Massachusetts. (Although I'm not sure why it matters whether Romney came to the binders or the binders came to Romney; he could just as easily have said, "Keep your stinkin' binders, mesdames.")
His odd, and probably telling, usage of the phrase "binders full of women" aside, though, I do have one thing to say in the GOP presidential nominee's defense: He hired a number of women for top positions when he was governor of Massachusetts, particularly during the first two years of his term, when 42 percent of his appointees to top positions were female, and he can rightly be proud of that record. Women at the highest levels of his administration included Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey, chief of staff Beth Myers and top policy adviser Cindy Gillespie.
That's in contrast to President Obama, in whose White House women earned a median salary of $60,000 in 2011, compared with the $71,000 median salary men there earned. Obama's inner circle is not what you'd call packed with women, either - by all accounts, of his female aides, only longtime Chicago friend Valerie Jarrett really has his ear. And surely that's one reason Romney spoke about how he'd gone about hiring for senior positions when asked what he'd do for women as president.
Another reason Romney's mind must've leapt to those darn binders, though, might be that he has nothing to say about pay equity since he isn't for it. Sure, he says he is, but he won't say whether he would've signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, and that can't be out of modesty, can it? If he'd sign the thing, he'd say so. And if you don't support the law that would make it feasible for women to sue employers who don't compensate them equitably, then all you've got is Ann Romney standing on a stage yelling, "I love you, women!" - and good luck taking that to the bank and cashing it.
Neither Romney nor Obama struck me as particularly likable Tuesday night when both tried to browbeat and at one point march in tandem toward moderator Candy Crowley of CNN. ("Used to being interrupted," the president told her mournfully at one point.) And I found Obama's answer on why we can't get it together to ban assault weapons intentionally and infuriatingly smoke-filled.
But Romney's bottom-of-both-barrels moment was his answer on that same subject: First, he said such weapons are already illegal; they aren't. Then, he suggested that assault rifles don't kill people; single moms whose parenting leads nowhere kill people - or at least I think that's what he said: "I believe if we do a better job in education, we'll - we'll give people the - the hope and opportunity they deserve and perhaps less violence from that. But let me mention another thing. And that is parents. We need moms and dads, helping to raise kids. Wherever possible the - the benefit of having two parents in the home, and that's not always possible. A lot of great single moms, single dads. But gosh, to tell our kids that before they have babies, they ought to think about getting married to someone, that's a great idea.. . . So we can make changes in the way our culture works to help bring people away from violence and give them opportunity, and bring them in the American system." Governor, we also need an assault-weapons ban.
What's got to be panicking Team Obama, though, is that Romney actually seems to have closed the gender gap - a USA Today/Gallup poll conducted last week shows him within one point of Obama among likely female voters, 48 to 49 percent. That's quite a feat, especially given that the president had been ahead with women voters by 18 percentage points at one time. We'll see, of course, whether Tuesday night's performance will lead to a post-binder rebound among women or whether that first debate punctured something that can't be reconstructed.
My view is that the tax plan Romney can't explain won't help either women or men who are not top earners. And although the "war on women" hasn't been my favorite phrase, Paul Ryan has me warming to it: "Now, it's a war on women; tomorrow, it's going to be a war on left-handed Irishmen or something like that," Ryan told donors Thursday in Naples, Fla. One wee difference, however, congressman, is that we're 55 percent of the electorate.
Fortunately, for Romney-Ryan, though, Team Obama's response to the closing gender gap is more of the same, sprinkled with some binder jokes.
"Mitt Romney is dishonestly trying to claim that he isn't staunchly opposed to a woman's right to choose,'' says a new Obama-Biden campaign ad. The president's surrogates and spinners, too, continue to believe they can win with women, who are almost evenly divided on abortion rights - by tripling and quadrupling down on a message that turns off about as many women as it energizes. Another day, another press call with Planned Parenthood's Cecile Richards. And if the president loses women, his team will doubtless conclude that they just didn't talk about choice enough; what else could it possibly be?
hennebergerm@washpost.com
Melinda Henneberger is a Post political writer and anchors the paper's She the People blog. Follow her on Twitter at @MelindaDC.
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The Fix
October 19, 2012 Friday 5:35 PM EST
Lugar's sour grapes straining Mourdock's Indiana Senate bid
BYLINE: Sean Sullivan
LENGTH: 884 words
Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) won't be returning to the Senate next year, but he's not a forgotten man in the race to replace him. With 18 days left until Election Day, Lugar's cold shoulder is complicating GOP candidate Richard Mourdock's bid against Rep. Joe Donnelly (D).
The latest development in an ongoing saga is a direct mail piece from a super PAC supporting Mourdock. The Indiana political news Web site Howey Politics Indiana reported Wednesday that USA Super PAC sent mail pieces indicating that "Indiana's Lugar Backs Mourdock in Senate Run." Lugar's office said it didn't authorize the ads. "It was clearly unauthorized and done without consultation with us. Lugar clearly stated on September 17 that he would not campaign for Mourdock in the general election for Senator from Indiana," Lugar spokesman Andy Fisher told Howey Politics.
The mail piece cites a September report in which Fisher said, "Yes, the senator is supporting Treasurer Mourdock."
While it's true that Lugar has expressed support for Mourdock, their relationship is hardly a warm one.
Mourdock dislodged Lugar in May a primary that wasn't even close. Running to the longtime senator's right, Mourdock won a heated campaign in which he routinely attacked the senator for being insufficiently conservative.
The defeat didn't appear to sit well with Lugar. In his concession speech, the senator expressed hope that Mourdock "prevails in November" in order to help Republicans take back the majority. But he never stumped for the his onetime opponent And in September, he confirmed that he had no intention to campaign for the man who defeated him.
Lugar and Mourdock are very different Republicans. Mourdock's unapologetic conservatism clashed with Lugar's history of working with Democrats. Had Lugar won, the general election would hardly be as competitive as it stands now. The longtime senator's ability to secure crossover support would have left Donnelly with very long odds.
That's why Democrats were elated after Mourdock's primary victory. Not only did it mean Donnelly would face a more conservative Republican who would have a tougher time with independents and Democrats; they were also presented with an opportunity to seize on some of the bad blood in the primary and peel off some Republican support from discontented Lugar supporters. Even if those supporters didn't vote for Donnelly, the thinking went, some might opt to stay home.
None of this would matter much if the race wasn't so close. But it is. A bipartisan Howey/DePauw poll released late last month showed Mourdock and Donnelly running about even. In the poll, Mourdock had the support of 71 percent of Republican voters; and only about six-in-10 Lugar primary voters were backing Mourdock. In other words, hardly the command of the Republican base one would hope to have behind them in a close race. The latest flap over the pro-Mourdock mailer only threatens to fan the flames.
"If you are looking for an excuse as a Lugar voter to not like Mourdock and go for Donnelly instead, this certainly gives you an excuse," said Ed Feigenbaum, author of the Indiana Legislative Insight newsletter.
"I know that there are hard feeling[s] that may not have healed from the primary but it is incumbent on Republicans to make sure that Congressman Donnelly is not allowed to cynically exploit the situation," James Bopp, who heads USA Super PAC, said in a statement Wednesday.
Republicans remain confident that the race hinges much more heavily on the records of Donnelly and Mourdock. Indeed, Donnelly's votes in support of some of President Obama's signature measures could sink him in a state Mitt Romney is expected to win
And while one of Indiana's senators isn't stumping for Mourdock, the other one is. Sen. Dan Coats (R) cut a TV ad for Mourdock, which his campaign released this week. Both Romney and vice presidential running mate Paul Ryan (Wis.) have also campaigned for Mourdock.
When asked how the Lugar-Mourdock dynamic would factor into the final three weeks of the campaign, Mourdock spokesman Christopher Conner said: "Richard appreciates Senator Lugar's call for Hoosiers to support his election and has often praised his exemplary public service."
The Mourdock campaign turned to Republican Sen. John McCain earlier this week. The Arizonan cut an ad for Lugar during the primary, but was in the state to stump for Mourdock on Wednesday.
This isn't the first time the results of a Senate primary have triggered some post-primary discomfort. In 2010, Republican Mike Castle wouldn't endorse tea party candidate Christine O'Donnell after a stinging defeat. Democrat Christopher Coons easily defeated O'Donnell that November.
Another example is 2002, when Republican John E. Sununu defeated incumbent senator Robert Smith (R) in New Hampshire, resulting in icy relations leading up to November, when Sununu ended up winning by about four points.
The Lugar-Mourdock relationship (or lack thereof) probably won't decide the outcome of the race on its own. Other factors like ads, messaging and fundraising (Mourdock nearly doubled up Donnelly in the third quarter) are the main drivers of the campaign. But if the margin stays close down the stretch, the senator about to leave office could leave a larger-than-expected imprint on the campaign to succeed him.
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Election 2012
October 19, 2012 Friday 3:11 PM EST
Ad watch: Mitt Romney touts bipartisanship
BYLINE: Rachel Weiner
LENGTH: 111 words
Mitt Romney, "Bringing People Together"
What it says: "Republicans and Democrats both love America. But we need to have leadership - leadership in Washington that will actually bring people together and get the job done."
What it means: In a break from straight partisan attacks, Mitt Romney takes a clip from the debate in which he touts his ability to reach across the aisle. Without saying so, he suggests President Obama is not up to the task.
Who will see it: Romney bought $14 million in time after the debate - a major investment that he's used in large part to push his best moments out to swing states.
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The Fix
October 19, 2012 Friday 12:59 PM EST
Why you should pay attention to the Bureau of Labor Statistics website today
BYLINE: Chris Cillizza;Aaron Blake
LENGTH: 1035 words
At 10 a.m. today, the Bureau of Labor Statistics will release its state-by-state jobs report, a series of findings that could well function as a final piece of the economic puzzle for undecided voters in swing states.
We've long argued that, while the national unemployment figure, which is released to much fanfare on the first Friday of every month, is absolutely important as a broad indicator of economic optimism or pessimism, it's the state unemployment numbers in each of the swing states that are of critical importance.
Think about it. Your perception about the relative health of the economy is far more likely to be influenced by what you see around you every day - and what you feel in your own life - than it is by something you see on the national news or read on a top-notch political blog hosted on the Washington Post's website.
A look at the August BLS numbers for the states - the numbers that come out at 10 will be for September and will be the last state-by-state data from the BLS before the election - suggests a mixed bag for President Obama and Mitt Romney.
In Nevada (12.1 percent), North Carolina (9.7 percent) and Florida (8.8 percent), the unemployment rates were significantly higher than the 8.1 percent national rate in August. On the other hand, the rates in Ohio (7.2 percent), New Hampshire (5.7 percent), Iowa (5.5 percent), Virginia (5.9 percent) and Wisconsin (7.5 percent) were lower than the national average. Colorado's unemployment rate of 8.2 percent was almost directly in line with the national rate.
Add up the states with unemployment rates higher than the national average, and you get 50 electoral votes. Add up the states with unemployment rates below the national average, and you get 51 electoral votes. Colorado, the pivot of the teeter-totter, awards nine electoral votes.
Now, the unemployment rate in any given swing state isn't the lone factor that will help people make up their minds. As we have seen over the last two months, neither a bad jobs report (August) for Obama nor a good one (September) appeared to have any direct and immediate effect on how people will vote on Nov. 6. There's a good possibility that all but a tiny sliver of voters are locked into their choice candidate now and literally nothing will change their minds.
Still, you can be sure both campaigns will be constantly refreshing the BLS website at 10 this morning to see which direction the numbers in the handful of swing states have moved. And that means political junkies would do well to keep a close eye on the numbers, too.
Restore Our Future launches $12 million buy: The top super PAC supporting Romney's campaign is making its biggest ad buy of the 2012 race, purchasing $12 million worth of ads in nine states.
The states include all of the major swing states - save New Hampshire - in addition to Michigan, a Democratic-leaning state where the super PAC has been among few players on either side.
Before this week, Restore Our Future had focused on only a few states; now it appears to be broadening its effort for the home stretch.
Obama says people weren't 'on the same page' on Libya: Obama defended his actions in regards to Libya during an appearance on "The Daily Show" on Thursday.
Asked about the administration's "confused" response by host Jon Stewart, Obama said information was passed along as it came in, but people weren't "on the same page."
"We weren't confused about the fact that four Americans had been killed," Obama said. "I wasn't confused about the fact that we needed to ramp up diplomatic security around the world right after it happened. I wasn't confused about the fact that we had to investigate exactly what happened so it gets fixed. And I wasn't confused about the fact that we're going to hunt down whoever did it."
Fixbits:
A new NBC News/Marist College poll in Wisconsin shows Obama up six and Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D) leading by four in the state's open Senate race.
A new ad from the Obama campaign hits Romney for saying he would be "delighted" to sign a bill banning all abortions. The quote used is from 2007; Romney has since clarified that he believes in abortion exceptions in the case of rape, incest and the life of the mother.
Joe Biden mixes up Afghanistan and Iran.
Paul Ryan hits the Democrats' accusations of a GOP "war on women."
The Orlando Sentinel endorses Romney.
A new Gallup poll shows 44 percent of the LGBT community identifies as Democratic, while 43 percent say they are independent and 13 percent say they are Republicans.
Hillary Clinton suggests she won't be running for president again: "I'm going to be cheering them on," she said of other potential female candidates. "I hope to be around when we finally elect a woman president."
Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa will deliver the keynote address at the Iowa Democratic Party's Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner on Saturday in Des Moines and campaign with Obama earlier in the day.
Connecticut GOP Senate candidate Linda McMahon accuses the media of being overly critical of suggestions to reform Social Security.
A new ad from Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) says it's time to bring the troops home from the Middle East and focus on American infrastructure. "If a new road, bridge or school is built in West Virginia, I can guarantee you we won't burn it down or blow it up," Manchin says in the ad.
The conservative retiree group 60-Plus is going up with a $340,000 ad buy hitting two Arizona Democratic House candidates: former congresswoman Ann Kirkpatrick and Kyrsten Sinema.
New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn (D) continues to lead the race for the next mayor, but her lead has shrunk.
Must-reads:
"Democratic convention ends in debt, Republicans' in the black" - T.W. Farnam, Washington Post
"Inspector General's Report Contradicts Secret Service on Prostitution Scandal" - Jake Tapper, ABC News
"Gallup vs. the World" - Nate Silver, New York Times
"The King of the Independents" - Elizabeth Hartfield, ABC News
"Obama's record: Struggling to bring back jobs" - Michael A. Fletcher, Washington Post
"For Obama and Romney, small New Hampshire could have a big impact" - Dan Balz, Washington Post
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The Washington Post
October 19, 2012 Friday
Met 2 Edition
'Binders full of women' vs. Obama's one-note pitch
BYLINE: Melinda Henneberger
SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A02
LENGTH: 911 words
Mitt Romney has been pummeled with his own binders - you know the ones - for what seems like weeks now, and things just keep getting worse for the Fix-It-Up Chappie: There were zero female partners at Bain Capital during Romney's years there. And as it turns out, those were preexisting "binders full of women" he drew on when hiring as governor of Massachusetts. (Although I'm not sure why it matters whether Romney came to the binders or the binders came to Romney; he could just as easily have said, "Keep your stinkin' binders, mesdames.")
His odd, and probably telling, usage of the phrase "binders full of women" aside, though, I do have one thing to say in the GOP presidential nominee's defense: He hired a number of women for top positions when he was governor of Massachusetts, particularly during the first two years of his term, when 42 percent of his appointees to top positions were female, and he can rightly be proud of that record. Women at the highest levels of his administration included Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey, chief of staff Beth Myers and top policy adviser Cindy Gillespie.
That's in contrast to President Obama, in whose White House women earned a median salary of $60,000 in 2011, compared with the $71,000 median salary men there earned. Obama's inner circle is not what you'd call packed with women, either - by all accounts, of his female aides, only longtime Chicago friend Valerie Jarrett really has his ear. And surely that's one reason Romney spoke about how he'd gone about hiring for senior positions when asked what he'd do for women as president.
Another reason Romney's mind must've leapt to those darn binders, though, might be that he has nothing to say about pay equity since he isn't for it. Sure, he says he is, but he won't say whether he would've signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, and that can't be out of modesty, can it? If he'd sign the thing, he'd say so. And if you don't support the law that would make it feasible for women to sue employers who don't compensate them equitably, then all you've got is Ann Romney standing on a stage yelling, "I love you, women!" - and good luck taking that to the bank and cashing it.
Neither Romney nor Obama struck me as particularly likable Tuesday night when both tried to browbeat and at one point march in tandem toward moderator Candy Crowley of CNN. ("Used to being interrupted," the president told her mournfully at one point.) And I found Obama's answer on why we can't get it together to ban assault weapons intentionally and infuriatingly smoke-filled.
But Romney's bottom-of-both-barrels moment was his answer on that same subject: First, he said such weapons are already illegal; they aren't. Then, he suggested that assault rifles don't kill people; single moms whose parenting leads nowhere kill people - or at least I think that's what he said: "I believe if we do a better job in education, we'll - we'll give people the - the hope and opportunity they deserve and perhaps less violence from that. But let me mention another thing. And that is parents. We need moms and dads, helping to raise kids. Wherever possible the - the benefit of having two parents in the home, and that's not always possible. A lot of great single moms, single dads. But gosh, to tell our kids that before they have babies, they ought to think about getting married to someone, that's a great idea.. . . So we can make changes in the way our culture works to help bring people away from violence and give them opportunity, and bring them in the American system." Governor, we also need an assault-weapons ban.
What's got to be panicking Team Obama, though, is that Romney actually seems to have closed the gender gap - a USA Today/Gallup poll conducted last week shows him within one point of Obama among likely female voters, 48 to 49 percent. That's quite a feat, especially given that the president had been ahead with women voters by 18 percentage points at one time. We'll see, of course, whether Tuesday night's performance will lead to a post-binder rebound among women or whether that first debate punctured something that can't be reconstructed.
My view is that the tax plan Romney can't explain won't help either women or men who are not top earners. And although the "war on women" hasn't been my favorite phrase, Paul Ryan has me warming to it: "Now, it's a war on women; tomorrow, it's going to be a war on left-handed Irishmen or something like that," Ryan told donors Thursday in Naples, Fla. One wee difference, however, congressman, is that we're 55 percent of the electorate.
Fortunately, for Romney-Ryan, though, Team Obama's response to the closing gender gap is more of the same, sprinkled with some binder jokes.
"Mitt Romney is dishonestly trying to claim that he isn't staunchly opposed to a woman's right to choose,'' says a new Obama-Biden campaign ad. The president's surrogates and spinners, too, continue to believe they can win with women, who are almost evenly divided on abortion rights - by tripling and quadrupling down on a message that turns off about as many women as it energizes. Another day, another press call with Planned Parenthood's Cecile Richards. And if the president loses women, his team will doubtless conclude that they just didn't talk about choice enough; what else could it possibly be?
hennebergerm@washpost.com
Melinda Henneberger is a Post political writer and anchors the paper's She the People blog. Follow her on Twitter at @MelindaDC.
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The New York Times
October 18, 2012 Thursday
Late Edition - Final
Romney Clarifies Abortion Stance
BYLINE: By JEREMY W. PETERS
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; THE AD CAMPAIGN; Pg. 18
LENGTH: 393 words
Abortion has long been a vexing issue for Mitt Romney. He expressed outright support for reproductive rights when he was governor of Massachusetts. He reversed himself as a candidate for president, saying that abortion should be illegal except in cases of rape, incest or when the mother's life was in jeopardy. With Democrats exploiting this inconsistency, he tries to clarify his position in a new ad.
ON THE SCREEN Sarah Minto from Ohio, who says she voted for President Obama in 2008 but now works as a volunteer for the Romney campaign, appears on screen, looking directly into the camera.
''You know, those ads saying Mitt Romney would ban all abortions and contraception seemed a bit extreme,'' she says, ''so I looked into it. Turns out Romney doesn't oppose contraception at all.'' As she speaks, she is shown searching on Google for ''Romney on abortion'' and viewing the ''Truth-O-Meter'' on PolitiFact.com, a fact-checking Web site.
Ms. Minto continues: ''In fact, he thinks abortion should be an option in cases of rape, incest or to save a mother's life. This issue is important to me, but I'm more concerned about the debt our children will be left with. I voted for President Obama last time. We just can't afford four more years.''
THE CONTEXT The Obama campaign and its supporters, like Planned Parenthood, have hammered Mr. Romney in recent ads. They used sound bites of him saying he wished the Supreme Court would overturn Roe v. Wade. They accused him of vowing to eliminate money for women's health care. And, more speciously, they said he supported outlawing all abortions, even in cases of rape and incest. Mr. Romney has repeatedly denied that assertion, which the Obama campaign has based on an answer Mr. Romney gave in a 2007 debate in which he said he would be ''delighted'' to sign a bill banning all abortions. He went on to say that he believed the country was not ready for that. Romney strategists believe that despite the impact of Mr. Obama's ads on their candidate's popularity, there has never been a better time -- with less than three weeks before Election Day -- to break through to women.
At the end, Mr. Romney's ad moves to economic issues. Republican strategists have found that women are especially concerned about debt and the economy when framed as an issue that could affect their children's futures.
JEREMY W. PETERS
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/18/us/politics/romney-clarifies-abortion-stance.html
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October 18, 2012 Thursday
Late Edition - Final
China's Currency Policy, an Irritant to U.S., Provides Debate Fodder
BYLINE: By KEITH BRADSHER
SECTION: Section B; Column 0; Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 3
LENGTH: 1198 words
HONG KONG -- Is China a currency manipulator?
Some of the more complicated exchanges during the presidential debate on Tuesday involved how to deal with China's efforts to increase its exports by keeping its currency at artificially low levels, an issue that has had considerable effects over the years on competitiveness, trade deficits and, some economists contend, American jobs.
Both candidates on Wednesday repeated the arguments they had voiced on the campaign trail. Mitt Romney criticized President Obama for not doing more to persuade China to stop intervening in currency markets. Mr. Obama said he was tougher toward Beijing than Mr. Romney would be if he were in the White House.
The two arguments obscure a more nuanced reality: adjusted for inflation, China's currency has strengthened considerably through much of Mr. Obama's tenure.
Some economists who used to be critical of China for undervaluing its currency, the renminbi, are now much less so. ''Romney's vow to label China a currency manipulator is a position that is not supported by recent economic data,'' said Eswar S. Prasad, a Cornell professor who specializes in Chinese currency and trade policies.
But for all the improvement, those gains have recently stopped or started to erode. At the same time, Chinese exports to the United States are strengthening again, rising 5.5 percent in September from a year ago. That partly reflects increased demand as the American economy begins to show signs of recovery.
Mr. Romney was caustic in accusing China of unfair policies.
''One of the ways they don't play by the rules is artificially holding down the value of their currency,'' he said. ''Because if they put their currency down low, that means their prices on their goods are low -- and that makes them advantageous in the marketplace.''
Mr. Romney promised that if elected he would immediately name China a ''currency manipulator,'' a designation that would mandate further negotiations with Beijing. It could lead to American retaliation if Congress passes legislation authorizing special tariffs for countries deemed to manipulate.
Mr. Romney was cautious, though, in threatening to actually impose tariffs on Chinese shipments to the United States, saying he would do so ''if necessary.''
''On Day 1, I will label China a currency manipulator, which will allow me as president to be able to put in place, if necessary, tariffs where I believe that they are taking unfair advantage of our manufacturers,'' he said.
Mr. Obama responded that the renminbi had strengthened 11 percent during his term of office. The value of one renminbi has actually risen 8.5 percent, to 15.9 cents, since he was sworn in.
But administration officials have tended to follow the practice of many economists in adjusting exchange rates based on the differences in inflation at the consumer level in two countries. Consumer prices have risen a little more than two percentage points more in China than in the United States since January 2009, according to official data, so the inflation-adjusted appreciation has totaled about 11 percent. Most of that took place in late 2010 and last year.
Economists say official data understates inflation in China much more than in the United States. The National Bureau of Statistics in Beijing has acknowledged that there are shortcomings in the way it calculates inflation and said it had begun to fix them. So the actual inflation-adjusted appreciation of the renminbi may have been even greater over the last several years.
That trend appears to be changing. As China's economy has slowed over the last year, partly in response to its stronger currency, the pressure on prices has begun to ease. Exporters interviewed at the Canton Fair on Monday in Guangzhou, China, were unconcerned about inflation for the first time in years.
''Raw material prices are flat,'' said Bob Wang, the sales manager at the Kralle Tools Company, a manufacturer in Wenzhou, in eastern China, that makes circular saw blades for lumber mills.
Through 2009 and the first half of 2010, China spent heavily to block the renminbi from rising against the dollar. China seemed to have the world's healthiest economy during the global financial crisis that erupted in 2008. Its currency would have surged had it not intervened.
As it was, the central bank's foreign exchange reserves swelled by $540 billion in just 18 months. The central bank paid for those huge purchases, mostly of dollars, partly by issuing more renminbi and partly by forcing the country's state-controlled commercial banks to hand over a fifth of their renminbi deposits at near-zero interest rates.
The central bank compensated the commercial banks by ordering all of them to pay very low interest rates -- only half the rate of inflation -- to their depositors.
Obama administration officials warned at the time that China was risking inflation by issuing so much more money. China's broadly measured money supply ended up growing 55 percent in 2009 and 2010, much more than that of the United States.
Inflation in consumer prices soon accelerated to reach 6.5 percent in July last year -- nearly twice the American level, even before allowing for of China's tendency to understate inflation. Partly to brake inflation, by making imports cheaper, the Chinese authorities allowed the renminbi to start rising in the summer of 2010 after a two-year hiatus.
The combination of higher prices and a strengthening currency erased much of the undervaluation that institutions like the International Monetary Fund perceived early in the global financial crisis. The I.M.F. responded three months ago by reclassifying the renminbi to ''moderately undervalued'' from ''substantially undervalued.''
Chinese inflation has now largely disappeared because of strict controls on bank lending and a slump in the real estate market. Consumer prices are now rising at about the same pace in China as in the United States, while wholesale prices are dropping much faster in China than in the United States.
The daily fixing of the renminbi's value by the Chinese central bank is now almost exactly where it started the year, as the Chinese government has tolerated only small movements up and down this year. But there is little evidence the central bank is intervening on a large scale to suppress the value of the renminbi. It might even be acting to prevent it from going lower to avoid a political reaction in the United States.
Foreign reserves are essentially unchanged this year. The renminbi has been under downward pressure because Chinese businesses and households have been moving more money out of the country to diversify their investments and hedge against the possibility of political change at home; this has offset the tide of dollars still sweeping in from the persistent trade surpluses.
Chinese exporters have taken heart as the currency has stabilized and inflation has rapidly disappeared -- although wages are still rising at a double-digit percentage pace. Vicky Leung, the sales director at the Xiangli Home Appliance Manufacturing Company, which makes electric fans in Shunde, in southeastern China, is one who is relieved.
''The dollar is good for us,'' she said.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/18/world/asia/chinas-renminbi-has-strengthened-during-obamas-term.html
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The New York Times
October 18, 2012 Thursday
Late Edition - Final
Rival Campaigns Intently Pursue Votes of Women
BYLINE: By JIM RUTENBERG and JEREMY W. PETERS; Richard A. Oppel Jr. and Mark Landler contributed reporting.
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1105 words
Shortly after the combative presidential debate on Tuesday, Mitt Romney's campaign began running a striking new commercial that uses a former Obama supporter to contest the notion that Mr. Romney's positions on abortion and contraception are ''extreme.''
Before dawn Wednesday, Democrats had taken to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and television to ridicule Mr. Romney's debate-night statement that he had collected ''binders full of women'' when he was a new governor in Massachusetts seeking ''qualified'' female appointees for his administration.
And on the campaign trail and on the air, the candidates and their allies argued intensely all day over who would do more to help women. At the same time, the topic of whether the heated encounter Tuesday night had alienated the very female voters they were seeking to connect with became fodder for cable TV discussions.
The level of intensity left little doubt that the election was coming down not only to a state-by-state fight for territory, but also to one for the allegiance of vital demographic groups, chief among them undecided women.
Speaking in Mount Vernon, Iowa, Mr. Obama made his own reference to Mr. Romney's ''binders'' comment, saying that there were enough talented women in the country that finding them required no special search.
Mr. Romney, at a campaign rally in Chesapeake, Va., hit back. ''This president has failed America's women,'' he said. ''They've suffered in terms of getting jobs. They've suffered in terms of falling into poverty.''
For Mr. Romney, the imperative, with less than three weeks until Election Day, is cutting into what has been Mr. Obama's sizable lead among women.
Their goal, Romney aides said, is to keep Mr. Obama's lead among women, which in many polls has been in double digits, down to the low single digits.
Key to that effort, they said, is changing the perception among undecided women that Mr. Romney holds very conservative positions on social issues, after a Republican primary campaign in which Mr. Romney was under constant pressure from the right.
Through polling and focus groups, the Romney campaign has found that while undecided women said they were concerned primarily about economic issues, they were troubled by whether Mr. Romney's positions on issues like abortion and contraception were too unyielding.
Mr. Romney, who while running for governor in 2002 said he would govern as a supporter of abortion rights but subsequently came to shift his position, now opposes abortion except in cases of rape and incest. On access to contraception, Mr. Romney has emphasized his opposition to Obama administration policies that he says pressure religious employers to provide health insurance that covers contraception.
He has not sought to limit access to contraception but has voiced support for a provision that would give other employers the right to deny coverage for contraception on moral grounds.
Mr. Romney and his team have tried to address these concerns. They said perceptions of Mr. Romney's positions had been unfairly shaped by Mr. Obama's advertising, including ads focused on abortion rights.
According to data from Kantar Media/CMAG, the Obama campaign and Democratic groups have run commercials relating to abortion about 30,000 times since July 2 -- about 10 percent of their ads -- including one that falsely claimed Mr. Romney's opposition to abortion extended to cases of rape and incest.
Mr. Romney's latest television ad answering that barrage potentially creates the risk that it will remind voters of how Mr. Romney has altered his position on abortion over the course of his political career.
Romney campaign strategists said they decided to release the ad this week because they believe it will have maximum impact as late-deciding voters tune in.
The ad was produced within the last two weeks, after strategists identified Sara Minto of Ohio, one of their volunteers, as a plausible ''ideal everywoman.''
''You know, those ads saying Mitt Romney would ban all abortions and contraception seemed a bit extreme, so I looked into it,'' says Ms. Minto, sitting in her living room. She adds that she voted for Mr. Obama in 2008.
''Turns out Romney doesn't oppose contraception at all. In fact, he thinks abortion should be an option in cases of rape, incest or to save a mother's life,'' she continues.
Joel Benenson, Mr. Obama's pollster, said in an interview he did not believe Mr. Romney would succeed in changing minds, saying, ''Perceptions are pretty baked in because of a range of positions on both the economic front and the social front.''
In a conference call with reporters, Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood, accused Mr. Romney of trying to ''mislead the American people about his plan to turn women's health care decisions over to their bosses.''
She pointed to Mr. Romney's statement of support last winter for the Blunt Amendment, which would allow employers to deny health coverage for procedures they find morally objectionable. (It came after he initially told an Ohio television station that he opposed the bill.)
That conference call included a statement from Lilly Ledbetter, the retired tire worker who became the impetus for the Fair Pay Act that made it easier for women to sue over pay disparity. Mr. Obama backed the legislation and signed it into law. Mr. Romney has not taken a definite position on it, though he has said he sees no reason to change it.
The call also featured Jesse Mermell, who had been executive director of the Massachusetts Government Appointments Project, which provided Mr. Romney with the ''binders'' he referred to when he said in the debate, ''I went to a number of women's groups and said, 'Can you help us find folks,' and they brought us whole binders full of women.'' Ms. Mermell said the binder was prepared for whomever won that election.
Obama campaign officials made it clear that they would continue to press the arguments about Mr. Romney's record on women's issues in advertisements, and they spent an additional $7 million on a final-stretch television blitz that was already costing $40 million.
Mr. Romney's campaign had its own offensive ready. In a phone call with reporters, Senator Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire said ''when the president talks about women's issues he doesn't talk about his vision for how he's going to make sure that we address the number of women who are under- or unemployed.''
And late Wednesday, the Romney campaign released an advertisement featuring women who had served in his state administration who say they were struck by his ''humanity,'' say he ''gets working women'' and stands by single mothers.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/18/us/politics/campaigns-raise-focus-on-women-for-final-weeks.html
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GRAPHIC: CHARTS: Abortion Which of these comes closest to your view? Abortion should be generally available to those who want it. Should be available but under stricter limits than it is now. Should not be permitted.
The Candidates: Regardless of how you intend to vote, who do you think would do a better job on women's reproductive issues? (A18)
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Candidates Clash In Furious Effort To Woo Women
BYLINE: By MICHAEL D. SHEAR
SECTION: Section ; Column 0; Washington; Pg.
LENGTH: 1128 words
WASHINGTON -- President Obama charged that Mitt Romney's policies are economically threatening to women, as the candidates in their second presidential debate on Tuesday night clashed repeatedly over who would best serve the interests of the country's largest and most critical constituency.
With some polls offering sporadic evidence that Mr. Romney is gaining support among women in the final weeks of the campaign, the president seized every opportunity during their face-off at Hofstra University on Long Island to assert that Mr. Romney, the Republican candidate, would eliminate financing for women's health services, block access to contraceptives, oppose equal pay and undermine the economic recovery for families in which women are the breadwinners.
''This is not just a women's issue,'' Mr. Obama said during an exchange about equal pay for women in the workplace. ''This is a family issue. This is a middle-class issue. And that's why we've got to fight for it.''
Mr. Romney sought to defend his policies as better for women, denying Mr. Obama's accusations about contraception and insisting that his record as Massachusetts governor is one of inclusion and equality. Even as the debate concluded, Mr. Romney's campaign released a television ad stressing that he does not oppose contraception and believes abortion should be legal in some cases.
''Turns out, Romney doesn't oppose contraception at all,'' a woman in the ad says. ''In fact, he thinks abortion should be an option in cases of rape, incest or to save a mother's life.''
But Mr. Romney's rambling description of his efforts to hire women into his administration as governor of Massachusetts became an instant Internet sensation when he said he had ''whole binders full of women'' that he considered for jobs in his cabinet and agencies.
''I said, 'Well, gosh, can't we find some women that are also qualified?' '' Mr. Romney said during the debate. ''And so we took a concerted effort to go out and find women who had backgrounds that could be qualified to become members of our cabinet.''
The ''binders full'' comment was a hit on Twitter, quickly becoming a ''meme'' that generated a mocking Tumblr page and prompted a Democratic group to buy up the Web site www.bindersfullofwomen.com. The group, American Bridge 21st Century, used it to list actions by Mr. Romney that the group said were contrary to women's interests.
The appeals to women came during a debate in which Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney also sought to energize their bases. Mr. Obama, in particular, delivered an aggressive performance that advisers hope will give his core supporters fresh evidence that the president is ready to fight for a second term.
Mr. Romney pressed his case for tax cuts, a favorite topic of conservatives, and remained critical of the administration's account of the deadly attack on the American Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, an issue that Republicans believe gives them an advantage. And Mr. Romney repeated his campaign mantra that the country cannot afford another four years like the ones Mr. Obama has presided over.
But there was no mistaking the focus by the candidates on women. That focus has increased dramatically in the final weeks of the campaign, as the overall race has tightened nationally and in many of the most important battleground states. Mr. Obama has long maintained a double-digit lead among women in most surveys, helping him to overcome a deficit among men.
A Gallup poll this week suggested that Mr. Obama's advantage had evaporated, though other surveys -- and Mr. Obama's top strategists -- disputed that finding.
As the debate on Tuesday made clear, neither campaign is taking the support of women for granted. Mr. Obama, in particular, seemed eager to make the case for his policies -- and to criticize Mr. Romney's -- after having been criticized by many high-profile women for not doing so in the debate two weeks ago in Denver.
The president went out of his way several times to mention Mr. Romney's pledge to eliminate financing for Planned Parenthood. Mr. Obama argued that that would not only affect women's health services but would be an economic burden on families during tough times.
''Millions of women all across the country who rely on Planned Parenthood for not just contraceptive care,'' Mr. Obama said. ''They rely on it for mammograms, for cervical cancer screenings. That's a pocketbook issue for women and families all across the country.''
On the question of contraception, Mr. Obama said that Mr. Romney would allow employers to decide whether to provide contraception coverage in their insurance plans, an option foreclosed by the president's health care law. Mr. Romney denied that.
''I don't believe that bureaucrats in Washington should tell someone whether they can use contraceptives or not, and I don't believe employers should tell someone whether they could have contraceptive care or not,'' Mr. Romney said, using time from another question to try to rebut the president. ''Every woman in America should have access to contraceptives.''
Mr. Romney sought to connect the interests of women to the broader issue of the economy's sluggish recovery, suggesting repeatedly that he could do better for struggling families -- and especially women -- if he is in the White House.
''There are three and a half million more women living in poverty today than when the president took office,'' Mr. Romney said. ''We don't have to live like this. We can get this economy going again.''
But it was a question about equal pay for women that elicited the most memorable exchange of the debate. Mr. Obama focused on passage of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act -- the first bill he signed as president -- which makes it easier for women to sue if they suspect they are not being paid fairly.
''So we fixed that,'' Mr. Obama said. ''And that's an example of the kind of advocacy that we need because women are increasingly the breadwinners in the family.''
When it was Mr. Romney's turn, he described the efforts he made after being elected governor to make sure that women were well represented in his administration. He said the early recommendations were mostly men, and that he pushed harder to search for qualified women to serve.
That led to the ''binders full'' comment and to a description of his willingness to be flexible about the hours that his chief of staff -- a woman named Beth Myers, who is now a top adviser to his campaign -- worked while raising children.
''She said, I can't be here until 7 or 8 at night. I need to be able to get home at 5, so I can be there for -- making dinner for my kids and being with them when they get home from school,'' Mr. Romney explained. ''So we said, fine, let's have a flexible schedule so you can have hours that work for you.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/18/us/politics/obama-and-romney-focus-on-efforts-to-woo-women.html
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October 18, 2012 Thursday
On Florida's Jewish Question
BYLINE: SHMUEL ROSNER
SECTION: OPINION
LENGTH: 635 words
HIGHLIGHT: Studying the Jewish vote in America is much like studying the Talmud: You immerse yourself in a miniscule detail of little value to most other people and debate ad nauseam the consequences of infinitesimal variations.
BOCA RATON, Florida - I got my first first-hand lesson on the technicalities of Florida voting among a small group of fellow Jews in a classroom here on Tuesday. It was an improvised seminar of sorts: a few friends sitting together to make sure they were on the same page and ready. What's on the ballot, and how does one make sure to vote for the people and the causes one believes in?
You might be thinking: Voting 101 for Floridian Jews? Now? Now, those Jews are learning how to vote properly? Twelve years late? Twelve years after George W. Bush narrowly beat Al Gore in Florida to win the presidency?
No one knows for sure if confused Jewish voters contributed significantly to the 2000 election debacle. All these years later, there's still no agreementabout what happened here back then.
The New York Times concluded that Bush would have won even without the Supreme Court's decision to stop the recount. But the 2,600 extra ballots that went to Patrick Buchanan in Palm Beach -- extra relative to what he won in other districts - may have made a difference in that tight race. You can't reliably tally the number of elderly Jewish voters who mistakenly voted for Buchanan - not a likely deliberate choice for most of them - or Bush or who somehow failed to vote for the candidate they wanted to see win: Gore.
This year Florida's Jews will be better prepared. The mechanics of voting have been simplified since 2000, and with all the hoopla around that debacle, it's hard to imagine there could be another one. So if they fail to vote for the candidate everybody expects them to vote for - Barack Obama - a reason other than technical difficulties will have to be found: his contentious relations with the Israeli government or, more likely, his economic policies.
Any such failure to vote for the predictable candidate would also have to be measured with a very sensitive scale. At most, the result would be that instead of 74 percent of American Jews supporting Obama (as in the 2008 election), this time only 65 percent would be - meaning that a vast majority of American Jews would still be rooting for the man in the White House.
Earlier this week, during an interview with an Israeli radio station dedicated to my new book, "The Jewish Vote: Obama vs. Romney/ A Jewish Voter's Guide," the host introduced me as "an expert on the Jewish vote." It's a big title that masks a simple truth: one hardly needs to be an expert on anything to accurately predict the Jewish vote in the United States. American Jews have not voted for a Republican presidential candidate since forever, and in most races they have given the Democrats not just a majority, but a vast majority of their votes.
Does a 2 percent or a 3 percent or even a 10 percent change in the Jewish vote warrant that much attention anyway? (Look at all these reports, opinion pieces, analyses, polls and blog posts!) That'd only mean at most a 10 percent change in the votes of just 2 percent of the American population. Jews, it must be said, vote in higher percentages than other Americans, so their actual share of the national vote is about double their share of the population. Still, with most of them residing in states where their votes hardly matter, the implications are generally minor.
In other words, examining the Jewish vote with such passion is often more about the student than about the topic, which is hardly, or only rarely, as consequential as we make it seem. You immerse yourself in a miniscule detail of little value to most other people and debate ad nauseam consequences of infinitesimal variations. That got me thinking that studying the Jewish vote is much like studying the Talmud and a very Jewish thing to do.
Romney and His Palestinian Problem
Silent Echoes
The Nakba, Then and Now
Our Jerusalem
Oh, to Be Jewish in China
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October 18, 2012 Thursday
The Wisconsin Ad War
BYLINE: DAVID FIRESTONE
SECTION: OPINION
LENGTH: 488 words
HIGHLIGHT: For swing states in the age of Citizens United, politics on TV is brutish, confusing and depressing.
WAUSAU, Wisc. - For a few weeks, it seemed that Democrats in Wisconsin might have broken the state's long stalemate and pulled ahead. But a poll out on Wednesday showed that voters were back in a familiar place: dead even.
The poll, by the Marquette University Law School, showed President Obama at 49 percent and Mitt Romney at 48 percent among likely voters. In the Senate race, former Gov. Tommy Thompson, the Republican, is at 46 percent and Representative Tammy Baldwin, the Democrat, is at 45 percent. Two weeks ago, Mr. Obama had an 11 point lead and Ms. Baldwin had 4 point lead.
Mr. Romney's rise was clearly due to his better performance in the first debate, but the poll's director, Charles Franklin, said Mr. Thompson had closed the gap with something else: a surge of negative ads.
That barrage is inescapable for anyone with a television in Wisconsin, and Ms. Baldwin is fighting back with equal intensity. For swing states in the age of Citizens United, politics on TV is brutish, confusing and depressing. It is a wonder that anyone votes.
"With Tammy Baldwin that far left of Obama and Pelosi, she's way too extreme for Wisconsin," says one ad by Crossroads GPS, the conservative group founded by Karl Rove. "She tried to pass an extreme cap-and-trade plan that increased energy costs and risked thousands of jobs," says another by the National Republican Senatorial Committee. "Tammy Baldwin hopes you don't notice her foreign policy extremism," says one by the Emergency Committee for Israel.
Ms. Baldwin's supporters have responded in kind. An ad from the Emily's List super PAC, "Women Vote!," compares Mr. Thompson to spoiled milk and a dead battery. "Tommy Thompson cashed in, traded his influence for millions at a D.C. lobbying firm," it says. Another ad from the Service Employees International Union attacks Mr. Thompson's ties to Wall Street and big oil.
None of the above-mentioned ads were developed by the actual campaigns. The race has been dominated by "super PACs" and so-called social welfare groups spending more than $22 million on the candidates' behalf - in fact it has the second-highest rate of outside spending of any Senate race, behind that of Virginia. (Ms. Baldwin herself has raised about $12 million, and Mr. Thompson about $6 million.)
Several outside groups, along with Ms. Baldwin's campaign, have made extremely powerful ads using Mr. Thompson's own unguarded words from a few weeks ago, in which he said, "who better than me, who's already finished one of the entitlement programs, to come up with programs to do away with Medicaid and Medicare?"
But in the relentless downpour of ads, it's hard for any single idea or image to take hold, forcing voters to retreat to the shelter of general mistrust. The result has left this state, and the country, wary, cynical and deeply divided.
'Independent' Super PACs
TV Stations for Truth
'Obama Phone'
The Lying Precedent
Mutually Assured Donations
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October 18, 2012 Thursday
Obama Hits Back With New Abortion Ad
BYLINE: JEREMY W. PETERS
SECTION: US; politics
LENGTH: 256 words
HIGHLIGHT: A day after Mitt Romney released a television commercial that seeks to soften his position on abortion rights and contraception, President Obama is out with a response that all but accuses the Republican nominee of lying.
A day after Mitt Romney released a television commercial that seeks to soften his position on abortion rights and contraception, President Obama is out with a response that all but accuses the Republican nominee of lying.
The new advertisement uses a clip from a CNN debate in 2007, when Mr. Romney was running for the Republican nomination for the first time and answered a question about whether he would sign a bill to ban all abortions.
"Let me say it: I'd be delighted to sign that bill," Mr. Romney is shown saying with a grin. For dramatic effect, the ad uses subtitles and repeats Mr. Romney's sound bite.
But the commercial notably leaves out the rest of Mr. Romney's response, in which he said that he did not believe that the country was ready for a ban on abortion.
His full response is more nuanced than the Obama ad suggests. "Let me say it: I'd be delighted to sign that bill. But that's not where we are. That's not where America is today. Where America is is ready to overturn Roe v. Wade and return to the states that authority. But if the Congress got there, we had that kind of consensus in the country, terrific."
The ad also extrapolates something from Mr. Romney's answer that he never said and was never asked: that he would ban abortion in cases of rape, incest and even to save a mother's life. In fact, Mr. Romney has long said that he believes abortion should be legal in those circumstances.
The Obama campaign said the ad would be running in Virginia, where the Romney campaign started running its ad on Wednesday.
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The Wisconsin Ad War
BYLINE: DAVID FIRESTONE
SECTION: OPINION
LENGTH: 488 words
HIGHLIGHT: For swing states in the age of Citizens United, politics on TV is brutish, confusing and depressing.
WAUSAU, Wisc. - For a few weeks, it seemed that Democrats in Wisconsin might have broken the state's long stalemate and pulled ahead. But a poll out on Wednesday showed that voters were back in a familiar place: dead even.
The poll, by the Marquette University Law School, showed President Obama at 49 percent and Mitt Romney at 48 percent among likely voters. In the Senate race, former Gov. Tommy Thompson, the Republican, is at 46 percent and Representative Tammy Baldwin, the Democrat, is at 45 percent. Two weeks ago, Mr. Obama had an 11 point lead and Ms. Baldwin had 4 point lead.
Mr. Romney's rise was clearly due to his better performance in the first debate, but the poll's director, Charles Franklin, said Mr. Thompson had closed the gap with something else: a surge of negative ads.
That barrage is inescapable for anyone with a television in Wisconsin, and Ms. Baldwin is fighting back with equal intensity. For swing states in the age of Citizens United, politics on TV is brutish, confusing and depressing. It is a wonder that anyone votes.
"With Tammy Baldwin that far left of Obama and Pelosi, she's way too extreme for Wisconsin," says one ad by Crossroads GPS, the conservative group founded by Karl Rove. "She tried to pass an extreme cap-and-trade plan that increased energy costs and risked thousands of jobs," says another by the National Republican Senatorial Committee. "Tammy Baldwin hopes you don't notice her foreign policy extremism," says one by the Emergency Committee for Israel.
Ms. Baldwin's supporters have responded in kind. An ad from the Emily's List super PAC, "Women Vote!," compares Mr. Thompson to spoiled milk and a dead battery. "Tommy Thompson cashed in, traded his influence for millions at a D.C. lobbying firm," it says. Another ad from the Service Employees International Union attacks Mr. Thompson's ties to Wall Street and big oil.
None of the above-mentioned ads were developed by the actual campaigns. The race has been dominated by "super PACs" and so-called social welfare groups spending more than $22 million on the candidates' behalf - in fact it has the second-highest rate of outside spending of any Senate race, behind that of Virginia. (Ms. Baldwin herself has raised about $12 million, and Mr. Thompson about $6 million.)
Several outside groups, along with Ms. Baldwin's campaign, have made extremely powerful ads using Mr. Thompson's own unguarded words from a few weeks ago, in which he said, "who better than me, who's already finished one of the entitlement programs, to come up with programs to do away with Medicaid and Medicare?"
But in the relentless downpour of ads, it's hard for any single idea or image to take hold, forcing voters to retreat to the shelter of general mistrust. The result has left this state, and the country, wary, cynical and deeply divided.
'Independent' Super PACs
TV Stations for Truth
'Obama Phone'
The Lying Precedent
Mutually Assured Donations
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October 18, 2012 Thursday
Obama Addresses Libya Attack in 'Daily Show' Interview
BYLINE: MARK LANDLER
SECTION: US; politics
LENGTH: 548 words
HIGHLIGHT: President Obama on Thursday acknowledged "screw-ups" in the government's handling of the deadly attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, and vowed an investigation that would fix them.
President Obama on Thursday acknowledged "screw-ups" in the government's handling of the deadly attack on the American Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, and vowed an investigation that would fix them.
Questioned on the attack and the conflicting accounts of it by "The Daily Show" host Jon Stewart, Mr. Obama said: "The government is a big operation and any given time, something screws up. And you make sure that you find out what's broken and you fix it."
"When four Americans get killed, it's not optimal," Mr. Obama said, according to a White House pool report of the taping. "We're going to fix it. All of it."
Mr. Obama's language was a notable departure from his second debate with Mitt Romney, in which he spoke emotionally of the four Americans killed in Benghazi as "my folks." But he was replying to a question from Mr. Stewart, in which he said, "Even you would admit, it was not the optimal response, at least to the American people, as far as all of us being on the same page."
Though the interview had some light moments, the host was characteristically tough in his questioning of the president, pushing him to explain the administration's shifting accounts of the Libya attack, the negative tone of his campaign, the trade-offs between American values and national security interests, and whether he would be able to break Washington gridlock in a second term.
Much of the focus was on Libya, with Mr. Stewart pressing the president on why the State Department and the American ambassador to the United Nations, Susan E. Rice, seemed to give different accounts of the attack in the immediate aftermath.
"Every piece of information that we get, as we got it, we laid it out to the American people," Mr. Obama replied. "The picture eventually gets fully filled in." But he rejected Mr. Stewart's suggestion that the administration was confused in its response.
"We weren't confused about the fact that four Americans had been killed," Mr. Obama said. "I wasn't confused about the fact that we needed to ramp up diplomatic security around the world right after it happened. I wasn't confused about the fact that we had to investigate exactly what happened so it gets fixed. And I wasn't confused about the fact that we're going to hunt down whoever did it."
Speaking more broadly about counterterrorism, the president said "remnants" of Al Qaeda were still active in North Africa and the Middle East, but that the administration had "gone after Al Qaeda and its leadership." He repeated his promise to close the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, saying he had not been able to get it through Congress.
Mr. Stewart poked fun at Mr. Obama's lackluster performance in the first debate, showing him two photos of Michelle Obama after the debates that he said he was putting into a campaign scrapbook. He said he was not sure which was which (Mrs. Obama was smiling broadly in one and looking at Mr. Obama with an angry expression in the other).
"Cute," Mr. Obama said. "Cute, Jon."
After a commercial break, Mr. Stewart quizzed the president on how many times a week Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. turned up at White House meetings in a bathing suit. "We had to stop that," Mr. Obama replied, saying he had issued a presidential directive. "I gotta say, though, he looks pretty good."
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October 18, 2012 Thursday
Romney 'Super PAC' Makes $12 Million Ad Buy
BYLINE: JEREMY W. PETERS
SECTION: US; politics
LENGTH: 358 words
HIGHLIGHT: The "super PAC" supporting Mitt Romney is making its most aggressive and expensive push yet in the advertising wars with a $12 million ad buy in nine states.
The "super PAC" supporting Mitt Romney is making its most aggressive and expensive push yet in the advertising wars with a $12 million ad buy in nine states.
The expenditure represents a significant expansion of the group's advertising campaign and will be a major boost for Mr. Romney with only two and a half weeks to go before Election Day.
The group, Restore Our Future, had been advertising only in a handful of states in recent weeks. But its latest ad buy will include almost all of the major battleground states - Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin - plus Michigan, which has been relatively quiet because President Obama is believed to have a sizable advantage there.
The money is for just six days of ads starting on Tuesday and includes some huge sums, according to a firm that tracks political advertising. Restore Our Future has reserved around $1 million in airtime for Iowa and Wisconsin, an amount that ensures its message will be on television in heavy rotation there because of their smaller-sized media markets. It has also committed $2.5 million to Ohio and $2.3 million to Florida.
Restore Our Future's ads will help Mr. Romney remain competitive on the air. Until recently, the Obama campaign had been outspending the Romney campaign and its Republican allies in several battleground states. But Republicans believe that with polls showing the race tightening, and a small but potentially pivotal slice of voters still undecided, a messaging barrage in the final days before the election could make all the difference.
Carl Forti, a senior strategist for the group, said Thursday that the ads for the latest campaign are still being worked on. "Governor Romney continues to generate excitement among voters," he said, "and we plan to play a pivotal role down the stretch as voters make their final decisions."
The fact that the group was able to reserve $12 million worth of air time for just one week indicates that it has had some success capitalizing off Mr. Romney's recent rise in the polls. It ended August with just $6 million in the bank, according to its last financial disclosure.
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October 18, 2012 Thursday
TimesCast Politics: A More Intent Focus on Women
BYLINE: THE NEW YORK TIMES
SECTION: US; politics
LENGTH: 109 words
HIGHLIGHT: Aftermath of the "binders full of women" comment. | New data on young voters and Hispanics. | The final fund-raising sprint. | Bruce Springsteen on the trail.
Getty Images
0:45 Women and the Campaign
Jim Rutenberg reports on messaging efforts from the Romney campaign to appeal to undecided female voters.
5:04 The Youth Vote
Susan Saulny talks with John Della Volpe from the Harvard Institute of Politics about the expected impact of the youth vote in November.
9:17 Latino Voters
Fernanda Santos looks at the potential impact of Hispanic voters in swing states.
13:26 The Money Race
Nicholas Confessore previews this weekend's campaign finance filing deadlines.
19:25 The Boss Returns to the Trail
Bruce Springsteen released a letter to fans explaining his choice to campaign in support of President Barack Obama.
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USA TODAY
October 18, 2012 Thursday
FINAL EDITION
Election is bumming out small businesses;
Both candidates send out negative messages
BYLINE: Oliver St. John, USA TODAY,
SECTION: MONEY; Pg. 2B
LENGTH: 456 words
President Obama and Mitt Romney both say they'll reduce the burden on small businesses and help them create jobs. But as campaigns head into their final weeks, more owners believe the reverse will happen.
More than three-quarters, 77%, of small businesses believe their taxes will increase, and that's one reason 67% of them don't plan on hiring next year, according to a study released today by The Hartford. Additionally, just 33% of are optimistic about the economy -- down sharply from the 61% that were upbeat six months ago.
"The deterioration in the percentage of small-business owners who are optimistic as compared to six months ago is remarkable," says Liam McGee, CEO of The Hartford.
Both candidates have said that if their opponent wins they will mess it up for small businesses. Are those the negative messages that owners are taking home?
The Hartford's survey of more than 2,000 small-business owners shows they are hanging on every word the candidates say on small-business policy. About 83% say they'll be thinking about it when they vote.
"All they're hearing is how one side is going to screw it up and how the other side is going to screw it up," says Garrett Sutton, author of Run Your Own Corporation. "That has an effect with business owners. They're sitting on their hands waiting to see what's going to happen."
A similar study from PNC Bank out two weeks ago shows only 23% of small-business owners are optimistic about their company's six-month outlook, vs. 28% six months earlier.
"They're a bit less optimistic, a little more cautious than they were back in the spring," says Stuart Hoffman, PNC's chief economist.
Hugo Bueno, owner of Bueno Construction in Hollywood, Fla., is more than a little more cautious. He says he's afraid he'll have to close his business after 28 years and become a construction worker himself. "If push comes to shove, I go back to my tool belt and go back to work, and I send everybody home," Bueno says. "I don't care who wins the election; what I care is, am I going to be able to pay my bills?"
Each candidate's camp says don't blame them. When asked why optimism was so low for small businesses, Romney campaign spokeswoman Amanda Henneberg blames Obama.
"Gov. Romney has consistently heard from small businesses about their concerns regarding the impact of President Obama's big government policies," Henneberg says.
And guess whom Obama campaign spokesman Adam Fetcher attributes the low morale to?
"Mitt Romney's rhetoric on small business hides the fact that his plan could put 30 million small-business owners at risk of a tax increase, and with his promise to repeal Obamacare, Romney would throw the tax cuts for small businesses it contains out the window as well," says Fetcher.
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USA TODAY
October 18, 2012 Thursday
FINAL EDITION
A fierce ground war for votes;
As Nevada goes, so goes the USA
BYLINE: Fredreka Schouten, USA TODAY,
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 1A
LENGTH: 1936 words
Bertha Beltran is just a high school sophomore but she is entrenched in a massive voter-turnout operation that could determine who wins the presidency next month.
Under a blazing desert sun on a recent Saturday, Beltran, 15, and two other Spanish-speaking teens intercept shoppers heading into La Bonita, a supermarket in a working-class neighborhood far east of Las Vegas' glittering casinos. It's the last day to register to vote by mail, and the trio of President Obama's supporters is pushing to sign up Latino voters, who make up more than a quarter of the state's population and could give Obama a crucial edge Nov. 6.
Elizabeth Ortiz, 27, registered a week earlier at another supermarket and plans to back Obama. Beltran encourages her to add her name, e-mail address and cellphone number to an early-voting pledge form -- information Obama's campaign will use to encourage the stay-at-home mom to show up at the polls.
"I can't vote yet, but this is my way of getting involved," says Beltran, who registers three voters and collects 10 pledges in a little more than an hour.
The scene is repeated across the city in a single day -- at supermarkets, shopping malls and at the House of Blues on the Las Vegas Strip, where rocker and Obama backer Jon Bon Jovi performs a free concert to promote early voting.
Across town, nearly a dozen Mitt Romney volunteers work the phones, trying to unearth new supporters and encourage them to vote early. Every time a new Romney backer is found, the volunteer rings a bell and the room bursts into applause.
Nevada has just 2.7 million residents and only six of the 270 electoral votes needed to win presidency. But Obama, Romney and their allies are fighting hard for each vote in a state that has sided with the White House victor in every election since 1980.
"When you are in a presidential race potentially decided by one or two electoral votes, six is a lot," says Stuart Rothenberg, editor of the non-partisan Rothenberg Political Report. "This election could come down to one state."
Obama spent three days in the state preparing for the first presidential debate. Romney has visited six times. Former president Bill Clinton stumped for Obama in Las Vegas this month, and Vice President Biden was in Reno on Wednesday.
Celebrities pop up, too. Grey's Anatomy star Jesse Williams makes a surprise visit to an Obama campaign office one morning to rally volunteers. He was filming in neighboring California until 2 a.m. and hopped a flight at 5 a.m., he told USA TODAY. "I try to get to battleground states whenever I can."
The state also offers a test of the candidates' ability to recruit volunteers, register voters and get them to the polls in an election so close that turnout could well determine the winner. Obama, who won Nevada by a landslide four years ago, has held a narrow lead in recent polls - as his campaign capitalized on his early fundraising advantage to build a substantial ground organization in the state. The president swamped the GOP nominee on the airwaves by more than 2 to 1 between April 1 and the first week of September, according to SMG/Delta, a Republican media-buying firm.
Romney has ramped up his TV advertising in the state, and last week outspent Obama in Nevada, according to National Journal.
Obama also has opened 27 offices in the state to Romney's 12. Obama's campaign has tapped into an experienced Democratic political operation that helped Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid win easy re-election in 2010 -- a year when Republicans made big gains in Congress. And Obama has the backing of labor unions, who have unleashed their workers to turn out the vote for him and other Democrats in Clark County, where most Nevadans live.
For their part, Republicans say they have launched an ambitious election effort to catch up to Obama. Republicans have knocked on nearly 370,000 doors and made more than 1.3 million calls to Nevada voters. A key goal: persuading non-partisan voters, who make up roughly 17% of the electorate, to go with Romney.
Romney, aided by the cash-flush Republican National Committee, "has a better ground game than the state party ever has," says Bob List, a former Nevada governor and ex-RNC national committeeman.
A rough economy
Nevada, one of the states hardest hit in the Great Recession, gives Romney one of his best opportunities to make the presidential race a referendum on the economy.
Nevada's unemployment rate stood at 12.1% in August, the highest in the nation. The state leads the nation in bankruptcies and ranks fifth in foreclosures. And 70% of Nevada homeowners owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth, according to the foreclosure listing firm RealtyTrac.
Also favoring Romney: Roughly 6% of the state's adults share his religious faith. His fellow Mormons made up 25% of GOP caucusgoers this year, exit polls show -- helping propel Romney to an overwhelming victory. In addition, the state is home base of casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, who has poured more than $50 million into outside Republican political groups.
Yet in an early sign of organizational strength, Democrats held a nearly 90,000 registration advantage over Republicans among active voters this week. The gap could grow wider: The powerful, 55,000-member Culinary Workers Union recently launched its voter-outreach operation and has knocked on more than 95,000 doors since Sept. 4.
Also complicating matters for Republicans: Texas Rep. Ron Paul's supporters this year seized control of the state GOP and its branch in Clark County and some have fought bitterly with other longtime Republicans in the state. The dissension burst onto the national stage in August when a majority of the state's delegates ignored Romney's victory in the Feb. 4 caucuses to nominate Paul as the GOP presidential nominee at the Republican National Convention in Tampa.
In early May, Romney's campaign and the Republican National Committee launched a parallel organization, Team Nevada, to oversee GOP election efforts. Romney aides say they have a robust voter identification and turnout operation that exceeds the party's efforts in 2004 when Bush won by a narrow margin.
Chris Carr, Romney's Nevada campaign manager, and other campaign officials dismiss the Republican Party fights as bad publicity that will have no real effect on election results. Only a small percentage of Paul supporters have not joined the Romney effort, Carr says.
Eric Herzik, a political scientist at the University of Nevada-Reno, questions whether the Republican push will be sufficient. "This is a state where Democrats should be down 5 or 6 points and scrambling," he says. "But the Republicans are in disarray, and all the parts of the Democratic coalition are back working for Obama."
Herzik, a Republican who voted for Romney in the 2008 and 2012 party caucuses, says he sees the Democratic advantage at work in his Republican neighborhood in Reno. In a 10-day period, he received two separate visits from Obama backers and a third from an AFL-CIO worker aiding Obama.
He has yet to get a Republican visit, he says, though his mailbox is filled each day with the GOP's glossy mailers. "They are literally mailing it in."
Potent ground operation
Obama's team invested heavily and early in a massive operation of field organizers to train and recruit volunteers in swing states. His payroll had swollen to 900 people at the end of August, more than double the 403 employed by Romney, according to the latest campaign filings. In Ohio alone, Obama has opened 121 offices to Romney's 40.
"We've invested for years in the battleground states," Obama's national field director Jeremy Bird says. "You can't fake a real ground game, and if you don't have one, you can't compensate with a billion-dollar barrage of false ads at the 11th hour."
The president is "trying to personally lower the unemployment rate by hiring field staff," Romney political director Rich Beeson retorts. "We've never been concerned about having more staff and offices. We have an incredibly motivated base of volunteers out there."
There's no doubt Obama's campaign has had a head start in Nevada, spending heavily as Romney fended off primary challengers to clinch the nomination, he says. But "Nevadans are smart," Beeson adds. "They will ask the same questions the rest of the country is asking: Can we afford four more years of Barack Obama?"
Las Vegas resident Ricardo Ritchie says no. Ritchie, 58, has been hit hard by the state's housing crash. The road-construction foreman has been out of work since July 2009, four months after his wife lost her public-relations job. Neither has found work in the three years since.
Their household income has dropped from nearly $200,000 a year to about $25,000 -- money Ritchie says he makes by investing their savings in the stock market.
About once a week, he also volunteers for the Romney campaign. A born-again Christian and abortion opponent, Ritchie says he's as motivated by social issues as he is the economy. "We have an administration that does not value life," he says.
A hand-lettered sign in the phone-bank room of Team Nevada headquarters reminds volunteers of Romney's strong performance in the Oct. 3 debate against Obama. "Mitt did his part on Wednesday," it declares. "Now we do ours!"
Romney's Nevada aides say they saw an uptick in volunteers after the first presidential debate. And Republicans say internal polls show the race tightening in the state.
So why isn't the GOP nominee ahead? The state's politics has changed with its demographics, as Californians have poured into Las Vegas and its Clark County suburbs, Carr says. "Without Clark County's Democrats, this would be a red state," he says.
Courting the Hispanic vote
No state added residents at a faster pace in the first decade of this century than Nevada. And as the state grew, so did its Latino population -- soaring to 27.1% of residents in 2011, up from 19.7% in 2000.
Latinos are an important voting bloc in Nevada. Nearly 270,000 are eligible to vote in the state this year, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. Bush, the last incumbent up for re-election, won the state by just 21,500 votes.
Obama appears to be widening his lead among Latino voters nationally. The president had the support of 70% of registered Hispanic voters compared to 20% backing Romney, in a Telemundo-NBC News-Wall Street Journal survey of Latino registered voters released Oct. 3.
Obama's approval rating also shot up 11% among Hispanic voters since August, pollsters found -- two months after he used his executive powers to halt deportations of some young illegal immigrants who were brought to the USA as young children. "It may be seen as cynical, but it was a great political move by Obama," says David Damore, a political scientist at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas.
Ortiz, who signed the voting pledge, says she knows at least 10 young people likely to escape deportation because of Obama's action. "I think people didn't have faith in him before, but now they do."
Romney has sought to make inroads in Nevada's Latino community. The campaign's Spanish-language commercials are in rotation. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., one of just two Hispanic U.S. senators, has stumped for Romney, and Romney recently opened a field office in a heavily Hispanic neighborhood.
Craig Romney, the candidate's youngest son who learned Spanish during his missionary work in Chile, headlined the kickoff. About 120 people attended, Team Nevada spokesman Darren Littell said.
Two days later, Obama was back in the state, accompanied by the Grammy-winning Mexican rock group, Mana. He drew a crowd of 11,000.
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The Fix
October 18, 2012 Thursday 10:20 PM EST
Todd Akin's third quarter fundraising pace lags behind Claire McCaskill's
BYLINE: Sean Sullivan
LENGTH: 864 words
Make sure to sign up to receive "Afternoon Fix" every day in your e-mail inbox by 5(ish) p.m.!
EARLIER ON THE FIX:
Michele Bachmann and John Tierney looking more vulnerable
Mitt Romney doesn't have a woman problem - at least not yet
Bruce Springsteen, Barack Obama and the Fix Endorsement Hierarchy
The Daily Show's panel of 'experts' analyzes the debate (VIDEO)
Robert Casey's $17 million problem
Obama's youth vote complication
Romney is winning the white vote - by a lot
WHAT YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED:
* Mitt Romney's campaign appears increasingly confident about its chances in North Carolina - to the point that it is beginning to shift staffers from the state to other battlegrounds. "With the increasingly widening polls in North Carolina, we will continue to allocate resources, including key senior staff, to other states," said Romney spokesman Michael Levoff. Obama campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki responded: "The Romney team doesn't ask me for advice, but pulling resources out of a state where early vote started today and there were lines wrapped around block to vote for the president when you have a narrow path to 270 doesn't seem like a smart strategy."
* If Romney doesn't win in November, he won't be running again, wife Ann Romney said during an appearance on ABC's "The View" Thursday morning. Mitt Romney was initially slated to be on the program with his wife, but later had to scrap the appearance due to scheduling difficulties.
* At a campaign stop in Nevada, Vice President Biden said of Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan (Wis.): "Ryan has written a book called 'The Young Guns' with two other fellas, members of the House, Republican leaders in the House ... unfortunately the bullets are aimed at you." Ryan spokesman Brendan Buck characterized the remark "over-the-top rhetoric."
* Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.) raised $1.6 million during the third quarter, less than a third of Sen. Claire McCaskill's (D) $5.8 million haul. Akin - who stoked controversy in August when he said "legitimate rape" rarely causes pregnancy - ended the period with just $553,000 in the bank, compared to McCaskill's $2.1 million. Meanwhile, a Democratic poll shows McCaskill leading Akin 47 percent to 35 percent, with a third party candidate at 8 percent. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee survey was conducted by Harstad Research from Oct. 15-17. Akin and McCaskill will debate for the final time Thursday night.
* Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) apologized for suggesting that Elizabeth Warren (D) used paid actors in a TV ad Warren ad that featured family members of mesothelioma sufferers. "It was wrong for me to have jumped to those conclusions and I apologize to those I offended," Brown said. Meanwhile, Brown released a new TV ad Thursday slamming Warren's legal work in the 1990s on behalf of LTV Steel, saying she "sided with yet another big corporation against working people." At the time, the company was fighting a rule forcing it to pay into a health care fund for retired workers. Warren's campaign has countered that the retirees' benefits weren't in jeopardy.
* Two environmental groups are coming to former governor Angus King's (I) defense in the Maine Senate race. The League of Conservation Voters and the Sierra Club released a contrast TV ad that touts King's record on energy and slams Republican nominee Charlie Summers.
WHAT YOU SHOULDN'T MISS:
* Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) released an environment-focused ad that could easily have come from a Democratic candidate. "I'm working to protect our environment," West says in the commercial. "We have a responsibility to keep Florida beautiful," the Republican congressman concludes at the end of the spot. West faces a tough reelection bid against Democrat Patrick Murphy.
* State Sen. Deb Fischer (R) leads former senator Bob Kerrey (D) by five points, 50 percent to 45 percent, according to an internal poll conducted for Kerrey's Nebraska Senate campaign Sunday-Tuesday by Harrison Hickman Analytics. An Omaha World-Herald poll conducted in late September showed Fischer up by 16, and most public surveys have shown her holding a double-digit lead.
* Former governor Linda Lingle (R) trails Rep. Mazie Hirono (D) by just four points, 47 percent to 43 percent, according to a poll of the Hawaii Senate race conducted for the Lingle campaign by Jan van Lohuizen from Oct. 9-16. It's rarely a good sign when candidates release internal polls showing them losing - something worth bearing in mind with regard to the Lingle survey and the Kerrey poll.
* The Republican Governors Association launched a new TV ad attacking Montana Attorney General Steve Bullock's (D) record on jobs. "Time after time, he stood in our way or refused to the fight for Montana," the narrator says.
THE FIX MIX:
Who won the "First Lady" debate?
With Aaron Blake
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October 18, 2012 Thursday 8:12 PM EST
Facts are curious things
BYLINE: Dana Milbank
SECTION: A section; Pg. A02
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Mitt Romney has done a heckuva job with his jobs plan.
At Tuesday night's town-hall debate, the Republican presidential nominee replied with confidence when 20-year-old student Jeremy Epstein asked the candidates for reassurance that he'd be able to find work after graduation.
"I put out a five-point plan that gets America 12 million new jobs in four years," Romney said. "It's going to help Jeremy get a job when he comes out of school."
The candidate's statement, a version of a claim he has made for months on the stump and in a new ad, was bold, precise - and baseless.
Hours earlier, my Washington Post colleague Glenn Kessler had reported that the source the Romney campaign provided for the jobs figure was a trio of studies that either didn't directly analyze Romney's policies or were based on longer time horizons than four years.
Top Romney economist Glenn Hubbard acknowledged to Kessler that the three studies did "not make up the 12 million jobs in the first four years," and the Romney campaign issued a statement minutes before the debate that expanded the jobs time frame to "the next four years and beyond."
But the claim, though discredited, had become a key part of Romney's message - and he went right ahead and repeated the falsehood during the debate.
Much of the burgeoning fact-check function in the news media is subjective; Romney's tax cut claims, for example, are impossible to assess with certainty because he doesn't say what deductions he would disallow and what other assumptions he makes. But the jobs claim is black and white: The evidence the Romney campaign furnished to support the claim did not do so.
Romney's economists do think the economy would add 12 million jobs under his policies over the next four years, and they issued a white paper in August claiming that. But this paper is not based on Romney's five-point plan, and elements of that plan, such as cracking down on China and consolidating job training, aren't even mentioned in the paper. Rather, the 12 million figure is based on the economists' assumptions that Romney's policies would mean that "the current recovery will align with the average gains of similar past recoveries."
This forecast is not terribly controversial, although claiming that Romney's policies will cause this growth is equivalent to the rooster believing his crow causes the sun to rise. Several independent economists, and President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, project the economy will add 12 million jobs over the next four years without factoring in Romney's policies.
More controversial is Romney's linking of his five-point plan to the 12 million jobs. "I have a plan," he said in a recent stump speech, "that's going to get this economy going and create jobs, jobs and more jobs - 12 million jobs." He often says that his tax policies would create 7 million jobs and his energy policies would generate 3.5 million to 4 million positions.
In a recent ad, Romney, speaking to the camera from a factory floor, says his "energy independence policy means more than 3 million new jobs," his tax plan "creates 7 million more," and "expanding trade, cracking down on China and improving job training takes us to over 12 million new jobs."
But when Kessler asked for substantiation, the campaign referred him to a Rice University professor's study for evidence that Romney's tax plan would generate 7 million jobs - which turned out to be a 10-year number. The evidence for the energy policy creating 3 million jobs comes from a Citigroup Global Markets study that did not analyze Romney's plan and was assuming an eight-year horizon. The remaining 2 million jobs, Kessler wrote, were justified by a 2011 International Trade Commission report that also didn't analyze Romney policies.
"The big point is the 3+7+2 does not make up the 12 million jobs in the first four years (different source of growth and different time period)," Hubbard acknowledged in an e-mail to Kessler.
Kessler called Romney's claim a bait-and-switch, a characterization Obama echoed when he spoke at a rally in Iowa on Wednesday afternoon. "Turns out his jobs math isn't any better than his tax math," Obama charged.
About the same time, Romney took the stage in Chesapeake, Va. This time, he dropped the reference to 12 million jobs. "I'm going to get this economy going," was the extent of his vow. It wasn't flashy, but it had the virtue of being honest.
danamilbank@washpost.com
For more Washington Sketch columns, visit washingtonpost.com/milbank.
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October 18, 2012 Thursday 8:12 PM EST
BYLINE: Mike DeBonis
SECTION: Metro; Pg. B02
LENGTH: 336 words
In Ward 7 council race, Moten issues dramatic ad attacking Alexander
D.C. politics finally has a dramatic attack ad of its own - one that wouldn't feel out of place amid the barrage of presidential and U.S. Senate commercials now targeting Virginia voters.
It comes from Ward 7 D.C. Council candidate Ron Moten, a Republican, and attacks Democratic incumbent Yvette M. Alexander with a deep bass voiceover, menacing music, a scratchy guerrilla video clip and a perhaps-deliberate mispronunciation ("Yvette Alexandria").
The ad features a clip from 2009, when questioning of Moten's Peaceoholics nonprofit organization was at its peak.
"I do not like people who do not elevate themselves, who drop out of school," she told pro-Moten protesters outside the John A. Wilson Building.
"What's the difference," the ad asks, between that sentiment and Mitt Romney's infamous "47 percent" comments, also featured in the video?
That the Republican candidate is attacking his Democratic opponent by referencing the Republican presidential candidate's most devastating gaffe tells you just how nutty party politics have gotten in this race.
Alexander chuckled when told about the ad.
"Oh my God," she said. "It's the mark of a confused man." She noted that Moten attended a debate watch party Tuesday night hosted by the Ward 7 Democrats.
"I'm like, 'Why is he here?' But we're welcoming to all," she said.
Alexander's the confused one, Moten said. "She's saying the same thing [Romney] was saying. . . . She has left them people hanging. I want to extend my hand and lift them up," he said.
Moten, running to represent a ward whose voters are 84 percent Democratic, has declined to say whether he'll vote for Romney or President Obama.
The ad is Internet-only for the time being. (You can view it on my blog.) Moten would not rule out a cable-TV buy, however.
"I'm gonna try," he said. "I've gotta see how much money I raise over the next few days."
- Mike DeBonis
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October 18, 2012 Thursday 8:12 PM EST
Both sides renew fight for the key support of women
BYLINE: Rosalind S. Helderman;Nia-Malika Henderson
SECTION: A section; Pg. A01
LENGTH: 1081 words
MIDDLEBURG HEIGHTS, Ohio - Republican nominee Mitt Romney's awkward comment during the second presidential debate that he had received "binders full of women" as Massachusetts governor when he requested more female job candidates went fully viral Wednesday, drawing snickers from voters but also fueling a broader fight between the two campaigns over the key support of women.
Romney's remark was just a sliver of the discussion Tuesday night about issues relevant to women, with the candidates tussling over subjects such as contraception and unequal pay. The battle escalated on Wednesday, as President Obama worked to reclaim his advantage among women - and as the Romney campaign returned to its core argument that the Republican is better suited to manage women's top concern, the economy.
Campaigning in Iowa, Obama ridiculed his opponent.
"I've got to tell you, we don't have to collect a bunch of binders to find qualified, talented, driven young women, ready to learn and teach in these fields right now," he said.
Romney, at a stop in Chesapeake, Va., revisited a question from the debate about the gender pay gap, saying that answers women want to hear about the economy are coming from him, not Obama.
"This is a presidency that has not helped America's women, and as I go across the country and ask women, 'What can I do to help?' what they speak about day in and day out is, 'Help me find a good job, or a good job for my spouse,' " Romney said. "That's what the women of America are concerned about. And the answers are coming from us and not from Barack Obama."
Although the candidates have courted female voters all year, they are renewing their attention to the demographic as polls show the race tightening, and as some surveys indicate that Obama's once-sizable advantage among women has slipped.
Romney shifted his emphasis Tuesday night on at least one issue relevant to women, asserting that "every woman in America should have access to contraceptives." He objects to the president's policy that requires employers to pay for contraception as part of health insurance coverage, an issue important to conservatives who consider it an infringement on the rights of religious institutions. But he did not mention that, and instead focused on the undisputed issue of access, as he appeared to be trying to present a more moderate face in the closing weeks before the election.
The Romney campaign also debuted a new ad this week that tries to soften his image. The spot, called "Sarah," features a young woman who says Obama's ads accusing Romney of wanting to ban all abortions and contraception "concerned" her.
"So I looked into it," she says. "Turns out, Romney doesn't oppose contraception at all. In fact, he thinks abortion should be an option in cases of rape, incest or to save a mother's life."
"This issue is important to me," she says. "But I'm more concerned about the debt our children could be left with."
The ad is a direct play for undecided voters such as Paula Fultz, 59, who is from a Cleveland suburb. She supports abortion rights and backed Obama four years ago but gave Romney a closer look after the first debate. "He seemed more credible than what I'd seen before," Fultz said of Romney. "So I've been leaning more to looking at the jobs discussion." After Tuesday's debate, Fultz said she is still leaning toward Romney, even though she said she thought Obama performed better the second time around.
The Obama campaign is working to blunt similar shifts among women in swing states. White House senior adviser David Plouffe, traveling to Iowa after the debate, previewed the team's plan to argue that Romney is on the wrong side of women's issues, such as his support for the Blunt Amendment, which allows employers not to pay for birth control if they have a moral objection to doing so.
"Mitt Romney: Wrong for American Women," read a press release from the campaign late Wednesday. During his stops that day, Obama wore a pink bracelet for breast cancer awareness.
In the Tuesday night face-off, Romney said he had a strong record of hiring women, saying one key to doing so for top jobs was allowing family-friendly work hours.
"I recognized that if you're going to have women in the workforce, that sometimes you need to be more flexible," he said, recalling that his gubernatorial chief of staff had two school-age children. "She said, 'I can't be here until 7 or 8 o'clock at night. I need to be able to get home at 5 o'clock so I can be there for making dinner for my kids and being with them when they get home from school.' So we said, 'Fine. Let's have a flexible schedule so you can have hours that work for you.' "
Obama spoke about growing up with a single, working mother and a working grandmother who trained men for jobs that paid more than hers. He also talked about signing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 - which made it easier for women to file lawsuits alleging pay discrimination - as one of his first actions in office.
Vice President Biden, campaigning in Colorado on Wednesday, picked up on the issue of whether Romney had sought female employees. "You heard the debate last night. When Governor Romney was asked a direct question about equal pay, he started talking about binders," Biden said. "Whoa! The idea that he had to go and ask where a qualified woman was, he just should have come to my house. He didn't need a binder."
Polling about where women stand in the race has been a point of controversy, with seemingly contradictory data pouring in each day.
Two recent surveys - a national Pew poll after the first debate and a more recent USA Today-Gallup survey in 12 battleground states - had Obama and Romney tied among female voters, something that would be a historic shift away from a gender gap that has helped Democrats in recent elections.
A Quinnipiac University poll in Pennsylvania released Tuesday had Romney closing in on Obama there but had the president with an 18-point advantage among women who are likely to vote. But a new poll from Marquette University Law School shows Romney making big gains in Wisconsin, entirely by winning over women.
In the new Washington Post-ABC News national poll, 51 percent of women back Obama and 44 percent support Romney, with the seven-point margin a numerical, but not statistically significant, advantage for the president.
heldermanr@washpost.com
hendersonn@washpost
Amy Gardner in Iowa and Ohio and Jon Cohen in Washington contributed to this report.
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Election 2012
October 18, 2012 Thursday 7:36 PM EST
Obama adds equal pay sign to campaign logo;
Yet another sign of how women's issues have taken center stage in the presidential campaign -- Obama's website now features an equal sign in the slogan, "Forward." When you click on the logo, it takes you to the campaign's page on women's issues, with equal pay getting top billing.
BYLINE: Rachel Weiner
LENGTH: 223 words
Yet another sign of how women's issues have taken center stage in the presidential campaign - Obama's Web site now features an equal sign in the slogan, "Forward." When you click on the logo, it takes you to the campaign's page on women's issues, with equal pay getting top billing.
The page features a video of Lily Ledbetter discussing the legislation that bears her name, which extends the statute of limitation for filing a wage discrimination lawsuit. The text under the video reads, "Mitt Romney refused to say whether or not he would have signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law, and Paul Ryan voted against it."
It's true that Romney has not said whether he would have supported the Lily Ledbetter legislation had he been in office at the time, though he has said he would not seek to repeal it as president.
Republicans have also been reaching out to women voters. A new ad from Romney's campaign emphasizes his support for rape and incest exceptions to abortion bans. "This issue is important to me," the narrator says. "But I'm more concerned about the debt our children could be left with."
The former Massachusetts governor has also released a Web video featuring women who worked in his administration discussing his sensitivity to their needs. "He totally gets working women," says one former member of his Cabinet.
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Election 2012
October 18, 2012 Thursday 6:54 PM EST
Romney ad softens position on abortion
BYLINE: Amy Gardner
LENGTH: 107 words
MOUNT VERNON, Iowa - Mitt Romney debuted a new TV ad this week that softens his positions on abortion and contraception and urges women voters to focus more on economic issues than social ones.
At a moment when women are seen as increasingly crucial to the outcome of the election, Romney is trying to build on gains he has made in recent polls. He also is trying to reverse the advantage that President Obama has built this year in part by hammering at Romney's many statements on women's health issues during the Republican primary season, when the GOP candidate described himself as "severely conservative."
Read the whole story.
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October 18, 2012 Thursday 5:09 PM EST
Ad watch: Obama camp suggests Romney would ban abortion;
It's the latest salvo in President Obama's ongoing fight to paint Mitt Romney as extreme on reproductive rights.
BYLINE: Rachel Weiner
LENGTH: 131 words
Obama for America, "Seen"
What it says: "Trying to mislead us? That's wrong. But ban all abortions? Only ... if you vote for him."
What it means: It's the latest salvo in President Obama's ongoing fight to paint Mitt Romney as extreme on reproductive rights. Romney's latest ad emphasizes his support for rape and incest exceptions to abortion bans; this ad counters with a clip from a 2007 Republican debate, in which Romney said he would be "delighted" to sign a bill banning all abortions. (Left out of the clip is that Romney added, "But that's not where we are. That's not where America is today.")
Who will see it: Residents of Virginia, where Republicans faced a backlash this year over a controversial anti-abortion bill.
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October 18, 2012 Thursday 4:24 PM EST
Ad watch: Comedian Paul Rodriguez does Romney radio ad
BYLINE: Rachel Weiner
LENGTH: 128 words
Mitt Romney, "Nuestro Futuro"
Listen here.
What it says (translated): "We Hispanics sacrifice because we believe in the promise of this great country. But President Obama has taken us down the road of unemployment, more poverty and an exorbitant debt that puts that promise at risk. ... I don't belong to any political party, but I do believe in the opportunities that the United States offers all of us. This is why I am supporting Mitt Romney."
What it means: With Paul Rodriguez, a comedian who became Republican in recent years in part over California water issues, Romney is again trying to reach out to Spanish-speaking voters. Even if his margin with Hispanic voters might not matter much.
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The Fix
October 18, 2012 Thursday 3:40 PM EST
Michael Bloomberg launching super PAC to support moderate candidates
BYLINE: Sean Sullivan
LENGTH: 827 words
Make sure to sign up to receive "Afternoon Fix" every day in your e-mail inbox by 5(ish) p.m.!
EARLIER ON THE FIX:
The dangers of relying on electoral precedents - in one comic strip
Mission Impossible: Moderating a presidential debate
Mitt Romney leading President Obama by six in Gallup poll
'Binders full of women': Liability or sideshow?
The "moments" of the second presidential debate - in 2 charts
The second presidential debate, by the numbers
Wonk|Fix: Recapping the presidential debate
Romney's missed opportunity on Libya
WHAT YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED:
* President Obama and Mitt Romney are running about even in Wisconsin, with Obama at 49 percent and Romney at 48 percent among likely voters, according to a new Marquette Law School poll. Just two weeks ago, Obama led Romney 53 percent to 42 percent. Meanwhile, the Wisconsin Senate race is also about even in the latest poll, with former governor Tommy Thompson (R) at 46 percent and Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D) at 45 percent.
* Obama seized on Romney's "binders" comment at a Wednesday campaign rally in Iowa. "We don't have to collect a bunch of binders to find qualified, talented, driven young women, ready to learn and teach in these fields right now," Obama said. Meanwhile, women who served in Romney's Cabinet when he was governor of Massachusetts sing his praises in a new Web video his campaign released Wednesday. Romney remarked at Tuesday's debate that he asked women's groups to help him identify well-qualified potential female cabinet members, "and they brought us whole binders full of women."
* California Rep. Howard Berman (D) is using footage of his debate last week with fellow Democratic Rep. Brad Sherman to cast Sherman as "too angry" and "mean" in a new ad. If you missed it, Sherman put his arm around Berman at the debate, asking, "Do you want to get into this?" Sherman and Berman are competing in a heated race for a San Fernando Valley district as a result of redistricting.
* The anti-tax Club for Growth is adding to its buys in the Indiana and Arizona Senate races. The club is spending $900,000 more in Arizona and $600,000 in Indiana. The new Arizona ad contrasts the records of Rep. Jeff Flake (R) and Richard Carmona (D), while the Indiana ad attacks Rep. Joe Donnelly (D).
* Romney launched a new Spanish-language TV ad hitting Obama over his record on immigration. "The liberal Democrats promised immigration reform ...Now, the Democrats say they never made a promise," the narrator of the ad says in Spanish.
WHAT YOU SHOULDN'T MISS:
* New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg (I) is launching a super PAC to help moderate candidates during the final weeks of the campaign. He expects to spend $10-$15 million on the effort, which Howard Wolfson will head. Among the candidates Bloomberg will support: former governor Angus King (I), who is running for the Senate in Maine, and Rep. Robert Dold (R-Ill.), who is in a tough reelection fight against Democrat Brad Schneider.
* Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said in an interview that the economy was not in a free fall when Obama took office. "The reason we're not creating those jobs is because of the choices, the policies, that President Obama took. You know, because here is the fact: He did not come into office with the economy in a free fall. We were losing jobs, but the fact is, within two months, we entered the second quarter, we only lost 0.7 percent GDP. But the economy bottomed out and then we started recovery the third quarter."
* Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-Tenn.) may be in some trouble back home, where a poll conducted for Democratic challenger Eric Stewart on Sunday and Monday showed the Republican leading by just five points, 49 percent to 44 percent. DesJarlais was the subject of a report last week detailing pressure he once applied on a mistress to get an abortion. Myers Research & Strategic Services conducted the poll of 400 likely voters.
* The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has pulled its $315,000 ad reservation in Rep. John Garamendi's (D-Calif.) district. The DCCC has not run ads for Garamendi, who appears likely to defeat GOP challenger Kim Vann, but it is spending money in the Sacramento media market on other races. Republicans have not spent money on Garamendi's seat either.
* Larry King will moderate a third party presidential debate hosted by the Free and Equal Elections Foundation on Oct. 23 in Chicago. Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson, Green Party nominee Jill Stein, Constitution Party nominee Virgil Goode and Justice Party nominee Rocky Anderson are slated to participate.
THE FIX MIX:
The debate, songified!
With Aaron Blake
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October 18, 2012 Thursday 3:24 PM EST
Robert Casey's $17 million problem;
The first-term Democratic senator has a real race on his hands. Should Democrats be more worried than they are?
BYLINE: Sean Sullivan
LENGTH: 722 words
With 19 days left until Election Day, Sen. Robert Casey (D-Pa.) has a real race on his hands against a well-funded Republican opponent who has blanketed the airwaves with ads propelling himself into competition. Democrats are not panicking, but for the senator with the well-known last name, it's going to take more than family ties to pull out a win.
A Quinnipiac University poll released Tuesday showed Casey with a slight, 48 percent to 45 percent lead over self-funding Republican Tom Smith. Other surveys have showed Casey with a more comfortable advantage, but it's clear the race is competitive.
The main reason Casey has had to sweat is Smith's money. The Republican loaned his campaign a whopping $10 million during the third quarter, suggesting he thinks he has a serious shot at victory. All told, he's poured in about $17 million, much of which has gone toward TV ads, which have splashed all over the airwaves in recent months.
"Tom Smith's relentless TV ad barrage has lifted him out of the coal mine to give Sen. Robert Casey a run for his money," said Tim Malloy, assistant director of polling at Quinnipiac. "Casey had a 55 - 37 percent lead in Quinnipiac University's August 1 survey. Now this race is too close to call."
Casey's campaign insists it hasn't been taking Smith lightly, and says the media is just now taking a closer look at the contest.
"We have been trying to raise alarm bells for a while now," said Casey campaign manager Larry Smar. "Until the last poll came out in September, no one was paying attention to the race."
Casey's third quarter fundraising haul didn't send the signal that he is ready to throw a knockout punch. He brought in about $1.5 million - a tick less than Smith raised. It's notable enough that a Republican challenger outraised a well-known Democratic incumbent. It's more remarkable that it was Smith, who doesn't really even need to raise cash to compete.
Smith campaign manager Jim Conroy said the third quarter tally "is even further evidence that Casey's message is falling on deaf ears."
The money race is a long one, and Casey has steadily built his campaign account quarter after quarter. He ended September with over $5 million in the bank, meaning he had enough cash for significant TV ad buys. The battle over the airwaves has become much more even during the past couple of weeks. Smith no longer has the airspace to himself.
That's one reason Democrats aren't panicking. Another is the realistic expectations many held. Several strategists say they never expected the race to be as one-sided as it was earlier this year, before Smith began has major air campaign.
"I think the mistake people are making right now is looking the Senate race in the context of where it was and not where it should be," said one Pennsylvania Democratic strategist unaffiliated with Casey's campaign who was granted anonymity to speak candidly.
Another Pennsylvania Democratic strategist not working for Casey said the way Smith's messaging has resonated may have caught Casey's team "a little bit off guard," but still sounded very confident the incumbent would win.
Ed Rendell, the former Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, said he expects Casey to win by a margin between "four and seven points."
So far, neither the National Republican Senatorial Committee nor the Democratic Senatorial Campaign committee has entered the air war. If national Democrats enter the fray, it would be the surest sign yet that Casey is in some real trouble.
Smith has put himself in a solid position, but he'll likely have to outrun the top of the GOP ticket to win in November. While recent polling shows Mitt Romney is within striking distance of President Obama in the Keystone State, the GOP presidential candidate hasn't won there since 1988. Meanwhile, Romney's campaign hasn't spent any money on TV there, suggesting it isn't too optimistic about its odds in the state.
Looking ahead, Smith and Casey will debate on Oct. 28, giving voters a chance to compare the two candidates side by side.
What's clear in this race is that Casey will have to really earn a reelection win, as Smith has done a good job keeping himself in the conversation. A competitive Senate race in Pennsylvania may have seemed to some observers like a stretch a few months ago. But that's what this contest looks like right now.
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October 18, 2012 Thursday 2:18 PM EST
Romney's missed opportunity on Libya
BYLINE: Aaron Blake
LENGTH: 1161 words
Toward the end of the second presidential debate on Tuesday night, the controversy over Libya was threatening to cast a pall over what had otherwise been a much-improved debate performance by President Obama.
By the end of the exchange over the issue, though, it was clear that Libya was not going to be Obama's next undoing - and in fact, the moment probably cost Mitt Romney the most.
Asked a tough question about who is to blame for a lack of security at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, where Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others were killed, Obama did what he had to: say the security of Americans' overseas rests on his shoulders.
You could almost see Romney licking his chops. He proceeded to criticize Obama for holding a fundraiser the day after the attack and for not calling it an act of terror for two weeks.
But what followed was about the best Obama could have hoped for out of the exchange.
After Obama devoted some time to a stern and direct rebuke of Republicans and Romney for politicizing the issue - Obama looked directly at Romney while doing this, and it played well - Romney took his turn.
Romney took issue with Obama's statement that he had called the attack an act of terror the day after it occurred. Romney even asked for Obama to repeat the claim, believing he had caught him in a lie.
Instead of trying to explain the exchange, let's just go to the transcript:
ROMNEY: I think it's interesting the president just said something which - which is that on the day after the attack, he went into the Rose Garden and said that this was an act of terror.
OBAMA: That's what I said.
ROMNEY: You said in the Rose Garden the day after the attack, it was an act of terror? It was not a spontaneous demonstration? Is that what you're saying?
OBAMA: Please proceed, governor.
ROMNEY: I want to make sure we get that for the record, because it took the president 14 days before he called the attack in Benghazi an act of terror.
OBAMA: Get the transcript.
At that point, debate moderator Candy Crowley inserted herself into the debate in a big way, pointing out that Obama had, in fact, referred to "terror" at the Rose Garden press conference.
(Here's Obama's quote: "No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for.")
Crowley interjected: "He did, in fact, sir (call it an act of terror)."
Obama, clearly pleased with how the exchange had panned out, then offered: "Can you say that a little louder, Candy?" And she did.
For a second, the air went out of the room, and a key GOP attack was rendered less effective.
Now, Republicans will argue today (and argued late Tuesday after the debate) that Obama didn't directly label the attack in Benghazi as terrorism in the Rose Garden, speaking only broadly about "terror." They will also note that, for two weeks thereafter, he didn't use the word "terrorism" while discussing the tragedy.
(Crowley even acknowledged this after the debate.)
But the fact is, instead of having a policy argument about what Obama did or didn't do for Americans in Benghazi and how he handled the situation in the days after it occurred - a very tough issue and one that will undoubtedly be a major theme of the foreign policy debate next week - we're going to have a process argument over whether Romney flubbed his attack on the issue and when exactly Obama called the attack "terrorism."
And in a debate that was otherwise pretty tight (a CNN poll after the debate showed 46 percent thought Obama won and 39 percent said Romney won), the exchange over Libya turned out about as well for Obama as he could have hoped.
The question now is whether it remains a potent line of attack for the debate next week. It very well might be, but this is at least a momentary problem for the Romney campaign on an issue that otherwise will be tough for Obama to handle.
Republicans can still argue that Obama refused to use the word "terror" for two weeks and that he placed the blame on a spontaneous event rather than a coordinated attack. And that's potent.
But for Romney, whose foray into foreign policy in the 2012 presidential race often hasn't gone well, the moment served as an unhelpful side story.
Romney launches big ad buy: The Romney campaign is going up with $12 million worth of ads in nine states.
The states are basically unchanged from the ones we've been focusing on for months: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin. The campaign is not buying time in Pennsylvania - despite some encouraging polling there.
Romney's campaign was narrowly outraised September but still raised a very impressive $170 million. It has generally bought ad time just a couple days early, not wanting to broadcast (so to speak) its strategy to Democrats.
Majority PAC launching $8.4 million Senate ad blitz: The Democratic super PAC is releasing a new round of TV ads in nine of the most competitive Senate races. In six of the nine states (Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, Virginia, Ohio and Connecticut) Democrats are defending seats, while in three others (Arizona, Indiana and Nevada), they are playing offense. The Indiana buy is a joint effort with the centrist group Center Forward.
The Missouri ad is notable; it slams Rep. Todd Akin (R) over his August remark that "legitimate rape" rarely causes pregnancy. Sen. Claire McCaskill (D) has also released a TV ad hitting Akin over his controversial comments.
The Majority PAC buy comes a day after conservative nonprofit group Crossroads GPS launched a seven-state, $5 million buy.
Fixbits:
"We are at war with terrorists," Paul Ryan says.
An internal poll conducted for McCaskill's campaign by Kiley and Company shows her leading Akin 52 percent to 38 percent.
The Duggar family, from TLC's "19 Kids and Counting," endorse Akin.
An automated SurveyUSA poll of the Washington governor's race shows former congressman Jay Inslee (D) at 47 percent and state Attorney General Rob McKenna (R) at 44 percent.
An internal poll from Rep. Brad Sherman's (D-Calif.) campaign shows him leading Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.) by 25 points.
A super PAC is going to spend $2.5 million to reelect Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.) in a very tough race for the GOP.
The NRA backs Rep. Ben Chandler (D-Ky.).
Rep. David Cicilline's (D-R.I.) GOP challenger gets the endorsement of Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles - kind of.
A Democratic poll shows Rep. David Rivera (R-Fla.) trailing by 11 points.
Must-reads:
"Jesse Jackson Jr.: Political candidate and subject of many unanswered questions" - Manuel Roig-Franzia, Washington Post
"In VP Debate, Biden Seemed to Overstate His Role in Social Security Reform" - Jake Tapper, ABC News
"Fact Check: Biden's too tall football tale" - Domenico Montanaro, NBC News
"Supreme Court won't get involved in Ohio dispute; all must be allowed to vote early" - Robert Barnes, Washington Post
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The Washington Post
October 18, 2012 Thursday
Suburban Edition
Facts are curious things
BYLINE: Dana Milbank
SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A02
LENGTH: 751 words
Mitt Romney has done a heckuva job with his jobs plan.
At Tuesday night's town-hall debate, the Republican presidential nominee replied with confidence when 20-year-old student Jeremy Epstein asked the candidates for reassurance that he'd be able to find work after graduation.
"I put out a five-point plan that gets America 12 million new jobs in four years," Romney said. "It's going to help Jeremy get a job when he comes out of school."
The candidate's statement, a version of a claim he has made for months on the stump and in a new ad, was bold, precise - and baseless.
Hours earlier, my Washington Post colleague Glenn Kessler had reported that the source the Romney campaign provided for the jobs figure was a trio of studies that either didn't directly analyze Romney's policies or were based on longer time horizons than four years.
Top Romney economist Glenn Hubbard acknowledged to Kessler that the three studies did "not make up the 12 million jobs in the first four years," and the Romney campaign issued a statement minutes before the debate that expanded the jobs time frame to "the next four years and beyond."
But the claim, though discredited, had become a key part of Romney's message - and he went right ahead and repeated the falsehood during the debate.
Much of the burgeoning fact-check function in the news media is subjective; Romney's tax cut claims, for example, are impossible to assess with certainty because he doesn't say what deductions he would disallow and what other assumptions he makes. But the jobs claim is black and white: The evidence the Romney campaign furnished to support the claim did not do so.
Romney's economists do think the economy would add 12 million jobs under his policies over the next four years, and they issued a white paper in August claiming that. But this paper is not based on Romney's five-point plan, and elements of that plan, such as cracking down on China and consolidating job training, aren't even mentioned in the paper. Rather, the 12 million figure is based on the economists' assumptions that Romney's policies would mean that "the current recovery will align with the average gains of similar past recoveries."
This forecast is not terribly controversial, although claiming that Romney's policies will cause this growth is equivalent to the rooster believing his crow causes the sun to rise. Several independent economists, and President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, project the economy will add 12 million jobs over the next four years without factoring in Romney's policies.
More controversial is Romney's linking of his five-point plan to the 12 million jobs. "I have a plan," he said in a recent stump speech, "that's going to get this economy going and create jobs, jobs and more jobs - 12 million jobs." He often says that his tax policies would create 7 million jobs and his energy policies would generate 3.5 million to 4 million positions.
In a recent ad, Romney, speaking to the camera from a factory floor, says his "energy independence policy means more than 3 million new jobs," his tax plan "creates 7 million more," and "expanding trade, cracking down on China and improving job training takes us to over 12 million new jobs."
But when Kessler asked for substantiation, the campaign referred him to a Rice University professor's study for evidence that Romney's tax plan would generate 7 million jobs - which turned out to be a 10-year number. The evidence for the energy policy creating 3 million jobs comes from a Citigroup Global Markets study that did not analyze Romney's plan and was assuming an eight-year horizon. The remaining 2 million jobs, Kessler wrote, were justified by a 2011 International Trade Commission report that also didn't analyze Romney policies.
"The big point is the 3+7+2 does not make up the 12 million jobs in the first four years (different source of growth and different time period)," Hubbard acknowledged in an e-mail to Kessler.
Kessler called Romney's claim a bait-and-switch, a characterization Obama echoed when he spoke at a rally in Iowa on Wednesday afternoon. "Turns out his jobs math isn't any better than his tax math," Obama charged.
About the same time, Romney took the stage in Chesapeake, Va. This time, he dropped the reference to 12 million jobs. "I'm going to get this economy going," was the extent of his vow. It wasn't flashy, but it had the virtue of being honest.
danamilbank@washpost.com
For more Washington Sketch columns, visit washingtonpost.com/milbank.
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The Washington Post
October 18, 2012 Thursday
Regional Edition
BYLINE: - Mike DeBonis
SECTION: METRO; Pg. B02
LENGTH: 324 words
In Ward 7 council race, Moten issues dramatic ad attacking Alexander
D.C. politics finally has a dramatic attack ad of its own - one that wouldn't feel out of place amid the barrage of presidential and U.S. Senate commercials now targeting Virginia voters.
It comes from Ward 7 D.C. Council candidate Ron Moten, a Republican, and attacks Democratic incumbent Yvette M. Alexander with a deep bass voiceover, menacing music, a scratchy guerrilla video clip and a perhaps-deliberate mispronunciation ("Yvette Alexandria").
The ad features a clip from 2009, when questioning of Moten's Peaceoholics nonprofit organization was at its peak.
"I do not like people who do not elevate themselves, who drop out of school," she told pro-Moten protesters outside the John A. Wilson Building.
"What's the difference," the ad asks, between that sentiment and Mitt Romney's infamous "47 percent" comments, also featured in the video?
That the Republican candidate is attacking his Democratic opponent by referencing the Republican presidential candidate's most devastating gaffe tells you just how nutty party politics have gotten in this race.
Alexander chuckled when told about the ad.
"Oh my God," she said. "It's the mark of a confused man." She noted that Moten attended a debate watch party Tuesday night hosted by the Ward 7 Democrats.
"I'm like, 'Why is he here?' But we're welcoming to all," she said.
Alexander's the confused one, Moten said. "She's saying the same thing [Romney] was saying. . . . She has left them people hanging. I want to extend my hand and lift them up," he said.
Moten, running to represent a ward whose voters are 84 percent Democratic, has declined to say whether he'll vote for Romney or President Obama.
The ad is Internet-only for the time being. (You can view it on my blog.) Moten would not rule out a cable-TV buy, however.
"I'm gonna try," he said. "I've gotta see how much money I raise over the next few days."
- Mike DeBonis
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The Washington Post
October 18, 2012 Thursday
Met 2 Edition
Both sides renew fight for the key support of women
BYLINE: Rosalind S. Helderman;Nia-Malika Henderson
SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A01
LENGTH: 1079 words
DATELINE: MIDDLEBURG HEIGHTS, OHIO
MIDDLEBURG HEIGHTS, Ohio - Republican nominee Mitt Romney's awkward comment during the second presidential debate that he had received "binders full of women" as Massachusetts governor when he requested more female job candidates went fully viral Wednesday, drawing snickers from voters but also fueling a broader fight between the two campaigns over the key support of women.
Romney's remark was just a sliver of the discussion Tuesday night about issues relevant to women, with the candidates tussling over subjects such as contraception and unequal pay. The battle escalated on Wednesday, as President Obama worked to reclaim his advantage among women - and as the Romney campaign returned to its core argument that the Republican is better suited to manage women's top concern, the economy.
Campaigning in Iowa, Obama ridiculed his opponent.
"I've got to tell you, we don't have to collect a bunch of binders to find qualified, talented, driven young women, ready to learn and teach in these fields right now," he said.
Romney, at a stop in Chesapeake, Va., revisited a question from the debate about the gender pay gap, saying that answers women want to hear about the economy are coming from him, not Obama.
"This is a presidency that has not helped America's women, and as I go across the country and ask women, 'What can I do to help?' what they speak about day in and day out is, 'Help me find a good job, or a good job for my spouse,' " Romney said. "That's what the women of America are concerned about. And the answers are coming from us and not from Barack Obama."
Although the candidates have courted female voters all year, they are renewing their attention to the demographic as polls show the race tightening, and as some surveys indicate that Obama's once-sizable advantage among women has slipped.
Romney shifted his emphasis Tuesday night on at least one issue relevant to women, asserting that "every woman in America should have access to contraceptives." He objects to the president's policy that requires employers to pay for contraception as part of health insurance coverage, an issue important to conservatives who consider it an infringement on the rights of religious institutions. But he did not mention that, and instead focused on the undisputed issue of access, as he appeared to be trying to present a more moderate face in the closing weeks before the election.
The Romney campaign also debuted a new ad this week that tries to soften his image. The spot, called "Sarah," features a young woman who says Obama's ads accusing Romney of wanting to ban all abortions and contraception "concerned" her.
"So I looked into it," she says. "Turns out, Romney doesn't oppose contraception at all. In fact, he thinks abortion should be an option in cases of rape, incest or to save a mother's life."
"This issue is important to me," she says. "But I'm more concerned about the debt our children could be left with."
The ad is a direct play for undecided voters such as Paula Fultz, 59, who is from a Cleveland suburb. She supports abortion rights and backed Obama four years ago but gave Romney a closer look after the first debate. "He seemed more credible than what I'd seen before," Fultz said of Romney. "So I've been leaning more to looking at the jobs discussion." After Tuesday's debate, Fultz said she is still leaning toward Romney, even though she said she thought Obama performed better the second time around.
The Obama campaign is working to blunt similar shifts among women in swing states. White House senior adviser David Plouffe, traveling to Iowa after the debate, previewed the team's plan to argue that Romney is on the wrong side of women's issues, such as his support for the Blunt Amendment, which allows employers not to pay for birth control if they have a moral objection to doing so.
"Mitt Romney: Wrong for American Women," read a press release from the campaign late Wednesday. During his stops that day, Obama wore a pink bracelet for breast cancer awareness.
In the Tuesday night face-off, Romney said he had a strong record of hiring women, saying one key to doing so for top jobs was allowing family-friendly work hours.
"I recognized that if you're going to have women in the workforce, that sometimes you need to be more flexible," he said, recalling that his gubernatorial chief of staff had two school-age children. "She said, 'I can't be here until 7 or 8 o'clock at night. I need to be able to get home at 5 o'clock so I can be there for making dinner for my kids and being with them when they get home from school.' So we said, 'Fine. Let's have a flexible schedule so you can have hours that work for you.' "
Obama spoke about growing up with a single, working mother and a working grandmother who trained men for jobs that paid more than hers. He also talked about signing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 - which made it easier for women to file lawsuits alleging pay discrimination - as one of his first actions in office.
Vice President Biden, campaigning in Colorado on Wednesday, picked up on the issue of whether Romney had sought female employees. "You heard the debate last night. When Governor Romney was asked a direct question about equal pay, he started talking about binders," Biden said. "Whoa! The idea that he had to go and ask where a qualified woman was, he just should have come to my house. He didn't need a binder."
Polling about where women stand in the race has been a point of controversy, with seemingly contradictory data pouring in each day.
Two recent surveys - a national Pew poll after the first debate and a more recent USA Today-Gallup survey in 12 battleground states - had Obama and Romney tied among female voters, something that would be a historic shift away from a gender gap that has helped Democrats in recent elections.
A Quinnipiac University poll in Pennsylvania released Tuesday had Romney closing in on Obama there but had the president with an 18-point advantage among women who are likely to vote. But a new poll from Marquette University Law School shows Romney making big gains in Wisconsin, entirely by winning over women.
In the new Washington Post-ABC News national poll, 51 percent of women back Obama and 44 percent support Romney, with the seven-point margin a numerical, but not statistically significant, advantage for the president.
heldermanr@washpost.com
hendersonn@washpost
Amy Gardner in Iowa and Ohio and Jon Cohen in Washington contributed to this report.
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The New York Times
October 17, 2012 Wednesday
Late Edition - Final
How To Score The Debate
BYLINE: By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN.
Maureen Dowd is off today.
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Editorial Desk; OP-ED COLUMNIST; Pg. 31
LENGTH: 881 words
I had to write this column before the presidential debate was finished, so I thought the most useful thing I could do is to offer the scoring system I'll be using to determine who did best. You can fill in your own scores. My system is not based on zingers or extra points for energizing the base, but rather on what I believe many Americans really want from the next president. You see, I believe this time is different -- that many Americans understand something is very wrong, that we could go the way of Greece or Japan if we don't shape up, and that they will embrace a candidate who trusts them with the truth, that is, an honest diagnosis of where we are and how we get out of this mess. Up to now, neither candidate has been willing to do that.
So, first, I'll be looking for that honest diagnosis. We are where we are today, in part, because the merger of globalization and information technology has transformed how goods and services are bought and sold, made and designed. This merger makes old jobs obsolete faster and spins off new jobs faster, but all the good new jobs require higher skills. As a country, notes Lawrence Katz, the Harvard University labor economist, we have historically ensured that our work force kept up with new technology by steadily expanding public education -- first universal primary education and then universal secondary education. But since the 1980s, says Katz, when we needed to move to some form of universal postsecondary education to keep pace with globalization and I.T., we didn't. Instead, he points out, ''our high school graduation rates stopped improving and our growth in college graduates slowed substantially -- far below what we need for rapid growth and shared prosperity.'' Today, our workers ages 50 and over are the most educated in the world; our younger workers are in the middle of the global pack for industrialized countries; and our national dropout rate remains stubbornly high, around 25 percent.
So what did we do? We created employment for our unskilled workers by a massive injection of subprime credit that created a large number of home construction and retailing jobs. Meanwhile, Wall Street also ballooned, in part by shifting from an industry that funded ''creative destruction'' of new firms to an industry, as the economist Jagdish Bhagwati put it, that funded ''destructive creation'' of unproductive financial instruments.
''For too many years, our job creation engines were excessively reoriented from competitive global markets to inwardly oriented sectors that were taken to unsustainable levels, (e.g., construction, finance, housing and retail),'' wrote Mohamed A. El-Erian, the chief executive of Pimco, in The Atlantic.com. ''The result was an unbalanced and vulnerable labor force. Our generation also overdosed on debt and credit entitlement. We got seduced by financial engineering. ... Too little genuine growth, too much debt, and a risk culture gone crazy culminated in the very messy global financial crisis of 2008 and its aftermath -- a costly shock to society whose impact will be with us for quite a few years still. ... For years, Western societies have under- and mal-invested in education. As we slipped down global rankings, we convinced ourselves that our traditional global edge in entrepreneurship and innovation'' could compensate for our declines in educational attainment. They can't.
All of this came to a head during the terrible 2000s. The housing/credit markets exploded, creating a systemic banking crisis and a painful recession, which coincided with our sharpening education deficit, which coincided with two wars and a big tax cut that dramatically worsened our national deficit. The result is a deep hole.
That hole requires us to now cut spending, raise and reform taxes; stimulate the economy by investing in infrastructure, research and teachers; spur more start-ups; and offer more people postsecondary vocational or college education. So, first, listen for anything like that diagnosis from the candidates.
And, second, listen for a plan that rises to the true scale of that challenge, one that proposes job-creating infrastructure investments tied with a program to stimulate more start-ups (which have slowed) tied with a credible deficit-reduction plan -- that would be phased in as the economy recovers -- tied with a plan to get more Americans postsecondary education. Yes, I know, Obama has many such initiatives, but he has not made them the centerpiece of his campaign, or highlighted them in his commercials, or tied them together into a compelling package that gets people out of their chairs, saying: ''Yes, he's got the answer!'' Instead of campaigning on how good is his plan, he has campaigned on how bad is Romney's.
Third, the country wants a plan that is fair. The wealthy have to pay more, but everyone should contribute something. And, fourth, the country wants a plan that is aspirational -- a plan that is about making America a great country for the next generation, not just ''balancing the budget.''
So I am scoring the debate with these criteria in mind. I have argued for a year now that the candidate who offers such a plan wins the election. If neither does, someone will still win -- probably narrowly -- but the country will lose by a mile.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/17/opinion/friedman-how-to-score-the-debate.html
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The New York Times
October 17, 2012 Wednesday
Late Edition - Final
Bankruptcy For Maker Of Batteries
BYLINE: By BILL VLASIC and MATTHEW L. WALD; Matthew L. Wald reported from Washington.
SECTION: Section B; Column 0; Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1136 words
DETROIT -- The troubled battery maker A123 Systems filed for bankruptcy on Tuesday, dealing a blow to the Obama administration's program to jump-start a domestic battery industry and spur development of electric vehicles.
The company's bankruptcy filing was unexpected, since it struck a deal in August to sell a majority stake to a Chinese auto parts manufacturer. That agreement, with the Wanxiang Group, provided an apparent lifeline to the company. But A123, which has received federal grant money, said the Wanxiang deal was never completed, and on Monday, it failed to make a debt payment due on $75 million it had borrowed from Wanxiang.
In announcing its bankruptcy filing, A123 said it had agreed to sell its automotive assets and factories to Johnson Controls, another American battery producer that has benefited from federal assistance, in a deal it valued at $125 million.
A123, based in Waltham, Mass., was once considered one of the most promising grant recipients under the administration's $2 billion stimulus program for electric car development. The Department of Energy awarded the company a $249 million grant to establish battery manufacturing operations in Michigan, although A123 had received only about $132 million of the grant before its bankruptcy.
The company's failure may well become a political football in the presidential campaign, in which energy policy has been a leading topic. The Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, has repeatedly criticized President Obama for his heavy spending on green-energy programs, including a $528 million loan to Solyndra, a solar module maker that went bankrupt last year.
''A123's bankruptcy is yet another failure for the president's disastrous strategy of gambling away billions of taxpayer dollars on a strategy of government-led growth that simply does not work,'' said Andrea Saul, Mr. Romney's press secretary, in a statement on Tuesday.
The Energy Department defended the federal grant to A123 as one of many bipartisan efforts to support American manufacturing of lithium-ion batteries for electric cars. A department official, Dan Leistikow, said in a blog post that the administration had awarded $2 billion in grants to 29 companies involved in the electrification of vehicles, creating thousands of jobs.
A123 has used about $132 million of its grant to date, plus another $6 million given in 2007 by the Bush administration, said Mr. Leistikow, the agency's director of public affairs. Michigan has also given A123 a $9 million grant, plus various tax breaks.
Mr. Leistikow said the federal money would not be wasted because A123's two Michigan factories would now be operated by Johnson Controls.
''In an emerging industry, it's very common to see some firms consolidate with others as the industry grows and matures,'' he said.
The department previously gave Johnson Controls, based in Wisconsin, its own $299 million federal grant for an electric-car battery project.
The Solyndra bankruptcy, which became the subject of Congressional hearings, stoked concerns about oversight of government-backed energy programs.
Another battery manufacturer that received federal help, Ener1, went bankrupt in January. It had approval for $118.5 million in grants from the Energy Department but had received only about half of that when it entered bankruptcy.
A123 was a centerpiece of the government's electric-vehicle program, opening two factories in Michigan and securing contracts to supply batteries to automakers including General Motors and the start-up firm Fisker Automotive.
But its financial stability has been in question for more than a year. The company suffered a major setback when it had to recall defective batteries in Fisker cars. And despite orders from carmakers, A123 could not generate sufficient revenue or profit from the slowly growing market for electric vehicles.
In August, A123 surprised industry experts by agreeing to sell up to 80 percent of the company to the American arm of the Wanxiang Group, China's largest auto parts manufacturer.
Political opponents of the Wanxiang deal asserted that the Chinese company would get access to technology and products made possible by the support of American taxpayers.
One of the critics, Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, said the sale of A123's factories to Johnson Controls was ''something positive'' because it kept the company's assets out of Chinese hands.
But Mr. Grassley and Senator John Thune, Republican from South Dakota, criticized the Energy Department, saying it ignored warning signs that A123 was faltering.
''The bankruptcy raises the prospect that the taxpayers will get little or no return on their investment in A123 and will lose millions of dollars,'' Mr. Grassley said.
The Energy Department countered that A123's employees and customers would be absorbed by a larger, stronger competitor in Johnson Controls.
''A123's manufacturing facilities and technology will continue to be a vital part of America's advanced battery industry,'' said Mr. Leistikow.
Wanxiang, which has its United States headquarters outside Chicago, pledged in August to invest up to $465 million in A123, but the deal fell apart for undisclosed reasons.
''We determined not to move forward with the previously announced Wanxiang agreement as a result of unanticipated and significant challenges to its completion,'' said David Vieau, A123's chief executive, in a statement.
Instead, the company found a new suitor in Johnson Controls, which analysts say is now in position to be the dominant American battery manufacturer.
A123 said filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection would ease the sale of its automotive assets to Johnson Controls. The deal includes Michigan plants in the Detroit suburbs in Livonia and Romulus, as well as A123's equity interest in battery facilities in China.
Johnson Controls said it would provide $72.5 million in financing for A123's reorganization in bankruptcy.
''We believe that A123's automotive capabilities are a good complement to our existing portfolio and will further advance Johnson Controls' position as a market leader in this industry,'' said Alex Molinaroli, head of the power systems unit of Johnson Controls.
Brian Johnson, an analyst with Barclays Capital, said in a research note that the deal would help Johnson Controls become ''the U.S.-based player'' in the market for lithium-ion batteries.
A123 has also received ''significant interest'' for its remaining assets, primarily its electric-grid technology and products for commercial and government entities, said Mr. Vieau, the company's chief executive
Whether Wanxiang will bid on those assets during bankruptcy is not known. The head of the Chinese firm's United States operations, Pin Ni, said in an e-mail on Tuesday, ''Our interest and commitment has not changed'' regarding A123.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/17/business/battery-maker-a123-systems-files-for-bankruptcy.html
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GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: One of the many kinds of batteries made by A123 Systems. (PHOTOGRAPH BY PAUL SANCYA/ASSOCIATED PRESS) (B1)
Joe Parker, left, and Dwayne Washington load batteries for 2013 all-electric vehicles at the A123 Systems plant in Livonia, Mich. (PHOTOGRAPH BY STEPHEN McGEE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES) (B7)
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The New York Times
October 17, 2012 Wednesday
Late Edition - Final
Which Changed First, The Polls or the Markets?
BYLINE: By NATHANIEL POPPER
SECTION: Section B; Column 0; Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 5
LENGTH: 1193 words
While Wall Street has thrown the bulk of its donations behind Mitt Romney, it is not viewing his potential ascent as an entirely good thing for the markets.
Some market participants who are generally supportive of Mr. Romney's economic policies, including the influential strategist James Bianco, argue that his rise in some polls since the first presidential debate, on Oct. 3, has been a drag on the markets because of Mr. Romney's opposition to the Federal Reserve's efforts to aid the economy with monetary stimulus.
The market returns over the last two weeks provide some support for this minority view. Leading American stock indexes fell 1.5 percent in the seven days after Mr. Romney delivered his strong performance in the first debate and began to rise in some national and swing-state polls.
Tying the movement of the markets to one thing, like the election, is difficult and dangerous. And there is no shortage of other issues occupying investors these days, from China to the European debt crisis to American economic data. But the tightening of the race in the last two weeks has led to more talk about the influence the election is exerting on the markets, and vice versa. The results of the second debate on Tuesday, and its effect on the polls, will only increase the conversation.
Even strategists who don't see Mr. Romney's prospects influencing broad stock indexes say the candidates' changing fortunes have hit asset prices in more subtle ways, in specific sectors that could be helped or hurt by a change of administration.
''By and large, white-collar finance people want to see Romney in there, but there are a number of subplots within that,'' said Jack Ablin, the chief investment officer at Harris Private Bank.
Perhaps the sector that has seen its fortunes buoyed most clearly by the Oct. 3 debate is the coal industry, which won a mention from Mr. Romney onstage when he said: ''I like coal. I'm going to make sure we're going to be able to burn clean coal.''
The next day, coal companies in the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index halted a slide that had lasted most of the year, and began to rise while the broader market was falling. Since then, coal stocks have been up as much as 20 percent, more than any of the 154 other sectors in the index.
Mr. Ablin said that along with other developments working against coal stocks, like the increased availability of natural gas, coal companies had been hurt by President Obama's support for alternative energy sources. Now, he said, they are being helped by the perception that Mr. Romney ''is really more fossil fuels.''
Traders have not suddenly concluded that Mr. Romney is a sure bet for the White House -- most prediction models still give Mr. Obama better-than-even odds of winning. But few people are more attuned to the subtle movements of polls than the number crunchers on Wall Street.
On trading floors, there is constant discussion and occasional wagering on the changing odds of the election outcome on Intrade, the betting Web site. After the first debate, Mr. Obama's odds of victory on the site fell from about 80 percent to about 60 percent last Friday.
Mr. Bianco, the strategist, said at an investment conference last week that the pessimism overtaking the market was a direct result of Mr. Romney's success after the first debate. He argued that investors had been scared off by Mr. Romney's promise not to reappoint the current Fed chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, when his term is up in 2014. Mr. Bianco, no fan of the Fed's current policy, said the market had become addicted to the Fed's stimulus and was frightened by the prospect of losing it.
''The further that Romney surges, the more you could see the market struggle,'' he said in an interview.
Jared Dillian, the author of a popular investing newsletter, said he, too, thought Mr. Romney's success was worrying investors. In addition to Fed policy, Mr. Dillian said, investors are concerned about the budget cuts that Mr. Romney has promised.
''You can pretty much point to exactly that debate and when the stock markets started acting poorly,'' Mr. Dillian said.
Monday and Tuesday provided a bit more support for these claims. After a weekend in which Mr. Obama's odds on Intrade turned up again, rising about 3 percent, the markets also reversed course. The benchmark Standard & Poor's 500-stock index made up last week's losses, closing up 1.03 percent, or 14.79 points, at 1454.92 on Tuesday.
But there are several other ways to explain the market's recent movements. On Monday, investors were buoyed by a report showing that retail sales rose 1.1 percent in September, more than expected. The Federal Reserve provided another reason for optimism when it said Tuesday that industrial output rose in September. And the pessimism of the previous week was fed in part by the weak profits reported by the first companies to announce their third-quarter financial results.
Many strategists believe that the markets reflect all of the economic data, and that it is these indicators that are moving polls, with a rallying market producing confidence in Mr. Obama, rather than the other way around.
''The direction of the economy and the market influences the success of the candidates,'' said Sam Stovall, the chief investment strategist at S&P Capital IQ. ''The candidates don't necessarily influence the economy and the market.''
But there is little question that the election, and the positions of the candidates, can play a role in the movement of particular corners of the market.
The firm LPL Financial has created an index of companies whose performance has been correlated with the shifting poll results. LPL's ''Wall Street Election Poll'' index consists half of sectors that would be expected to do well in the case of a Democratic win and half of sectors that would be expected to benefit from a Republican victory.
LPL has predicted that, along with the coal industry, the financial industry will benefit if Mr. Romney wins, given his promises to loosen regulations on banks. After the debate, the financial stocks in the Standard & Poor's 500 were up 2.4 percent, while the broader market fell.
The firm has put homebuilding stocks and health care facilities stocks among those that could be helped by a victory for Mr. Obama. John Canally, the economist for LPL's research department, said that homebuilders might be helped by another four years with Mr. Obama because he is less likely to disrupt the housing market by pushing for drastic reforms of the government mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. These stocks fell 6.5 percent in the week and a half following the debate, after rising for most of the year.
Mr. Canally and many others say the more significant impact of the election will be felt when the results are in and the winners begin to grapple with the most immediate threat to the markets: the so-called fiscal cliff of tax increases and spending cuts scheduled for the end of the year. The outcome of Senate elections could have more of an impact on that than the presidential vote.
''The bigger issue for the markets in this election is the lame duck session that will follow it,'' Mr. Canally said.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/17/business/debating-the-elections-cause-and-effect-on-wall-street.html
LOAD-DATE: October 17, 2012
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GRAPHIC: PHOTO: Mitt Romney, with coal miners in Beallsville, Ohio. He has received the bulk of Wall Street's donations this election season. (PHOTOGRAPH BY SHANNON STAPLETON/REUTERS)
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The New York Times
October 17, 2012 Wednesday
Late Edition - Final
Obama and Romney Mount Biting Attacks in Debate Rematch
BYLINE: By JIM RUTENBERG and JEFF ZELENY
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1534 words
President Obama and Mitt Romney engaged Tuesday in one of the most intensive clashes in a televised presidential debate, with tensions between them spilling out in interruptions, personal rebukes and accusations of lying as they parried over the last four years under Mr. Obama and what the next four would look like under a President Romney.
Competing for a shrinking sliver of undecided voters, many of them women, their engagements at times bordered on physical as they circled each other or bounded out of their seats while the other was speaking, at times more intent to argue than to address the questions over jobs, taxes, energy, immigration and a range of other issues.
Mr. Obama, criticized by his own party for a lackluster debate performance two weeks ago, this time pressed an attack that allowed him to often dictate the terms of the debate. But an unbowed Mr. Romney was there to meet him every time, and seemed to relish the opportunity to challenge a sitting president.
Mr. Obama's assertive posture may well have stopped the clamor of concern from supporters that had been weighing on his campaign with three weeks and one more debate to go before the election.
The president's broadsides started with a critique of Mr. Romney for his opposition to his administration's automobile bailout in his first answer -- ''Governor Romney said we should let Detroit go bankrupt'' -- and ended more than 90 minutes later with an attack on Mr. Romney's secretly taped comments about the ''47 percent'' of Americans who he said did not take responsibility for their own lives.
''When he said behind closed doors that 47 percent of the country considers themselves victims who refuse personal responsibility -- think about who he was talking about,'' the president said toward the end of the debate at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y.
It was as if a different, highly charged president had taken the stage rather than the reluctant, disengaged-seeming candidate who showed up to meet Mr. Romney at their first debate two weeks ago.
Mr. Romney stayed acutely focused on Mr. Obama's record in the face of it all, saying that the president had failed to deliver what he promised in his 2008 campaign and arguing repeatedly and strenuously, ''We just can't afford four more years like the last four years.''
He credited Mr. Obama for being ''great as a speaker and describing his vision.'' But then he brought down the ultimate hammer in a challenge to an incumbent: ''That's wonderful, except we have a record to look at. And that record shows he just hasn't been able to cut the deficit, to put in place reforms for Medicare and Social Security to preserve them, to get us the rising incomes we need.''
The two took pains to fashion their arguments toward female voters, with the debate seeming at times directed entirely at them. Mr. Obama mentioned Mr. Romney's vow to cut government funding for Planned Parenthood at least four times; Mr. Romney repeatedly mentioned that under Mr. Obama: ''There are three and a half million more women living in poverty today than when the president took office. We don't have to live like this.''
And Mr. Romney sought to broaden his appeal to women by softening his tone on reproductive issues, saying: ''Every woman in America should have access to contraceptives.''
Emphasizing his record of diversity as governor based on his own recruiting, he said, ''I brought us whole binders full of women.''
It is a bit of conventional wisdom that undecided voters seek comity in their leaders. There was none of that Tuesday.
At times the back and forth was personal in small ways. Having already invoked the 14 percent effective tax rate that Mr. Romney personally paid, Mr. Obama mentioned Mr. Romney's investment in Chinese companies. Then Mr. Romney asked if Mr. Obama had looked at his own pension for its investments.
''I don't look at my pension,'' Mr. Obama said. ''It's not as big as yours.''
But at other moments the verbal sparring took on a deeper, emotional resonance, such as when Mr. Romney suggested that the administration was intentionally misleading in its shifting explanations for the attack on the American mission in Benghazi, Libya, that resulted in the deaths of the American ambassador, J. Christopher Stevens, and three other Americans there.
''The suggestion that anybody in my team, whether the secretary of state, our U.N. ambassador, anybody on my team would play politics or mislead when we've lost four of our own, Governor, is offensive,'' Mr. Obama said, standing and looking intently at his opponent. ''That's not what we do. That's not what I do as president.''
Mr. Obama noted that he had gone to the Rose Garden the day after the attack to say ''this was an act of terror.''
Mr. Romney asserted that Mr. Obama had not said that until 14 days later, prompting the moderator, Candy Crowley of CNN, to interject, ''He did in fact, sir.'' Mr. Obama, interjected with a hint of anger, ''Can you say that a little louder, Candy?'' (She said Mr. Romney's broader point, about shifting explanations, was ''correct.'')
The vitriol that has been coursing through the campaign for months, in television ads and dueling speeches, played out at exceptionally close range for much of the 90-minute debate.
The exchanges were intense and personal, with Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney repeatedly leaving their stools and invading each other's space on the stage, Mr. Romney frequently looking at the president intently from his stool and interrupting as much as the president interrupted him.
At times they were within striking distance of each other as they forcefully made their points.
''If I could have you sit down, Governor Romney,'' Ms. Crowley said. ''Thank you.''
But while Mr. Romney was on the defensive for much of the debate, his arguments were built around a theme he returned to again and again: the Obama administration's record and its failure to restart the economy, saying his business know-how was what was called for now. He used a litany of statistics to make his case that the economy has not improved and that the president has not lived up to his pledges.
At least a half-dozen times, Mr. Romney said that 23 million Americans are out of work. And he said that 580,000 women had lost jobs in the last four years.
''The president has tried, but his policies haven't worked,'' Mr. Romney said, calling Mr. Obama a great speaker with a poor record.
The two tangled over tax policy, health care and spending, delivering what have become familiar arguments at this late stage in the campaign, but they also covered new ground under questioning from an audience of undecided voters. One woman said she was disappointed by Mr. Obama, but worried that Mr. Romney would return to policies of the Bush administration.
In blunt terms, Mr. Romney distanced himself from former President George W. Bush, criticizing him for leaving behind a rising budget deficit, failing to deal aggressively on trade deals with China and for favoring big business over small ones.
''President Bush and I are different people,'' he said, ''and these are different times.''
Ms. Crowley, the moderator, defied the rules of the Commission on Presidential Debates -- negotiated by the two campaigns -- pressing the candidates for a follow-up after the very first question. Ms. Crowley had made it clear that she would do that and had not signed anything agreeing to those conditions, but she also stood to the side and let the two men go after each other throughout the debate.
The questions came from voters who said they had not decided between Mr. Obama or Mr. Romney or were open to changing their minds in the final three weeks of the race. A question about the nation's immigration laws prompted one of the longest exchanges between the men, with Mr. Romney pointing out that the president did not meet his promise of achieving comprehensive immigration legislation during his first term.
''This is a president who has not been able to do what he said he'd do,'' said Mr. Romney, who pledged to pass an immigration overhaul in his first year as president, a sharp departure from his anti-immigration tone in the Republican nominating fight one year ago.
The pressure on both men was intense.
Three weeks before Election Day, there was a sense within both parties that Mr. Romney had succeeded in using the first debate to break an important psychological barrier by putting himself on equal footing with Mr. Obama and showing a presidential bearing before an audience of roughly 70 million people. And Tuesday night was Mr. Obama's opportunity to try to restore his campaign's momentum.
Mr. Obama's performance came just as the Romney campaign was starting its own huge advertising blitz -- after months of lopsided pummeling by Mr. Obama on television -- in the closing phase of the race.
On Tuesday his campaign placed $12 million more in commercials in the nine major battlegrounds.
And, unannounced, it began running a new commercial featuring a woman who identifies herself as a former Obama voter who researched Mr. Romney's record on abortion and found it was not as anti-abortion as Mr. Obama has said, noting, for instance, that he supports abortion in cases of rape and incest.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/17/us/politics/obama-and-romney-turn-up-the-temperature-at-their-second-debate.html
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GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: Mitt Romney and President Obama during the debate, their second, Tuesday night at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y. (PHOTOGRAPH BY DOUG MILLS/THE NEW YORK TIMES) (A1)
President Obama and Mitt Romney, his Republican challenger, answered questions from the audience in the town hall-style debate, moderated by Candy Crowley, right, of CNN. (PHOTOGRAPH BY RICHARD PERRY/THE NEW YORK TIMES) (A12)
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The New York Times Blogs
(The Caucus)
October 17, 2012 Wednesday
App Snapshot: Still Fighting Over Libya and Women
BYLINE: SARAH WHEATON
SECTION: US; politics
LENGTH: 696 words
HIGHLIGHT: Tuesday night's debate hasn't ended, at least when it comes to Libya and the candidates' appeal to women. Get the latest statements and fact-checks.
Tuesday night's debate hasn't ended, at least when it comes to Libya and the candidates' appeal to women. Here's the latest on how those arguments are playing out, and how they measure up to reality, from the Election 2012 app, where we're continuously curating the latest political news -- from The Times and from other top sources around the Web.
LIBYA
Attack on U.S. Mission in Benghazi Becomes Subject of Strongest Words
Mitt Romney tried to use the White House's handling of the attack on the American mission in Libya as a broad indictment of President Obama as commander in chief, while Mr. Obama accused Mr. Romney of politicizing a tragedy. (The New York Times)
Clearing the Record About Benghazi
As questions mount over what happened in the attack on the American diplomatic compound last month, here are some of the facts as they are now known. (The New York Times)
Biden and Ryan Continue Clash on Benghazi
The running mates continued the dispute over the Obama administration's handling of the attacks in Benghazi during Wednesday morning TV appearances. (ABC News)
Fact-Check: Terrorism and Security in Libya
The Obama administration has come under fire for shifting assessments of what really happened in Benghazi and for questions of security at the embassy. (The New York Times)
Fact-Check: Libya Attack Called Act of Terror
As was pointed out by the moderator, Mr. Obama called the attack in Libya an act of terror during remarks in the Rose Garden the day after it occurred. (The New York Times)
Candy Crowley Fact-Checks Romney
Ms. Crowley will almost certainly be remembered for the highly controversial moment in which she challenged Mr. Romney's statement about Mr. Obama's response to Benghazi.
(Politico)
Election-Year Stakes Overshadow Nuances of Libya Investigation
After a month of conflicting statements and partisan criticism, the circumstances surrounding the deadly attack in Benghazi have become clouded in ambiguities and questions. (The New York Times)
WOMEN AND SOCIAL ISSUES
Debate Moves Women to Fore in Race for the White House
President Obama asserted that Mitt Romney would oppose equal pay for women and block access to contraceptives, but Mr. Romney said he would do better by struggling families - especially women. (The New York Times)
Romney Says Obama 'Has Failed America's Women'
Mitt Romney returned to the campaign trail and made an economic argument for female support. (The New York Times)
'Binders Full of Women' Now Has a Binder Full of Jokes
Mitt Romney used the phrase to explain his recruitment efforts of women after becoming governor of Massachusetts. But the awkward phrasing -- conjuring up the image of a three-ring binder stuffed with female job seekers -- exploded quickly. (The New York Times)
In New Ad, Romney Stresses Moderate Positions on Reproductive Issues
Mitt Romney's campaign, in an effort to appeal to women who hold more moderate views on reproductive issues, is releasing a new commercial that highlights his support for contraception and abortion in limited circumstances. (The New York Times)
Video: Romney Ad on Abortion
This strategy is not without risk, as many socially conservative Republicans have long been wary of Mr. Romney. (YouTube)
Mind the Binder
Mitt Romney's remark about considering "whole binders full of women" for Massachusetts cabinet jobs has become an Internet sensation because of the phrasing, but David S. Bernstein, a staff writer for The Phoenix in Boston, says the story itself is misleading. (The Phoenix)
Fact-Check: Fewer Women Have Jobs?
Mr. Romney said that fewer women have jobs than four years ago. But that is not correct, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. (The New York Times)
Fact-Check: Employing Women in Massachusetts
Mr. Romney said that as governor, he employed more women in senior state government positions than did any other state administration, but there have been conflicting reports as to whether that is the case. (The New York Times)
Fact-Check: Contraceptive Coverage
Mr. Romney has said he would abolish the requirement that employers offer contraception coverage, which he has described as an attack on religious liberty. (The New York Times)
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PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog
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USA TODAY
October 17, 2012 Wednesday
FINAL EDITION
Facebook becomes battleground state;
Political postings escalate into 'unfriendly' spats
BYLINE: Laura Petrecca, @LauraPetrecca, USA TODAY
SECTION: MONEY; Pg. 5B
LENGTH: 1457 words
Jason Perlow thought it was just a spirited debate.
A friend posted some negative information about presidential candidate Mitt Romney on Facebook, and Perlow, who considers himself a moderate, pointed out what he saw as flaws in that commentary.
That online disagreement escalated into an offline disintegration of their more-than-10-year friendship.
"He got really angry," says Perlow, 43. "He defriended me on Facebook and told me not to send him any more e-mails. He also defriended my wife, who had nothing to do with it."
Most people know the social dangers of discussing politics at family gatherings, cocktail parties and the workplace. But the rise of Facebook brings about a tempting -- and treacherous -- territory to engage in such commentary.
Any seemingly controversial comments can turn off family and friends, as well as affect how colleagues, clients and potential employers feel about the person who is posting.
Professional contacts don't have to be Facebook friends to see those posts. Co-workers, managers and recruiters can easily infiltrate the pages of Facebook users who don't keep tight privacy settings on their profiles.
How business professionals respond also matters, says marketing consultant Michael Byrnes.
He has an extremely conservative client who recently decided to defriend any Facebook friends who made comments supporting President Obama.
"He just didn't want to be connected to that," says Byrnes, who counseled his client to simply hide those friends' newsfeeds rather than fully severing the Facebook ties. The man didn't take his advice.
"It's really going to impact his business over time," Byrnes says.
Online battleground
Mix together a divided country and hot-button political issues, and Facebook can become an online landmine.
Politics is "one of the most polarizing topics discussed on Facebook," says Ron Schott of social-media marketing agency Spring Creek Group.
Nearly a quarter of Internet users are more likely to voice extreme political views online than in real life, according a survey by McCann Truth Central, the research unit of the McCann Erickson ad agency.
"It leads others to make assumptions about them as a person," Schott says. "When people interact with you in real life three to four times a year, but see your stuff on Facebook a lot more, often that's who you become in their minds."
One in six social-network users say they've changed their views about a political issue after discussing it or reading posts on a social-networking site, according to a Pew Research Center survey.
During the 2008 presidential race, Facebook had 100 million users. Now it has 10 times that. More than half of Americans use social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+, according to Pew.
One in six social-media users say they have posted about politics recently, according to Pew. Of the two-thirds who don't post political content, about one-fifth don't do it because they are worried they might upset or offend someone.
TMI? (Too much information)
With Election Day less than a month away, Facebook is brimming with controversial candidate quotes, provocative headlines and personal commentary.
"People get mobilized by the elections and they start posting things they don't usually post," says James Fowler, a University of California-San Diego political science professor who specializes in social-network research.
Among the reasons political posts are profuse on Facebook:
Political strategists seed the site. Campaign operatives know that Facebook users typically pay more attention to a friend's updates than political ads, so they create evocative content that can quickly go viral, Fowler says. They post quotes, videos and pictures "designed to get people's attention," Fowler says.
It's easy to spread candidate news as well as personal commentary. With the increased use of tablets and smartphones, Facebook users can disseminate their opinions at any place at any time. Facebook's "share" button makes it simple to recycle content. "You see something and it makes you laugh and you hit the share button and off it goes," Fowler says. "But if you had three seconds (to think about it), maybe you wouldn't have shared it."
Users assume others are like-minded. "We think people are more similar to us than they are," Fowler says. So the user spreading the "Nobama" or "Anti-Romney" message assumes that most people in his or her circle agree with that stance when that isn't necessarily true. "People sharing things on Facebook probably feel safer than they should," he says.
There's no in-person accountability. "On Facebook, we share all sorts of stuff that we would never share in normal conversations," says social-media expert Schott. At a dinner party or family gathering, users have to defend their position to others who disagree. On Facebook, they can just ignore or even delete contrary comments.
How Facebook users think of the site is much different now than during the campaign four years ago, says Laura Simpson, global director of McCann Truth Central.
"Facebook is evolving into more of a debate space for issues," she says. "Before, it was a much more personal record, or archive, of your social life. Now, there are (updates about) weddings and babies, but you'll also see political views and videos about topics that people feel passionate about."
And with that shift, users are more apt to jump into controversial conversations, Simpson says.
Rich McMahon, 60, from Montclair, N.J., has vigorously disputed political statements on Facebook posted by someone he's known for 25 years.
"He would put up something that I thought was incorrect and I would point out how I thought it was incorrect," says McMahon, who eventually defriended that man on Facebook but remains friendly with him in real life.
Learn to set boundaries
Perlow, a blogger who lives in the Fort Lauderdale area and who lost a friend to Facebook fighting, has tinkered with third-party plug-ins that can create word filters on a profile, such as SocialFixer. But he has another idea on how to keep people from getting sucked in when they want to stay on the political sidelines: Facebook should create a way for users to filter their feeds and weed out politically oriented commentary.
"I kind of think of Facebook as a no-nastiness zone, and I don't want to see tons and tons of political objectives," he says. "I'd rather see a picture of someone's cat or their kids or what they did today, rather than 'Oh my God, look at all the horrible things that are going to happen if Romney becomes president or if Obama becomes president.'"
Until that time comes, Schott suggests that those who want to limit the political discourse go to Facebook's settings section and hide a friend's posts so they don't come up on a newsfeed.
"It's not as permanent as unfriending a person, so you're not insulting them by unfollowing them," he says. "You can hide them and then unhide them after election season."
Jerry White of San Leandro, Calif., upset some friends when he weighed in on political topics. At the same time, he noticed politically oriented remarks on Facebook that were "mean, negative and untrue." He saw posts that baited others and criticisms that seemed trivial, such as disparaging comments about the vegan sloppy joes that Michelle Obama served children at a White House luncheon.
"Finally, I just said that I've had enough," says White, 50. "Facebook is supposed to be fun, and I don't enjoy getting into arguments with people. I'm not changing my opinion and I'm not changing their opinion."
He opted out of the political commentary.
"I am turning over a new leaf," was his Aug. 21 status update. "No political posts on my wall and no comments on other people's political posts (except maybe a like)."
He didn't defriend those who took to the public pulpit but hid the updates of overzealous political posters.
His public statement earned him 34 "likes" from his friends, he says.
"Now my life on Facebook is so much nicer."
---
What happens on Facebook
A survey of social-networking site users showed:
38%
Discovered through a friend's posts that his or her political beliefs were different from what the user thought.
36%
Say social-network sites are "very important" or "somewhat important" for keeping up with political news.
16%
Say "some," "most" or "all" of their recent postings were about politics.
16%
Say they've changed their views about a political issue after discussing it or reading posts.
47%
Have hit the "like" button in response to political comments or material posted by someone else.
38%
Have posted positive comments in response to a political post or status update from someone else.
Source Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project surveys of social-networking site users
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October 17, 2012 Wednesday
FINAL EDITION
Another blow for green energy;
Car battery maker files for Chapter 11
BYLINE: Wendy Koch, @wendykoch, USA TODAY
SECTION: MONEY; Pg. 1B
LENGTH: 409 words
An electric vehicle battery maker that was awarded $249 million in federal stimulus funds filed for Chapter 11 reorganization on Tuesday, giving GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney potential ammunition to attack President Obama's green-energy subsidies.
The Waltham, Mass.-based company, A123 Systems, filed for bankruptcy protection in Wilmington, Del., a day after it said it would be unable to make a debt payment. It's selling its automotive assets to Milwaukee-based auto-parts maker Johnson Controls, which may enable it to continue operating two factories in the Detroit suburbs of Livonia and Romulus.
As electric vehicle sales remain sluggish, the rechargeable lithium-ion battery manufacturer has struggled. It took a hit when the batteries it supplied for Fisker Automotive's luxury plug-in Karma stopped running during a Consumer Reports test drive, prompting a recall. In August, it announced an investment deal with Chinese auto parts maker Wanxiang Group, but the deal collapsed.
Its Chapter 11 filing will likely spur further GOP criticism, which escalated once solar panel manufacturer Solyndra filed for Chapter 11 protection in September 2011 after receiving more than $500 million in federal loan guarantees.
In the first presidential debate Oct. 3, Romney called four aid recipients "losers," including Solyndra, Fisker, EV car maker Tesla Motors and auto battery manufacturer Ener1.
"You don't just pick the winners and losers, you pick the losers," Romney told Obama in a sharp exchange.
On Tuesday, Romney campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul called A123's bankruptcy "yet another failure for the president's disastrous strategy of gambling away billions of taxpayer dollars on a strategy of government-led growth that simply does not work."
The Department of Energy said those investments have had bipartisan support, pointing to a May 2009 letter, signed by GOP and Democratic members of Michigan's congressional delegation, in favor of the grants to A123 and three other companies.
Because of DOE investments since 2009, department spokesman Dan Leistikow said, the cost of a battery with a 100-mile range has been halved -- to $17,000 -- and is expected to drop to $10,000 by 2015. One other recipient, Ener1, has filed for bankruptcy protection but continues operating.
Leistikow notes that A123's sale to Johnson Controls means its facilities and technology will remain "a vital part" of America's advanced battery industry.
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October 17, 2012 Wednesday
FINAL EDITION
With gloves off, do they connect?;
TV moments, whether ad spots or debates, often make up minds
BYLINE: Susan Page, @susanpage, USA TODAY
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 5A
LENGTH: 1065 words
Call it fight night.
That low-key, low-energy Barack Obama whose performance was widely panned after the first presidential debate two weeks ago apparently stayed back in Denver. With his ambitions for a second term on the line, the president talked faster, pushed back harder and challenged Mitt Romney with more specifics in a crackling second encounter on Long Island on Tuesday.
The Republican nominee often was put on the defensive, forced to explain promises he made during the Republican primaries on immigration and taxes. He seemed taken aback when Obama blasted him for what the president characterized as an effort to score political points from violence that cost a U.S. ambassador's life. And in one of several confrontations that put the two men virtually toe-to-toe, Romney demanded to know whether Obama realized he had investments in China in his pension.
"Mr. President, have you looked at your pension?" Romney asked. "Have you looked at your pension? Mr. President, have you looked at your pension?"
"It's not as big as yours, so it doesn't take as long," Obama said to laughter.
A few moments on TV more than likely will determine who is elected president in 21 days. The question is which moments: the memorable exchanges from the three 90-minute debates between Obama and Romney? Or the impact from a flood of 30-second ads both sides are airing?
Strategists viewed the second debate as a pivotal event in a contest that is once again strikingly close. After a year-long campaign, the town-hall-style forum at Hofstra University was probably the best remaining opportunity for Romney to build on the positive impression he made in the first debate and for Obama to regain the momentum he lost there.
Obama came across as more engaged and presidential than he did in Denver, and he hit themes he failed to spotlight in the first debate. In response to the first question, he managed to mention Romney's opposition to the auto bailout. In the last, he noted Romney's controversial "47%" comment. In remarks that seemed tailor-made to please female voters, he noted his debt to his single mother and his grandmother and his aspirations for his two daughters.
Romney, meanwhile, struck a regretful tone when he expressed disappointment in the president's tenure, a sentiment mentioned by a voter who posed a question in the debate. "If you elect President Obama, you know what you're going to get," the former Massachusetts governor said. "You'll get a repeat of the last four years." He called Obama "great as a speaker" but, in effect, a failure as a president in delivering prosperity for the middle class.
Given the build-up beforehand for the high-stakes encounter, the debate presumably drew a huge audience. The first was watched by 67 million people, Nielsen reported, the most for any presidential debate since 1992.
Still, in the battleground states, the debates are framed by an unprecedented onslaught of political advertising, almost all of it negative. On local stations from Orlando to Columbus, Richmond to Las Vegas, airtime from now until election eve is sold out and campaign ads are running back-to-back.
It is easier to skip the debates than avoid the spots. In a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll of swing states, nearly eight of 10 residents in a dozen top battlegrounds say they have seen an ad for Obama or Romney in the past three days. (So did 63% of those in non-swing states.)
For most, it wasn't a positive experience. A 55% majority in the battlegrounds say this year's ads have "turned them off to the campaign." Just a third say they have made them "feel more excited" about it.
That said, voters in the battlegrounds acknowledge that the ads are influential. Six in 10 say the campaign ads they've seen have made them more certain about whom they'll support. Fewer than one in five say the ads made them less certain.
Obama ads in particular seem to have made an impression: 67% of Democrats say the ads solidified their vote, a bit more than the 60% of Republicans who say the same.
The poll of 1,023 registered voters was taken Oct. 5-11 in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin. The margin of error is +/-4 percentage points.
In this campaign more than previous ones, the ads and the debates seem to be filling divergent roles. Almost all of the TV ads have been negative -- that is, devoted to blasting the other candidate.
A study by the Wesleyan Media Project released this month reported that fewer than 8% of the presidential ads in the previous three weeks had been positive, mentioning only the candidate it backed. That's much lower than in 2000, when 30% of the ads were positive, or in 2008, when 19% were.
In some ways, the debates are designed to be an antidote to ads. On a small stage, surrounded on three sides by an audience of about 80 undecided or "persuadable" voters, they tried to make the case for themselves. Obama touted his record as president; Romney bragged about his record as Massachusetts governor and head of the Salt Lake City Olympics.
But they also turned nearly every question to an attack on the other. In an emotional exchange, Romney accused Obama of behaving inappropriately by leaving Washington to headline political fundraisers on the day after a U.S. ambassador was assassinated in Libya, and of trying to mislead Americans about the terrorist nature of that attack.
Obama turned the charge back to Romney: "The suggestion that anybody on my team team, the secretary of State, our U.N. ambassador, anybody on my team, would play politics or mislead when we've lost four of our own is offensive, Governor."
Their exchanges weren't exactly spontaneous -- each candidate spent days at "debate camps" beforehand rehearsing quips and practicing answers -- but they are less scripted than almost anything else the candidates do during a campaign.
In the end, says Mitchell McKinney of the University of Missouri, "the power of the 30-second spot may well trump the effect of debates."
Debates can help maintain or change momentum, as the first debate boosted Romney, and as the second debate may revive Obama's prospects. But after next week's final debate in Florida, focused on foreign policy, the candidates and their allies will intensify their campaigns on the airwaves. When the debates are over, the ads will still be on the air.
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October 17, 2012 Wednesday
FINAL EDITION
ROUND 2;
A feistier Obama, Romney tangle in lively free-for-all
BYLINE: Richard Wolf, @richardjwolf, USA TODAY
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 1A
LENGTH: 660 words
President Obama sought to battle back against Mitt Romney on Tuesday in their second debate, portraying his challenger as a man with "a one-point plan" to help the wealthy at the expense of the middle class.
Romney didn't back down, going toe-to-toe with the president on issues ranging from jobs and taxes to energy, immigration and the Middle East. Romney said Obama "has not been able to do what he said he'd do."
The town-hall-style event at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y., gave millions of television viewers a chance to see the two men interact directly with audience members as well as with each other.
Obama was more animated than he was in Denver two weeks ago, when Romney dominated the first of three debates. This time, the president raised issues that could be weak spots for Romney, including the Republican's opposition to the auto bailout, his former company's outsourcing of jobs and his statement that 47% of Americans are dependent on government.
"Gov. Romney doesn't have a five-point plan; he has a one-point plan," Obama said. "That plan is to make sure that folks at the top play by a different set of rules."
Romney fought back repeatedly against charges that his plan to cut tax rates without reducing middle class deductions doesn't add up. After Obama told the audience "you're going to be paying for it," Romney quipped, "When we're talking about math that doesn't add up, how about $4 trillion in deficits?"
Romney blamed Obama for gas prices that have doubled and accused the president of turning his back on traditional sources of energy. "This has not been Mr. Oil, or Mr. Gas, or Mr. Coal," Romney said.
Obama may have defused one of Romney's attack lines by taking responsibility for the recent debacle in Libya, where U.S. ambassador Christopher Stevens was killed by terrorists after seeking increased security. Asked if Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was responsible for it, as she said earlier Tuesday, Obama demurred. "She works for me. I'm the president. And I'm always responsible," he said.
Still, Romney said the situation "calls into question the president's whole policy in the Middle East."
The debate offered Obama a chance to regroup from his performance Oct. 3, when Romney outperformed Obama in substance and style before a viewing audience of 67 million.
Tuesday's debate was the only one featuring questions from potential voters -- the audience of 82 undecided or "persuadable" men and women chosen by the Gallup organization. Their questions -- from how Romney differs from George W. Bush to why Obama hasn't made things better, faster -- put both candidates on the spot.
Today, the two men and their running mates visit six states between them: Obama and Vice President Biden in Ohio, Iowa, Colorado and Nevada, Romney and Rep. Paul Ryan in Virginia and Florida. The final debate will be next Monday in Florida.
ON THE ATTACK
Mitt Romney
"He said when he was running for office, he would cut the deficit in half. Instead he's doubled it. If the president were re-elected, we'd go to almost $20 trillion. This puts us on a road to Greece. I know what it takes to balance budgets.''
"We don't have to settle for 43 months with unemployment above 8%, 23 million Americans struggling to find a good job.''
"What we don't need is to have the president keeping us from taking advantage of oil, coal and gas. This has not been Mr. Oil, or Mr. Gas, or Mr. Coal.''
President Obama
"Gov. Romney doesn't have a five-point plan. He has a one-point plan -- to make sure the folks at the top play by a different set of rules.''
"We haven't heard from the governor any specifics beyond Big Bird and eliminating funding for Planned Parenthood in terms of how he pays for (his economic plan).''
"Governor, when you were governor of Massachusetts, you stood in front of a coal plant and pointed at it and said, 'This plant kills,' and took great pride in shutting it down. And now suddenly you're a big champion of coal.''
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October 17, 2012 Wednesday
First EDITION
Going toe-to-toe on TV for points;
Which moments count most to fence-sitters: Ad spots or debates?
BYLINE: Susan Page, @susanpage, USA TODAY
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 5A
LENGTH: 1064 words
A few moments on TV more than likely will determine the next president.
The question is which moments: The most memorable exchanges from Tuesday night's 90-minute debate between President Obama and Mitt Romney? Or the impact from a flood of 30-second ads both sides are airing?
Obama, faulted for a low-energy performance at the first debate, came out swinging. When Romney criticized the Obama administration's record on energy exploration, Obama declared, "Very little of what Gov. Romney just said was true." The two men, standing almost toe to toe, argued with heat over who was right.
"You'll get your chance in a moment; I'm still speaking," Romney told the president as moderator Candy Crowley of CNN struggled to move on to the next question.
Strategists in both campaigns viewed the second presidential debate Tuesday night as a pivotal event in a contest that is once again strikingly close. After a year-long campaign, the town-hall-style forum at Hofstra University was probably the best remaining opportunity for Romney to build on the positive impression he made in the first debate and for Obama to regain the momentum he lost there.
Still, in the battleground states, the debates are framed by an unprecedented onslaught of advertising, almost all of it negative. On local stations from Orlando to Columbus, Richmond to Las Vegas, airtime from now until election eve is sold out and ads are running back-to-back.
It is easier to skip the debates than avoid the spots.
The first debate drew a TV audience of 67 million, Nielsen says, the most for any presidential debate since 1992. But the paid ads have reached more. In a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll of Swing States, nearly eight of 10 residents in a dozen top battlegrounds say they have seen an ad for Obama or Romney in the past three days. (So did 63% of those in non-swing states.)
For most, it wasn't a positive experience. A 55% majority in the battlegrounds say this year's ads have "turned them off to the campaign." Just a third say they have made them "feel more excited" about it.
"It's just mudslinging," Mary Edwards, 46, of Wilson, N.C., who was called in the poll, said in a follow-up phone interview. "They're just talking trash about each other. They're not putting out what they're going to do, what they can do."
"My 5-year-old is frightened by them, by those on both sides," says Karen Farrell, 42, who lives in the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C. The future they paint if the opposition wins is dire, Farrell says. "She says, 'Mama, is this really going to happen?'"
That said, voters in the battlegrounds acknowledge that the ads are influential. Six in 10 say the campaign ads they've seen have made them more certain about whom they'll support. Fewer than one in five say the ads made them less certain.
Obama ads in particular seem to have made an impression: 67% of Democrats say the ads solidified their vote, a bit more than the 60% of Republicans who say the same.
The poll of 1,023 registered voters was taken Oct. 5-11 in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin. The margin of error is +/-4 percentage points.
In this campaign more than previous ones, the ads and the debates seem to be filling divergent roles. Almost all of the TV ads have been negative -- that is, devoted to blasting the other candidate, not boosting your own. Romney and his allies have tried to tie Obama's policies to high unemployment and home foreclosures. Obama's team portrays Romney as a plutocrat with extreme conservative policies and little empathy for regular folks.
A study by the Wesleyan Media Project released this month reported that fewer than 8% of the presidential ads in the previous three weeks had been positive, mentioning only the candidate it backed. That's much lower than in 2000, when 30% of the ads were positive, or in 2008, when 19% were.
In some ways, the debates are an antidote to ads. On a small stage Tuesday night, surrounded on three sides by an audience of about 80 undecided or "persuadable" voters, they tried to make the case for themselves. Obama touted his record as president; Romney bragged about his record as Massachusetts governor and head of the Salt Lake City Olympics.
To be sure, they also attacked the other side. "For me, I look at what's happened over the past four years and I think, this is disappointing," Romney said in defending his tax plan as one that would generate more jobs. "We can do better than this."
"Gov. Romney doesn't have a five-point plan," Obama declared. "He has a one-point plan," which he said consists of breaks for the wealthy."
Obama showed much more energy than he did at the opening debate in Denver, talking faster, walking around the stage and looking directly at Romney. He argued that his leadership in the White House had helped rescue the auto industry and put the country back on the right track. Romney tried to convey that he understands the problems most Americans face and would do something about them. In response to the first questioner, Romney called him by name at the beginning of his answer and by the end was promising Jeremy that he'd have a job when he graduated from college in 2014.
Their exchanges weren't exactly spontaneous -- each candidate spent days at "debate camps" beforehand rehearsing quips and practicing answers -- but they are less scripted than almost anything else the candidates do during a campaign. "An unfiltered moment," Republican National Chairman Reince Priebus said beforehand.
In the end, says Mitchell McKinney of the University of Missouri, "the power of the 30-second spot may well trump the effect of debates."
For one thing, he says, voters are more likely to recall ads, especially negative ones, than they are moments from a debate beyond some gaffe or exchange that becomes the subject of constant replay.
Debates can help maintain or change momentum -- just as the first debate boosted Romney at Obama's expense. But after next week's final debate in Florida, focused on foreign policy, the candidates and their allies will intensify their campaigns on the airwaves. Romney raised $170 million last month and Obama $181 million, both records for this campaign cycle, with appeals to supporters to help pay for even more of those ads.
When the debates are over, the ads will be on the air.
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October 17, 2012 Wednesday
First EDITION
ROUND 2;
A feistier Obama, Romney tangle in lively free-for-all
BYLINE: Richard Wolf, @richardjwolf, USA TODAY
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 1A
LENGTH: 659 words
President Obama sought to battle back Tuesday night from a poor showing in the first presidential debate, charging that Republican challenger Mitt Romney "has a one-point plan" to help the wealthy at the expense of the middle class.
Romney, for his part, tried to take advantage of his campaign's upward momentum by tearing into Obama's economic record in the past four years and contrasting it with his own plans for the future.
In the second debate -- a town-hall-style event at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y. -- Obama and Romney tangled heatedly over jobs, taxes, energy and women's issues, often arguing face-to-face as they stood before 82 undecided voters.
The president was more animated than he had been in Denver two weeks ago, when he let Romney dominate the first of three debates. This time, he wasted no time bringing up issues that could be Achilles' heels for Romney, ranging from his opposition to the auto bailout to his own 14% tax rate.
"Gov. Romney doesn't have a five-point plan, he has a one-point plan," Obama said. "That plan is to make sure that folks at the top play by a different set of rules."
Romney fought back repeatedly against charges that his tax plan doesn't add up. "When we're talking about math that doesn't add up, how about $4 trillion in deficits?" he said.
Romney blamed Obama for gas prices that have doubled and accused the president of turning his back on traditional sources of energy. "This has not been Mr. Oil, or Mr. Gas, or Mr. Coal," Romney said.
The debate offered Obama an opportunity to regroup from his performance in Denver two weeks ago, when Romney dominated both in substance and style before a viewing audience of 67 million, the most for a debate since 1992.
More than seven in 10 likely voters gave that debate to Romney in a Washington Post/ABC News poll.
This time, slightly more people predicted Obama would win than Romney, according to the Pew Research Center. Still, the president may have benefited from lower expectations than he faced the first time around, and Romney may have faced higher expectations.
Tuesday's debate was the only one featuring questions from potential voters -- 82 undecided or "persuadable" men and women chosen by the Gallup organization. Moderator Candy Crowley of CNN followed up in search of more specific answers.
The final debate will be Monday night in Florida and will focus on foreign policy. The only vice presidential debate, held in Kentucky last week, featured an aggressive effort by Vice President Biden to attack the lack of specifics in the Republicans' economic and foreign policy proposals. Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin gave a spirited defense of the GOP plan and attacked Obama's stewardship.
Today, the four candidates are visiting six swing states between them: Obama and Biden in Ohio, Iowa, Colorado and Nevada, Romney and Ryan in Virginia and Florida.
ON THE ATTACK
Mitt Romney
"He said when he was running for office, he would cut the deficit in half. Instead he's doubled it. If the president were re-elected, we'd go to almost $20 trillion. This puts us on a road to Greece. I know what it takes to balance budgets.''
"We don't have to settle for 43 months with unemployment above 8%, 23 million Americans struggling to find a good job.''
"What we don't need is to have the president keeping us from taking advantage of oil, coal and gas. This has not been Mr. Oil, or Mr. Gas, or Mr. Coal.''
President Obama
"Gov. Romney doesn't have a five-point plan. He has a one-point plan -- to make sure the folks at the top play by a different set of rules.''
"We haven't heard from the governor any specifics beyond Big Bird and eliminating funding for Planned Parenthood in terms of how he pays for (his economic plan).''
"Governor, when you were governor of Massachusetts, you stood in front of a coal plant and pointed at it and said, 'This plant kills,' and took great pride in shutting it down. And now suddenly you're a big champion of coal.''
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October 17, 2012 Wednesday
CHASE EDITION
High-energy, no economy of words;
Which TV moments matter to voters on fence: Ads or debates?
BYLINE: Susan Page, @susanpage, USA TODAY
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 5A
LENGTH: 1061 words
Call it fight night.
That low-key, low-energy Barack Obama whose performance was widely panned after the first presidential debate two weeks ago apparently stayed back in Denver. With his ambitions for a second term on the line, the president talked faster, pushed back harder and challenged Mitt Romney with more specifics in their second encounter on Long Island Tuesday.
Romney was forced to defend and explain his record as governor of Massachusetts and the promises he made during the Republican primaries on immigration, taxes and more. "Very little of what Gov. Romney just said was true," Obama declared during a dispute on energy exploration that became a toe-to-toe confrontation in which each repeatedly interrupted the other.
Romney was aggressive, too. At one point, Romney walked over to Obama and asked repeatedly if he had looked at his pension plan, which, Romney said, included investments in China.
"It's not as big as yours," Obama replied to laughter.
A few moments on TV more than likely will determine who is elected president in 21 days. The question is which moments: The most memorable exchanges from the three 90-minute debates between Obama and Romney? Or the impact from a flood of 30-second ads both sides are airing?
Strategists in both campaigns viewed the second debate as a pivotal event in a contest that is once again strikingly close. After a year-long campaign, the town-hall-style forum at Hofstra University was probably the best remaining opportunity for Romney to build on the positive impression he made in the first debate and for Obama to regain the momentum he lost there.
Obama came across as more engaged and presidential than he did in Denver. He hit themes he failed to mention in the first debate. In the first question from a college student about jobs, he managed to mention Romney's opposition to the auto bailout. He made comments aimed at female voters, mentioning his debt to his single mother and his grandmother and his aspirations for his two daughters.
In a regretful tone, Romney expressed disappointment in the president's tenure, a sentiment heard from some voters who had supported Obama in 2008 with high hopes. "If you elect President Obama you know what you're going to get," he said. "You'll get a repeat of the last four years." Romney called Obama "great as a speaker" but, in effect, a failure as a president in delivering prosperity for the middle class.
Still, in the battleground states, the debates are framed by an unprecedented onslaught of political advertising, almost all of it negative. On local stations from Orlando to Columbus, Richmond to Las Vegas, airtime from now until election eve is sold out and campaign ads are running back-to-back.
It is easier to skip the debates than avoid the spots.
The first debate drew a TV audience of 67 million, Nielsen says, the most for any presidential debate since 1992. But the paid ads have reached more. In a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll of swing states, nearly eight of 10 residents in a dozen top battlegrounds say they have seen an ad for Obama or Romney in the past three days. (So did 63% of those in non-swing states.)
For most, it wasn't a positive experience. A 55% majority in the battlegrounds say this year's ads have "turned them off to the campaign." Just a third say they have made them "feel more excited" about it.
That said, voters in the battlegrounds acknowledge that the ads are influential. Six in 10 say the campaign ads they've seen have made them more certain about whom they'll support. Fewer than one in five say the ads made them less certain.
Obama ads in particular seem to have made an impression: 67% of Democrats say the ads solidified their vote, a bit more than the 60% of Republicans who say the same.
The poll of 1,023 registered voters was taken Oct. 5-11 in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin. The margin of error is +/-4 percentage points.
In this campaign more than previous ones, the ads and the debates seem to be filling divergent roles. Almost all of the TV ads have been negative -- that is, devoted to blasting the other candidate, not boosting your own. Romney and his allies have tried to tie Obama's policies to high unemployment and home foreclosures. Obama's team portrays Romney as a plutocrat with extreme conservative policies and little empathy for regular folks.
A study by the Wesleyan Media Project released earlier this month reported that fewer than 8% of the presidential ads in the previous three weeks had been positive, mentioning only the candidate it backed. That's much lower than in 2000, when 30% of the ads were positive, or in 2008, when 19% were.
In some ways, the debates are designed to be an antidote to ads. On a small stage, surrounded on three sides by an audience of about 80 undecided or "persuadable" voters, they tried to make the case for themselves. Obama touted his record as president; Romney bragged about his record as Massachusetts governor and head of the Salt Lake City Olympics.
But they also turned nearly every question to an attack on the other side. Romney criticized Obama for heading out of Washington for political fundraisers on the day after the U.S. ambassador was assassinated in Libya. Obama blasted Romney for making what he called unpresidential efforts to capitalize on the unrest.
Their exchanges weren't exactly spontaneous -- each candidate spent days at "debate camps" rehearsing quips and practicing answers -- but they are less scripted than almost anything else the candidates do during a campaign. "An unfiltered moment," Republican National Chairman Reince Priebus said beforehand.
But in the end, says Mitchell McKinney of the University of Missouri, "the power of the 30-second spot may well trump the effect of debates."
Debates can help maintain or change momentum, as the first debate boosted Romney at Obama's expense, and as the second debate may revive Obama's prospects. But after next week's final debate in Florida, focused on foreign policy, the candidates and their allies will intensify their campaigns on the airwaves. Romney raised $170 million last month and Obama $181 million, both records for this campaign cycle, with appeals to supporters to help pay for even more of those ads.
When the debates are over, the ads will be on the air.
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USA TODAY
October 17, 2012 Wednesday
CHASE EDITION
ROUND 2;
A feistier Obama, Romney tangle in lively free-for-all
BYLINE: Richard Wolf, @richardjwolf, USA TODAY
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 1A
LENGTH: 666 words
President Obama sought to battle back Tuesday night from his poor showing in the first presidential debate, charging that Republican challenger Mitt Romney "has a one-point plan" to help the wealthy at the expense of the middle class.
Romney, for his part, tried to take advantage of his campaign's upward momentum by tearing into Obama's economic record over the past four years and contrasting it with his own plans for a brighter future.
In the second debate -- a town hall-style event at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y. -- Obama and Romney tangled heatedly over jobs, taxes, energy, immigration and foreign policy, often arguing face-to-face as they stood before 82 undecided voters.
Obama was more animated than he was in Denver two weeks ago, when Romney dominated the first of three debates. This time, Obama raised issues that could be Achilles' heels for Romney, including the Republican's opposition to the auto rescue, his own 14% tax rate, and charges that his former private equity company was a "pioneer of outsourcing."
"Gov. Romney doesn't have a five-point plan; he has a one-point plan," Obama said. "That plan is to make sure that folks at the top play by a different set of rules."
Romney fought back repeatedly against charges that his plan to cut tax rates without affecting middle class deductions doesn't add up. "When we're talking about math that doesn't add up, how about $4 trillion in deficits?" he said, referring to Obama's four budgets.
Romney blamed Obama for gas prices that have doubled and accused the president of turning his back on traditional sources of energy. "This has not been Mr. Oil, or Mr. Gas, or Mr. Coal," Romney said.
Obama may have defused one of Romney's attack lines by taking responsibility for the situation in Libya, where U.S. ambassador Christopher Stevens was killed by terrorists after seeking increased security. Asked if Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was responsible for it, as she said earlier Tuesday, Obama demurred. "She works for me. I'm the president. And I'm always responsible," he said.
The debate offered Obama a chance to regroup from his performance Oct. 3, when Romney outperformed Obama in substance and style before a viewing audience of 67 million. More than seven in 10 likely voters gave that debate to Romney in a Washington Post/ABC News poll.
Tuesday's debate was the only one featuring questions from potential voters -- 82 undecided or "persuadable" men and women chosen by the Gallup organization.
The final debate will be Monday in Florida and will focus on foreign policy. The only vice presidential debate, held in Kentucky last week, featured an aggressive effort by Vice President Biden to attack Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin over Romney's proposals.
Today, the four candidates are visiting six swing states between them: Obama and Biden in Ohio, Iowa, Colorado and Nevada, Romney and Ryan in Virginia and Florida.
ON THE ATTACK
Mitt Romney
"He said when he was running for office, he would cut the deficit in half. Instead he's doubled it. If the president were re-elected, we'd go to almost $20 trillion. This puts us on a road to Greece. I know what it takes to balance budgets.''
"We don't have to settle for 43 months with unemployment above 8%, 23 million Americans struggling to find a good job.''
"What we don't need is to have the president keeping us from taking advantage of oil, coal and gas. This has not been Mr. Oil, or Mr. Gas, or Mr. Coal.''
President Obama
"Gov. Romney doesn't have a five-point plan. He has a one-point plan -- to make sure the folks at the top play by a different set of rules.''
"We haven't heard from the governor any specifics beyond Big Bird and eliminating funding for Planned Parenthood in terms of how he pays for (his economic plan).''
"Governor, when you were governor of Massachusetts, you stood in front of a coal plant and pointed at it and said, 'This plant kills,' and took great pride in shutting it down. And now suddenly you're a big champion of coal.''
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USA TODAY
October 17, 2012 Wednesday
FINAL EDITION
USA Now;
What we're following
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 3A
LENGTH: 330 words
NEWS Check our OnPolitics blog for latest reaction and fallout from last night's presidential debate, as we follow both candidates today on the campaign trail. President Obama travels to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and Athens, Ohio. Republican Mitt Romney is in Chesapeake and Leesburg, Va.
MONEY The Commerce Department releases its report on housing starts at 8:30a.m.ET. Look online at money.usatoday.com to find the impact of the numbers.
TECH Samsung's confidence in its line of smartphones is reflected in those ads that poke fun at rival Apple since the launch of the iPhone 5. Tech writer Roger Yu will look at how the phone wars are going.
LIFE Nashville's golden girl Taylor Swift is coming out with her fourth album, Red, but it's her biggest departure from a country sound. USA TODAY'S Brian Mansfield interviews the pop star in Nashville.
NEWS Cities, counties and other local governments across the USA are trying to maximize their purchasing power by combining services to save money -- from running 911 call centers to buying new street lights. USA TODAY'S Chuck Raasch looks at a few places where it's happening and how it's working.
LIFE An analysis of new Census data looks at cohabitation and finds that unmarried couples who live together are more diverse than people may realize.
SPORTS Another hot night for the baseball playoffs with two games being played. USA TODAY Sports will have the latest.
Just before deadline
An earthquake hit southern Maine on Tuesday night, rattling New England states as far as Connecticut, including the Boston area, but caused no injuries or apparent damage. The U.S. Geological Survey at first estimated the 7:12 p.m. quake as a 4magnitude-4.6, but later downgraded that to 4.0. The epicenter, about 3 miles west of Hollis Center, Maine, is about 3 miles deep. That is about 20 miles west of Portland. In nearby Saco, Sue Hadiaris said, "The whole house shook. It felt like a train was coming right through the house. It was very unnerving."
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October 17, 2012 Wednesday 8:12 PM EST
Race likely to be bitter until the bitter end
BYLINE: Dan Balz
SECTION: A section; Pg. A07
LENGTH: 958 words
HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. - No one thought the second debate between President Obama and Mitt Romney would be like the first one, and it certainly wasn't. The question is how much Tuesday's sharply contested forum will arrest the movement toward Romney that has shaken up the race in the past two weeks.
Unlike the exchange in Denver, Tuesday's debate at Hofstra University was not a mismatch between an aggressive and focused Romney and a lackluster and unfocused Obama. Instead, it was marked by tough and testy exchanges between two candidates who have opposing policies and who knew they had much to lose if they didn't do well.
Unlike in the first debate, Romney was on the defensive as much as or more than he was on the offensive. It was clear from the opening minutes Tuesday that Democrats, who were deeply disappointed by Obama's performance in Denver, were elated by the president they saw on stage. He passed up no opportunity to attack his rival and to challenge his record, just as Romney had done last time.
The candidates did not come to play nice. They squabbled over facts. They interrupted each other. They circled each other. They invaded each other's space. If town-hall-style debates are supposed to be forums in which the candidates focus on the voters onstage, this was one in which they often seemed to ignore their questioners so they could slug it out one on one.
Romney and Obama have one more debate, on Monday at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Fla. Although the focus of the final forum is foreign policy, it will be a time for the candidates to make their closing arguments to try to woo undecided voters and motivate their respective bases, whose enthusiasm becomes crucial in a close contest.
But after what happened at Hofstra, it's clear that the real competition will be the fight to the finish, a battle for the battleground states where the election will be decided. The most important are Virginia, Florida and Ohio - with Ohio being perhaps first among equals. After that come Iowa, Colorado and New Hampshire, Nevada, North Carolina and Wisconsin.
Few events have changed the race as quickly or dramatically as the first debate. Romney's clear victory over Obama in Denver turned around the campaign narrative, which was heading toward a premature conclusion that the contest was virtually over. It also shifted polls, both nationally and in the battleground states.
How many minds will be changed by what happened on Tuesday night? There is likely to be a boost in enthusiasm among Obama loyalists, and that's not insignificant. Given that some parts of his coalition, young voters in particular, are not as motivated as they were four years ago, that jolt of energy could be important. Obama advisers know that turning out their voters will be harder for them than it will be for Romney's team.
But Romney's initial performance did much to generate enthusiasm among his supporters. That's not likely to be diminished by Tuesday's debate. After Denver, Republicans began to think it was possible to win. Their enthusiasm going forward is unlikely to slacken. The turnout battle from now until Election Day will be as fiercely fought as was the battle at Hofstra.
One of the keys to the outcome will be women, and a big question from Tuesday's debate is how women will react to what they saw. Romney appeared to be making progress in reducing Obama's big margins among female voters in the past two weeks. But he may have hurt himself.
Just as Vice President Biden's smiles and laughs during his debate with GOP vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan (Wis.) last week turned off some voters, Romney's efforts to push back against CNN's Candy Crowley, who served as moderator, could alienate some women.
Heading into the second debate, there was little disagreement that a race that had seemed to be slipping away from Romney in September was back to what strategists in both parties had predicted would be a competitive contest to the end.
In the hours before the exchange, the Romney and Obama campaigns offered genuinely conflicting and perhaps self-serving assessments of how things stood - in the battlegrounds and among key demographic groups.
Take the state of play in Ohio. Before Denver, Obama had a clear and, in some polls, big lead. In a pre-debate appearance Tuesday in the spin room, Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) told reporters that the race there was even. "Our own tracking indicates it's a dead heat," he said.
Portman, who has played the president in Romney's debate preparations, said that before Denver, the challenger was behind by "a big gap," but added that Romney has made steady progress since then. "Frankly, it wasn't just a bump after the debate."
Jim Messina, Obama's campaign manager, offered a counterview. He said the first debate may have tightened the race, but added that the contest always was destined to close in the final month. He also said that Obama was still strong in the Midwest - Ohio, Iowa and Wisconsin.
"We continue to have more pathways to 270 votes than Romney," he said. "All of our pathways are still there. We are where we need to be."
What voters saw Tuesday night was just how big the choice will be in November. Romney and Obama painted dire pictures of what will happen if the other is elected in three weeks. Voters may have heard this before, but it was more sharply etched, with the candidates standing only a few feet apart, than in the television commercials or campaign appearances.
Now the campaign turns to fundamentals - one more debate and then a sprint to Nov. 6. The race has been long and hard-fought, but Obama and Romney showed Tuesday night that they have plenty left for the final stretch, and their teams are ready for what comes next.
balzd@washpost.com
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October 17, 2012 Wednesday 8:12 PM EST
Stimulus-backed [#xfb01]rm in bankruptcy
BYLINE: Carol D. Leonnig
SECTION: A section; Pg. A03
LENGTH: 513 words
An electric-car-battery company that won a $249 million stimulus grant filed for bankruptcy Tuesday, reigniting Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney's criticism that the Obama administration wasted taxpayer money by subsidizing clean-energy companies.
The company has received $130 million of its federal grant, which it used to build a Michigan plant to manufacture lithium ion batteries for electric cars. The company said it would create thousands of jobs.
But the start-up was besieged by problems, including malfunctions and fires in its batteries and a heavy reliance on a single troubled buyer, carmaker Fisker Automotive.
"A123's bankruptcy is yet another failure for the president's disastrous strategy of gambling away billions of taxpayer dollars on a strategy of government-led growth that simply does not work," Romney campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul said in an e-mailed statement.
A123 is the fifth prominentclean-energy firm the Obama administration subsidized with loans or grants that has filed for bankruptcy protection, joining solar firms Solyndra and Abound Solar, energy firm Beacon Power, and battery company Ener1. Solyndra, whose lead investor was linked to a key Obama donor, is often cited by Republicans as a prime example of "cronyism" in President Obama's stimulus program.
Several leaders in the electric-car and battery industry warned last year that demand would fall far short of Obama's goal of 1 million electric cars on the road by 2015, and would not justify all the plants that stimulus grants were financing.
A123's troubles surfaced last year. Fisker Automotive fell two years behind its timetable in producing its electric car. The Energy Department had agreed to lend Fisker $529 million but in 2011 refused to release funding beyond the $193 million that had gone out.
A123 chief executive David Vieau said in a December interview with The Washington Post that the company was hitting the same "minor bumps in the road" that every start-up experiences.
"We have the orders, customers and factories," Vieau said. "That's not conjecture, it's a business plan. We will be fully busy in 2013."
Obama had touted A123 as a job creator and illustration of his stimulus program at work. He made a highly publicized call to A123's Livonia plant for its 2010 opening and said the plant signaled "the birth of an entire new industry in America."
An Energy Department spokesman said that the company's fall is natural in a free market, and that Johnson Controls, which makes batteries and energy systems, has bought A123's factories.
"In an emerging industry, it's very common to see some firms consolidate with others as the industry grows and matures," Dan Leistikow wrote in an e-mail.
A Johnson Controls spokesman said the firm intends to use A123's technology but does not know specifically how it will use its battery plant. Johnson Controls won a $299 million stimulus grant to build two battery plants. It is running one at half-capacity and has put off plans to build the second.
leonnigc@washpost.com
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October 17, 2012 Wednesday 8:12 PM EST
Moderator Crowley makes her presence known
BYLINE: Paul Farhi
SECTION: A section; Pg. A05
LENGTH: 753 words
True to her predictions, moderator Candy Crowley was an active, aggressive and prominent presence in Tuesday night's second presidential debate.
The longtime CNN reporter and host pressed, poked and prodded President Obama and GOP nominee Mitt Romney when necessary, and occasionally played fact-checker and referee between the two men, during a town-hall debate at Hofstra University in New York.
Despite a format that was supposed to put the spotlight on undecided voters, Crowley's influence was substantial. She wound up asking 10 questions, one fewer than the voters chosen by the Gallup Organization as the primary questioners of the candidates.
Crowley also exerted an unseen influence over the debate. Under the rules, she was part of a team that selected the questions, as well as the order in which they were asked, by a cross section of Americans.
Once the debate began, she also was empowered, at her discretion, to extend the time for discussion of any question. In the end, Obama spoke for more than three minutes longer than the former Massachusetts governor during a debate that ran a bit over its scheduled 90 minutes.
Thanks to the format, the tenor of the debate was more conversational - and occasionally more confrontational - than the first presidential debate two weeks ago. At various times, a candidate rose from his stool and appealed directly to Crowley for time to address a statement by his opponent. At one point, Crowley ordered Romney to sit down.
Crowley's mission was beset by a small and fleeting controversy in the days leading up to the debate. The Obama and Romney campaigns had reservations about her role; they wanted no after-the-fact questions at all - a demand that essentially would have reduced her job to keeping time and holding the microphone for audience members.
But Crowley and the bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates said they weren't bound by a memorandum of understanding between the campaigns. They stuck to a broader agreement with the campaigns from July that said Crowley's role was to "facilitate discussion," a catchall phrase that Crowley said included the right to pose questions after an audience member weighed in.
The only restriction, which Crowley did observe, was that she couldn't introduce a new topic in her follow-ups or offer her own opinions on the proceedings.
As Crowley told CNN this month: "Once the table is kind of set by the town hall questioner, there is then time for me to say, 'Hey, wait a second, what about X, Y and Z?' "
And that is generally what Crowley did, never wandering too far from the question at hand.
Her attempts to pin down both candidates on specific policies, though, were often rebuffed. When she asked Obama early on whether $4 for a gallon of gas is "the new normal," the president didn't answer, instead attacking Romney about his support of the coal industry.
Similarly, when she followed up a voter's question about immigration by asking Romney about his support for "self-deportation" of undocumented immigrants, Romney ignored her and launched into a critique of the president's inability to pass comprehensive immigration legislation during his first year in office.
She also corrected Romney for saying that Obama had failed to characterize the killing of the American ambassador to Libya last month as an act of terrorism. "He did say that," she said. Her response drew scattered applause from the audience and a retort from Obama: "Can you say that a little louder, Candy?"
Obama and Romney were so aggressive with each other that Crowley at moments struggled to separate them verbally. In that sense, she was similar to ABC's Martha Raddatz, who kept last week's vice-presidential debate largely within the rules.
Crowley seems unlikely to take the public drubbing that befell PBS's Jim Lehrer, who was widely criticized for his open-ended questions and for permitting Obama and Romney to exceed time limits in their first presidential debate.
For the record, Crowley was the fourth woman to moderate a presidential debate. The first was National Public Radio's Pauline Frederick, who moderated the second debate between President Gerald R. Ford and Jimmy Carter in 1976. Barbara Walters of ABC News moderated the third Carter-Ford debate that year, as well as the 1984 debate between President Ronald Reagan and challenger Walter Mondale.
Carole Simpson, then of ABC News, was the moderator for a town-hall debate involving President George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Ross Perot in 1992.
farhip@washpost.com
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October 17, 2012 Wednesday 8:12 PM EST
Debate's questioners reflect economic angst
BYLINE: Amy Gardner
SECTION: A section; Pg. A04
LENGTH: 806 words
HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. - The everyday Americans who engaged the candidates at Tuesday's second presidential debate spoke directly to a question widely expected to decide this election:
Whom can they trust to improve their faith in the economy, the country and their futures?
A college student, a respiratory therapist and a club owner were among the undecided Long Island voters selected randomly by the Gallup organization to pose questions to President Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney during their only town-hall-style debate of the season.
The questioners at Hofstra University seemed like real people, speaking in sometimes thick New York accents, occasionally fumbling to find their reading glasses or the notecards on which they'd scrawled their questions. They sharply probed the candidates' weaknesses - asking questions that prompted exchanges about Romney's wealth or Obama's response to the violence in Libya. Their topics, in the aggregate, made plain the economic uncertainty that dozens of polls have already told us haunts a wide swath of America.
"Mr. President, Governor Romney, as a 20-year-old college student, all I hear from professors, neighbors and others is that when I graduate, I will have little chance to get employment," began Jeremy Epstein, the evening's first questioner. "What can you say to reassure me, but more importantly my parents, that I will be able to sufficiently support myself after I graduate?"
Katherine Fenton, a young woman, offered a glimpse of the uncertainty through her own prism: "In what new ways do you intend to rectify the inequalities in the workplace, specifically regarding females making only 72 percent of what their male counterparts earn?"
Some questions were framed as a referendum on Obama, an effort to get at what he's done to deserve reelection. Phillip Tricolla asked the president to explain why gas prices are so high. Susan Katz said she was "disappointed" with the lack of progress she's seen over the past four years.
Some of these questioners left the impression that they like the president and may even have supported him last time. But their questions suggested that they are searching for a reason they should do so again next month.
The questioners also succeeded in an area that the moderators of the previous debates - Jim Lehrer at the first presidential debate in Denver and Martha Raddatz with the vice-presidential candidates in Kentucky - did not: They asked questions about complex topics, including taxes and foreign policy, in plain English.
Mary Follano succeeded even after a stumble in the middle of her moment.
"Governor Romney, you have stated that if you're elected president, you would plan to reduce the tax rates for all the tax brackets and that you would work with the Congress to eliminate some deductions in order to make up for the loss in revenue.
"Concerning these various deductions, the mortgage deductions, the charitable deductions, the child tax credit and also the - oh, what's that other credit? I forgot."
"You're doing great," Obama offered.
"Oh, I remember," Follano continued. "The education credits, which are important to me, because I have children in college. What would be your position on those things, which are important to the middle class?"
Little information was made available by the Commission on Presidential Debates about the questioners. But public records revealed a Mary Follano, for instance, who is 54, lives in Oceanside, N.Y., and works as a respiratory therapist. She is a registered Republican. Trocolla is a Republican, too, aged 52 and the owner of a club. Kerry Ladka, 61, is a registered Republican and said during the debate that he works at Global Telecom Supply in Mineola. His question, he said, came from his "brain trust" at the office.
One surprise of the evening was how little the two candidates tried to interact with their inquisitors. Both men walked up to the questioners and listened patiently while they spoke. But they spent most of the evening trying to pivot to a direct conversation with the other rather than engaging their audience.
Romney, responding to Follano's tax question, started by saying, "Let me tell you, you're absolutely right about part of that" - not exactly a warm and fuzzy outreach. At another moment, Romney initially ignored Katz's question about her disappointment in Obama's four years in order to rebut the president's previous remarks on women's health issues.
"Thank you. And I appreciate that question," Romney said. "I just want to make sure that, I think I was supposed to get that last answer."
But he seemed to realize the peril of turning his back on his inquisitor.
"Let me come back," he said after some back-and-forth with moderator Candy Crowley, "and - and answer your question."
gardnera@washpost.com
Alice Crites contributed to this report.
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Election 2012
October 17, 2012 Wednesday 6:21 PM EST
Ad watch: Romney pushes Obama on immigration promise
BYLINE: Natalie Jennings
LENGTH: 119 words
Mitt Romney, "Soluciones para la inmigracion"
What it says (translated): "The liberal Democrats promised immigration reform... Now, the Democrats say they never made a promise ... Romney and the Republicans will fight for bipartisan reform to bring families together."
What it means: Mitt Romney, who trails significantly in polling among Hispanic voters, is trying to turn the tables. The ad highlights an exchange from Tuesday night's debate in which he confronted Obama over the president's unfulfilled promise of immigration reform.
Who will see it: There's no new ad buy, but Romney has in recent weeks bought ad time in Colorado, Florida and Nevada on Spanish-speaking media.
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Election 2012
October 17, 2012 Wednesday 3:10 PM EST
Ad watch: Romney highlights top debate moment
BYLINE: Rachel Weiner
LENGTH: 95 words
Mitt Romney, "The Choice"
What it says: "The President has tried, but his policies haven't worked."
What it means: As The Fix notes, Romney was at his best in the second debate when contrasting Obama's record with his own. This ad aims to keep that moment in voters' minds.
Who will see it: The day of the debate, Romney made a $12 million ad buy in nine swing states, with the most money going to Florida, Ohio and Virginia. Colorado, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina and Wisconsin are also on the list.
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October 17, 2012 Wednesday 6:23 AM EST
Fact Check: Romney misleads on middle class taxes
BYLINE: Glenn Kessler
LENGTH: 258 words
Romney's claim that Obama would raise taxes on the middle class by $4,000 has earned him three Pinocchios in the past.
The figure is drawn froma very dry reporttitled A Simple Measure of the Distributional Burden of Debt Accumulation.
The study tries to calculate the burden of servicing the national debt by various income groups, examining what would happen under current law, current policies and Obamas budget. (Current law refers to policies that are supposed to happen, such as expiring tax cuts; current policy reflects the fact that Congress has said it will not let certain tax cuts expire.)
Among the three scenarios, theres actually not much difference for households making between $100,000 to $200,000, the burden would be between $2,800 to $5,400 a year through 2022 and the Obama administrations budget falls right in the middle. In other words, the study shows how much lower taxes could be if the nation did not keep adding to the debt load; it does not show, as the ad claims, that Obama has some sort of secret plan to raise taxes.
Presumably, a Romney budget would fall in the same range, but he has not provided detailed plans. We arent really able to run the overall numbers for Romney because we were trying to use the plans for which we had good budget projections, said Matthew Jensen, one of the co-authors.
Indeed, the study also looks how the distributional burden rose under George W. Bush and he of course cut taxes, repeatedly. So just because the debt burden rises, that is not proof that a president will raise taxes.
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The Washington Post
October 17, 2012 Wednesday
Met 2 Edition
Race likely to be bitter until the bitter end
BYLINE: Dan Balz
SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A07
LENGTH: 955 words
DATELINE: HEMPSTEAD, N.Y.
HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. - No one thought the second debate between President Obama and Mitt Romney would be like the first one, and it certainly wasn't. The question is how much Tuesday's sharply contested forum will arrest the movement toward Romney that has shaken up the race in the past two weeks.
Unlike the exchange in Denver, Tuesday's debate at Hofstra University was not a mismatch between an aggressive and focused Romney and a lackluster and unfocused Obama. Instead, it was marked by tough and testy exchanges between two candidates who have opposing policies and who knew they had much to lose if they didn't do well.
Unlike in the first debate, Romney was on the defensive as much as or more than he was on the offensive. It was clear from the opening minutes Tuesday that Democrats, who were deeply disappointed by Obama's performance in Denver, were elated by the president they saw on stage. He passed up no opportunity to attack his rival and to challenge his record, just as Romney had done last time.
The candidates did not come to play nice. They squabbled over facts. They interrupted each other. They circled each other. They invaded each other's space. If town-hall-style debates are supposed to be forums in which the candidates focus on the voters onstage, this was one in which they often seemed to ignore their questioners so they could slug it out one on one.
Romney and Obama have one more debate, on Monday at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Fla. Although the focus of the final forum is foreign policy, it will be a time for the candidates to make their closing arguments to try to woo undecided voters and motivate their respective bases, whose enthusiasm becomes crucial in a close contest.
But after what happened at Hofstra, it's clear that the real competition will be the fight to the finish, a battle for the battleground states where the election will be decided. The most important are Virginia, Florida and Ohio - with Ohio being perhaps first among equals. After that come Iowa, Colorado and New Hampshire, Nevada, North Carolina and Wisconsin.
Few events have changed the race as quickly or dramatically as the first debate. Romney's clear victory over Obama in Denver turned around the campaign narrative, which was heading toward a premature conclusion that the contest was virtually over. It also shifted polls, both nationally and in the battleground states.
How many minds will be changed by what happened on Tuesday night? There is likely to be a boost in enthusiasm among Obama loyalists, and that's not insignificant. Given that some parts of his coalition, young voters in particular, are not as motivated as they were four years ago, that jolt of energy could be important. Obama advisers know that turning out their voters will be harder for them than it will be for Romney's team.
But Romney's initial performance did much to generate enthusiasm among his supporters. That's not likely to be diminished by Tuesday's debate. After Denver, Republicans began to think it was possible to win. Their enthusiasm going forward is unlikely to slacken. The turnout battle from now until Election Day will be as fiercely fought as was the battle at Hofstra.
One of the keys to the outcome will be women, and a big question from Tuesday's debate is how women will react to what they saw. Romney appeared to be making progress in reducing Obama's big margins among female voters in the past two weeks. But he may have hurt himself.
Just as Vice President Biden's smiles and laughs during his debate with GOP vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan (Wis.) last week turned off some voters, Romney's efforts to push back against CNN's Candy Crowley, who served as moderator, could alienate some women.
Heading into the second debate, there was little disagreement that a race that had seemed to be slipping away from Romney in September was back to what strategists in both parties had predicted would be a competitive contest to the end.
In the hours before the exchange, the Romney and Obama campaigns offered genuinely conflicting and perhaps self-serving assessments of how things stood - in the battlegrounds and among key demographic groups.
Take the state of play in Ohio. Before Denver, Obama had a clear and, in some polls, big lead. In a pre-debate appearance Tuesday in the spin room, Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) told reporters that the race there was even. "Our own tracking indicates it's a dead heat," he said.
Portman, who has played the president in Romney's debate preparations, said that before Denver, the challenger was behind by "a big gap," but added that Romney has made steady progress since then. "Frankly, it wasn't just a bump after the debate."
Jim Messina, Obama's campaign manager, offered a counterview. He said the first debate may have tightened the race, but added that the contest always was destined to close in the final month. He also said that Obama was still strong in the Midwest - Ohio, Iowa and Wisconsin.
"We continue to have more pathways to 270 votes than Romney," he said. "All of our pathways are still there. We are where we need to be."
What voters saw Tuesday night was just how big the choice will be in November. Romney and Obama painted dire pictures of what will happen if the other is elected in three weeks. Voters may have heard this before, but it was more sharply etched, with the candidates standing only a few feet apart, than in the television commercials or campaign appearances.
Now the campaign turns to fundamentals - one more debate and then a sprint to Nov. 6. The race has been long and hard-fought, but Obama and Romney showed Tuesday night that they have plenty left for the final stretch, and their teams are ready for what comes next.
balzd@washpost.com
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October 17, 2012 Wednesday
Met 2 Edition
Stimulus-backed ï¬rm in bankruptcy
BYLINE: Carol D. Leonnig
SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A03
LENGTH: 511 words
An electric-car-battery company that won a $249 million stimulus grant filed for bankruptcy Tuesday, reigniting Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney's criticism that the Obama administration wasted taxpayer money by subsidizing clean-energy companies.
The company has received $130 million of its federal grant, which it used to build a Michigan plant to manufacture lithium ion batteries for electric cars. The company said it would create thousands of jobs.
But the start-up was besieged by problems, including malfunctions and fires in its batteries and a heavy reliance on a single troubled buyer, carmaker Fisker Automotive.
"A123's bankruptcy is yet another failure for the president's disastrous strategy of gambling away billions of taxpayer dollars on a strategy of government-led growth that simply does not work," Romney campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul said in an e-mailed statement.
A123 is the fifth prominentclean-energy firm the Obama administration subsidized with loans or grants that has filed for bankruptcy protection, joining solar firms Solyndra and Abound Solar, energy firm Beacon Power, and battery company Ener1. Solyndra, whose lead investor was linked to a key Obama donor, is often cited by Republicans as a prime example of "cronyism" in President Obama's stimulus program.
Several leaders in the electric-car and battery industry warned last year that demand would fall far short of Obama's goal of 1 million electric cars on the road by 2015, and would not justify all the plants that stimulus grants were financing.
A123's troubles surfaced last year. Fisker Automotive fell two years behind its timetable in producing its electric car. The Energy Department had agreed to lend Fisker $529 million but in 2011 refused to release funding beyond the $193 million that had gone out.
A123 chief executive David Vieau said in a December interview with The Washington Post that the company was hitting the same "minor bumps in the road" that every start-up experiences.
"We have the orders, customers and factories," Vieau said. "That's not conjecture, it's a business plan. We will be fully busy in 2013."
Obama had touted A123 as a job creator and illustration of his stimulus program at work. He made a highly publicized call to A123's Livonia plant for its 2010 opening and said the plant signaled "the birth of an entire new industry in America."
An Energy Department spokesman said that the company's fall is natural in a free market, and that Johnson Controls, which makes batteries and energy systems, has bought A123's factories.
"In an emerging industry, it's very common to see some firms consolidate with others as the industry grows and matures," Dan Leistikow wrote in an e-mail.
A Johnson Controls spokesman said the firm intends to use A123's technology but does not know specifically how it will use its battery plant. Johnson Controls won a $299 million stimulus grant to build two battery plants. It is running one at half-capacity and has put off plans to build the second.
leonnigc@washpost.com
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October 17, 2012 Wednesday
Suburban Edition
Moderator Crowley makes her presence known
BYLINE: Paul Farhi
SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A05
LENGTH: 753 words
True to her predictions, moderator Candy Crowley was an active, aggressive and prominent presence in Tuesday night's second presidential debate.
The longtime CNN reporter and host pressed, poked and prodded President Obama and GOP nominee Mitt Romney when necessary, and occasionally played fact-checker and referee between the two men, during a town-hall debate at Hofstra University in New York.
Despite a format that was supposed to put the spotlight on undecided voters, Crowley's influence was substantial. She wound up asking 10 questions, one fewer than the voters chosen by the Gallup Organization as the primary questioners of the candidates.
Crowley also exerted an unseen influence over the debate. Under the rules, she was part of a team that selected the questions, as well as the order in which they were asked, by a cross section of Americans.
Once the debate began, she also was empowered, at her discretion, to extend the time for discussion of any question. In the end, Obama spoke for more than three minutes longer than the former Massachusetts governor during a debate that ran a bit over its scheduled 90 minutes.
Thanks to the format, the tenor of the debate was more conversational - and occasionally more confrontational - than the first presidential debate two weeks ago. At various times, a candidate rose from his stool and appealed directly to Crowley for time to address a statement by his opponent. At one point, Crowley ordered Romney to sit down.
Crowley's mission was beset by a small and fleeting controversy in the days leading up to the debate. The Obama and Romney campaigns had reservations about her role; they wanted no after-the-fact questions at all - a demand that essentially would have reduced her job to keeping time and holding the microphone for audience members.
But Crowley and the bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates said they weren't bound by a memorandum of understanding between the campaigns. They stuck to a broader agreement with the campaigns from July that said Crowley's role was to "facilitate discussion," a catchall phrase that Crowley said included the right to pose questions after an audience member weighed in.
The only restriction, which Crowley did observe, was that she couldn't introduce a new topic in her follow-ups or offer her own opinions on the proceedings.
As Crowley told CNN this month: "Once the table is kind of set by the town hall questioner, there is then time for me to say, 'Hey, wait a second, what about X, Y and Z?' "
And that is generally what Crowley did, never wandering too far from the question at hand.
Her attempts to pin down both candidates on specific policies, though, were often rebuffed. When she asked Obama early on whether $4 for a gallon of gas is "the new normal," the president didn't answer, instead attacking Romney about his support of the coal industry.
Similarly, when she followed up a voter's question about immigration by asking Romney about his support for "self-deportation" of undocumented immigrants, Romney ignored her and launched into a critique of the president's inability to pass comprehensive immigration legislation during his first year in office.
She also corrected Romney for saying that Obama had failed to characterize the killing of the American ambassador to Libya last month as an act of terrorism. "He did say that," she said. Her response drew scattered applause from the audience and a retort from Obama: "Can you say that a little louder, Candy?"
Obama and Romney were so aggressive with each other that Crowley at moments struggled to separate them verbally. In that sense, she was similar to ABC's Martha Raddatz, who kept last week's vice-presidential debate largely within the rules.
Crowley seems unlikely to take the public drubbing that befell PBS's Jim Lehrer, who was widely criticized for his open-ended questions and for permitting Obama and Romney to exceed time limits in their first presidential debate.
For the record, Crowley was the fourth woman to moderate a presidential debate. The first was National Public Radio's Pauline Frederick, who moderated the second debate between President Gerald R. Ford and Jimmy Carter in 1976. Barbara Walters of ABC News moderated the third Carter-Ford debate that year, as well as the 1984 debate between President Ronald Reagan and challenger Walter Mondale.
Carole Simpson, then of ABC News, was the moderator for a town-hall debate involving President George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Ross Perot in 1992.
farhip@washpost.com
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October 17, 2012 Wednesday
Met 2 Edition
Debate's questioners reflect economic angst
BYLINE: Amy Gardner
SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A04
LENGTH: 804 words
DATELINE: HEMPSTEAD, N.Y.
HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. - The everyday Americans who engaged the candidates at Tuesday's second presidential debate spoke directly to a question widely expected to decide this election:
Whom can they trust to improve their faith in the economy, the country and their futures?
A college student, a respiratory therapist and a club owner were among the undecided Long Island voters selected randomly by the Gallup organization to pose questions to President Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney during their only town-hall-style debate of the season.
The questioners at Hofstra University seemed like real people, speaking in sometimes thick New York accents, occasionally fumbling to find their reading glasses or the notecards on which they'd scrawled their questions. They sharply probed the candidates' weaknesses - asking questions that prompted exchanges about Romney's wealth or Obama's response to the violence in Libya. Their topics, in the aggregate, made plain the economic uncertainty that dozens of polls have already told us haunts a wide swath of America.
"Mr. President, Governor Romney, as a 20-year-old college student, all I hear from professors, neighbors and others is that when I graduate, I will have little chance to get employment," began Jeremy Epstein, the evening's first questioner. "What can you say to reassure me, but more importantly my parents, that I will be able to sufficiently support myself after I graduate?"
Katherine Fenton, a young woman, offered a glimpse of the uncertainty through her own prism: "In what new ways do you intend to rectify the inequalities in the workplace, specifically regarding females making only 72 percent of what their male counterparts earn?"
Some questions were framed as a referendum on Obama, an effort to get at what he's done to deserve reelection. Phillip Tricolla asked the president to explain why gas prices are so high. Susan Katz said she was "disappointed" with the lack of progress she's seen over the past four years.
Some of these questioners left the impression that they like the president and may even have supported him last time. But their questions suggested that they are searching for a reason they should do so again next month.
The questioners also succeeded in an area that the moderators of the previous debates - Jim Lehrer at the first presidential debate in Denver and Martha Raddatz with the vice-presidential candidates in Kentucky - did not: They asked questions about complex topics, including taxes and foreign policy, in plain English.
Mary Follano succeeded even after a stumble in the middle of her moment.
"Governor Romney, you have stated that if you're elected president, you would plan to reduce the tax rates for all the tax brackets and that you would work with the Congress to eliminate some deductions in order to make up for the loss in revenue.
"Concerning these various deductions, the mortgage deductions, the charitable deductions, the child tax credit and also the - oh, what's that other credit? I forgot."
"You're doing great," Obama offered.
"Oh, I remember," Follano continued. "The education credits, which are important to me, because I have children in college. What would be your position on those things, which are important to the middle class?"
Little information was made available by the Commission on Presidential Debates about the questioners. But public records revealed a Mary Follano, for instance, who is 54, lives in Oceanside, N.Y., and works as a respiratory therapist. She is a registered Republican. Trocolla is a Republican, too, aged 52 and the owner of a club. Kerry Ladka, 61, is a registered Republican and said during the debate that he works at Global Telecom Supply in Mineola. His question, he said, came from his "brain trust" at the office.
One surprise of the evening was how little the two candidates tried to interact with their inquisitors. Both men walked up to the questioners and listened patiently while they spoke. But they spent most of the evening trying to pivot to a direct conversation with the other rather than engaging their audience.
Romney, responding to Follano's tax question, started by saying, "Let me tell you, you're absolutely right about part of that" - not exactly a warm and fuzzy outreach. At another moment, Romney initially ignored Katz's question about her disappointment in Obama's four years in order to rebut the president's previous remarks on women's health issues.
"Thank you. And I appreciate that question," Romney said. "I just want to make sure that, I think I was supposed to get that last answer."
But he seemed to realize the peril of turning his back on his inquisitor.
"Let me come back," he said after some back-and-forth with moderator Candy Crowley, "and - and answer your question."
gardnera@washpost.com
Alice Crites contributed to this report.
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The New York Times
October 16, 2012 Tuesday
Late Edition - Final
73,000 Political Ads Test Even a City of Excess
BYLINE: By JEREMY W. PETERS
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1052 words
LAS VEGAS -- No one comes here expecting anything in moderation. But to turn on the television these days is to shatter even Vegas-size notions of excess.
More political commercials have been broadcast in this city than anywhere else, giving it the dubious distinction of being the most saturated media market in the most expensive year in American politics.
And late last week, when the count passed 73,000, Las Vegas set the record as the place with the most televised campaign advertisements in a single year.
With the influx here and in other battleground states certain to become even heavier in the final three weeks of the campaign, this election is surpassing 2008 both in the sheer volume of ads and in the money spent. Media experts estimate that about $2.5 billion was spent nationwide on political advertising in 2008, and that this year the total could grow by a third, to as much as $3.3 billion.
Commercials are flying at Nevadans at a rate of 10,000 per week. At least 98 different ads are in rotation, coming from ''super PACs,'' various Democratic and Republican committees, Congressional candidates, local candidates and, of course, President Obama and Mitt Romney.
Local stations are shaving minutes off their news programs to accommodate the crush. Breaks during many popular network shows like ''Saturday Night Live'' are sold out between now and Election Day. And Las Vegans find themselves at such a desperation point that some are longing to return to the days when ads from personal injury lawyers and discount furniture stores dominated the local news.
''I hate 'em, I hate 'em, I hate 'em,'' said Debbie Markland, 62, a cocktail waitress at a downtown casino who now mutes the television in exasperation during every commercial break. ''I can't wait until this election is over.''
The political ads in Las Vegas are as caustic as they are ceaseless. This candidate took a trip to Italy and stuck you, the taxpayer, with the bill. That candidate will eliminate federal money for your annual mammogram. This candidate thinks Social Security is a pyramid scheme. And that candidate would cut federal programs that help your autistic child.
Las Vegas, home not just to a closely fought presidential race but to competitive House and Senate races as well, is the center of a nationwide advertising binge. Waves of ads, many of them paid for with super PAC money, are also cluttering the airwaves in states like North Dakota, Montana and Nebraska where the presidential candidates have not set foot.
The number of campaign commercials for the 2012 elections is on track to far exceed what ran four years ago, according to Kantar Media. A tally taken four weeks before Election Day found that campaign ads had run on local television and national cable more than 2.7 million times, compared with 3.5 million in all of 2008.
Experts consider volume to be a more accurate gauge of an advertising war's intensity than money spent because advertising rates vary widely from city to city. A $1 million buy in Madison, Wis., for example, is not the same as one in Miami.
The more than $3 billion that Kantar Media estimates will be spent on political advertising this year is roughly equal to the amount set aside in a government settlement with major banks to help homeowners who owe more than their homes are worth.
In the presidential race alone, the campaigns and their allies have reserved about $70 million in commercial time between Oct. 15 and Election Day. Of that, $5 million is just for Nevada and its six electoral votes. Even larger amounts are being spent in places like Ohio and Florida, where the high cost of advertising gives campaigns and super PACs less punch for their dollar.
But Nevada, with its relatively low advertising rates and just two media markets that reach most of the state, is beating even the most hotly contested battlegrounds in the number of ads broadcast. Reno, the state's No. 2 market, ranks fourth in total saturation, just behind Cleveland (second) and Denver (third).
''There are battleground states, and then there's Vegas,'' said Ken Goldstein, president of the Campaign Media Analysis Group at Kantar Media.
''We have a joke around here,'' said Lisa Howfield, the general manager of KSNV, the NBC station. ''Pretty soon we're going to have such long commercial breaks that people are going to tune in and all they'll hear is: 'Hello, welcome to News 3. And goodbye.' ''
Ms. Howfield has stretched some of her station's commercial breaks far past the usual two minutes, to three minutes. She said that her inventory of advertising time was 90 percent sold through Election Day, and that some programs like ''Jeopardy!'' a perennial favorite for political advertisers because it reaches many older people, were oversold.
Many people in Las Vegas say they feel overwhelmed.
''It's like brainwashing,'' said Marques Hill, 27, a bartender.
''It's sickening,'' said Steve Culp, 58, a casino manager.
''The money is obscene. Obscene,'' said Jimmie Johns, a retiree. ''I have never witnessed a campaign like this one. And I'm 67.''
One question that grows with each dollar spent is whether voters are being swayed anymore, especially when many say the ads they see now are merely noise canceling out more noise.
Scholars who have looked at the impact of campaign ads have found that for races like those for House seats in which name recognition often makes all the difference, ads do matter. But for presidential candidates, the case is not as strong.
And this record-breaking year, ironically enough, may provide the most convincing argument yet that all the advertising that money can buy ultimately has little impact.
''There are always lots of efforts to say after the fact, 'Oh, it must be due to the ads,' '' said Diana C. Mutz, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania who recently wrote a paper for the American Academy of Arts and Sciences that argues that advertising does little to alter public opinion in presidential races.
''TV is great for name recognition, but it's much harder to actually change someone's mind who has an opinion on the matter,'' she said. ''And that's where you find that this huge amount of spending isn't commensurate with the impact of political ads.''
''You could buy votes for what they're spending and it would probably have more impact.''
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October 16, 2012 Tuesday
Late Edition - Final
China and Its Trade Practices Are Coming to the Debates
BYLINE: By SHARON LaFRANIERE
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; Pg. 13
LENGTH: 1231 words
Halfway through the fall debates, the sparring between President Obama and Mitt Romney and their running mates has been notable for the absence of an issue Mr. Romney has pressed on the campaign trail and in his television advertising: China.
When American policy toward Beijing does come up Tuesday night -- or next week, when it will be one of five designated topics in a debate focused solely on foreign affairs -- Mr. Romney will have plenty of arguments to draw on.
In one recent ad, he accused the Obama administration of letting hundreds of thousands of American factory jobs vanish in the face of what he calls China's unfair trade practices. ''It's time to stand up to the cheaters,'' he says in the ad, ''and make sure we protect jobs for the American people.''
And that is just part of a fusillade of soft-on-China accusations that Mr. Romney has leveled at Mr. Obama, who he says has allowed the Chinese to manipulate their currency, distort fair trade, steal American technology and hack into American government and corporate computers.
The Obama campaign has hardly been silent. In an ad earlier this month it said that while Mr. Romney ran a private equity firm, it invested in a Chinese company that exploited low-wage labor. ''Mitt Romney tough on China? Since when?'' the ad asks.
Many Asia experts say Mr. Romney's comments are indeed tough. They begin with a pledge to brand Beijing a currency manipulator on his first day in office, and end with promises to increase America's already formidable military presence in the western Pacific and sell new American fighter jets to Taiwan. Analysts say such moves would amount to a profound shift in a policy toward China that has remained remarkably constant for decades across Republican and Democratic administrations. And they would be virtually certain to upend relations with Beijing's leaders.
Whether a President Romney would carry out such pledges, however, is another matter. ''There is a lot of game playing on both sides,'' said Uri Dadush, director of the International Economics Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. ''Once in office, presidents tend to recognize that the Chinese don't react well when you point a gun to their head.''
Even some of Mr. Obama's own current and former aides acknowledge that Mr. Obama went too far to accommodate China's leaders during his first year in office. The White House hardened its approach after the Chinese gave the cold shoulder to the United States on issues ranging from climate change to Iran's nuclear program. The president then pursued trade grievances, firmed up diplomatic and military ties with Beijing's neighbors and designated the western Pacific as a central focus of American military strategy.
Mr. Romney promises to display even more spine.
''The policy that Obama has adopted of constantly acquiescing to China, constantly giving China more room in the hope that China will grant us some concessions, simply hasn't worked,'' said Alex Wong, the campaign's foreign policy director.
Mr. Romney often promises to officially declare that China is deliberately weakening its currency, the renminbi, to make its exports more competitive, thereby costing American jobs. That action would only trigger bilateral consultations. But should Beijing refuse to bend, he has said, he would instruct the Commerce Department to impose duties on Chinese imports.
In the 2008 presidential campaign Mr. Obama also promised to label China a currency manipulator. But once in office, he opted for behind-the-scenes pressure on Beijing to let the renminbi strengthen. So has every president since 1994. Many economists argue that the pressure, combined with China's own desire to rebalance its economy, has worked. The renminbi is no longer grossly undervalued, they say, although other powerful hidden subsidies, like artificially low interest rates, remain. Since 2005, the renminbi has appreciated about 30 percent, the International Monetary Fund concluded in July, revising its status from ''substantially'' to ''moderately undervalued.''
Similarly, China's current account surplus -- which measures in part how much more money China makes from exports than it spends on imports -- has fallen to three percent of gross domestic product, down from 10 percent in 2007. That suggests a stronger renminbi has reduced the trade imbalance between China and its partners.
''I think we should declare victory,'' said Nicholas R. Lardy, a senior economist at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. The Carnegie Endowment's Mr. Dadush asserts that Mr. Romney's pledge makes ''no economic or trade policy sense, given what China has done and given its importance.''
Grant D. Aldonas, Mr. Romney's trade adviser and a Commerce under secretary for international trade during President George W. Bush's first term, acknowledges the renminbi's gains but argues the government recently has been suppressing its value.
The renminbi has indeed weakened one percent against the dollar since February, according to Michael Pettis, a finance professor at Peking University and a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment. But Mr. Pettis argues that the reason for the renminbi's fall is capital flight, not government intervention. So many Chinese are taking money out of the country that Beijing is ''actually forcing the renminbi up, not down,'' he said.
Mr. Romney is threatening to use the Commerce Department's powers to unilaterally impose tariffs on Chinese products, while the Obama administration's main tactic against unfair trade practices has been to bring cases before the World Trade Organization. Mr. Romney argues there is no need to hold back because a trade war is already under way. But many economists say the current battles are mere skirmishes, not a real trade war. They warn that unilateral sanctions could trigger Chinese retaliation that would more than offset any economic benefits.
Consider 2009, when the Commerce Department imposed a duty on imports of Chinese tires -- a move sought by the United Steelworkers Union and widely criticized by economists and by Mr. Romney as politically motivated. Gary Hufbauer, a trade expert with the Peterson Institute, said the action protected at most 1,200 American jobs but last year alone cost American consumers $1.1 billion in higher-priced tires.
China responded with tariffs on imports of American chicken parts that cost American poultry producers an estimated $1 billion in lost sales. Last month, the Obama administration let the tire tariff quietly expire.
On the military front, Mr. Romney's aides have said he wants to build up the American military presence to counter China's influence in the western Pacific. The Obama administration has moved in that direction, expanding an Australian base to 2,500 Marines and stationing four combat ships in Singapore. Mr. Romney has also criticized President Obama's 2011 decision to sell Taiwan $5.85 billion in military hardware to update its air force instead of approving Taiwan's request for 66 new and more advanced F-16 fighters. As president, an aide said, Mr. Romney would approve such a request.
''There would be a tough Chinese reaction,'' said Bonnie S. Glaser, a senior fellow with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who described China's opposition to the sale as an unofficial red line. ''The question is how tough.''
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GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: President Obama in Shanghai in 2009. He and Mitt Romney have traded charges of being soft on China. (PHOTOGRAPH BY STEPHEN CROWLEY/THE NEW YORK TIMES) (A13)
The Chinese president, Hu Jintao, with President Obama in a news conference at the White House in January 2011. (PHOTOGRAPH BY DOUG MILLS/THE NEW YORK TIMES) (A17)
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The New York Times Blogs
(DealBook)
October 16, 2012 Tuesday
Goldman Beats Expectations
BYLINE: WILLIAM ALDEN
SECTION: BUSINESS
LENGTH: 1935 words
HIGHLIGHT: Goldman Sachs swung to a profit in the third quarter. | Andrew Ross Sorkin says lawsuits brought by the government "may have a profound impact" on how businesses view the next crisis. | SoftBank is betting it can break the dominance of Verizon and AT&T.
GOLDMAN BEATS EXPECTATIONS | Goldman Sachs may be getting its groove back. The Wall Street firm said on Tuesday that it swung to a profit in the third quarter, reporting net earnings applicable to common shareholders of $1.46 billion, compared with a loss of $428 million in the quarter a year ago. The third-quarter profit amounted to $2.85 a share, beating the $2.12 a share analysts were expecting. Goldman also said it was increasing its dividend to 50 cents from 46 cents. (The conference call to discuss the results is at 9:30 a.m. Dial 1-888-281-7154 to listen in the United States.)
One risk still looms for Goldman, as a new book by a former employee, Greg Smith, is set to be released next week. But judging by the first chapter, it is not entirely clear what dirt Mr. Smith might reveal in "Why I Left Goldman Sachs," DealBook's Susanne Craig writes. Mr. Smith illustrates Goldman's famously competitive culture with anecdotes about folding stools and a Cheddar cheese salad. The other chapters, with titles like "Welcome to the Casino" and "Monstrosities," may prove more embarrassing for the firm, Ms. Craig notes.
Goldman added a new board member on Monday, naming Adebayo O. Ogunlesi as an independent director. Mr. Ogunlesi, a well-known Wall Street figure who once said he did not fit the mold of a typical investment banker, runs Global Infrastructure Partners, a private equity firm that recently raised a $8.25 billion fund.
Over all, it has been a year of retrenching in the financial industry, and the cutbacks have had an effect on New York City's economy. The City Room blog writes that smaller bonuses on Wall Street were "the main reason Manhattan was the only large county in the country to record a decline in wages in the latest 12-month period for which figures are available, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics in New York."
THE BAILOUT BLUES | Jamie Dimon was hailed as the King of Wall Street when JPMorgan Chase bought Bear Stearns in March 2008 in a government-brokered deal. But he has lately been having second thoughts about Bear, which is the target of a new lawsuit filed by New York's attorney general. Andrew Ross Sorkin writes in the DealBook column: "Whether you love or hate Wall Street, whether you want bankers to go to jail or not, the recent series of suits brought by the government may have a profound impact on how businesses react to being asked to provide assistance when the next financial crisis arrives. Chances are, they won't."
AN INSIDER'S PLAN TO LIMIT BANK SIZE | Daniel K. Tarullo, a Federal Reserve governor, made a splash last week when he urged Congress to consider limiting the size of banks' balance sheets. DealBook's Peter Eavis writes that lawmakers on both sides of the aisle may warm to that idea. "I am completely open to the proposal because of my similar concern about the growing size of institutions that are too big to fail," said Senator David Vitter, a Republican of Louisiana. "Beyond this specific proposal, there is a growing nonpartisan consensus to do a lot more to limit the size of the megabanks."
ON THE AGENDA | Mitt Romney and President Obama meet Tuesday night in the second presidential debate. Mr. Romney, the Republican candidate, has cultivated some well-placed friends on Wall Street, who held a fund-raising event Monday evening, DealBook's Peter Lattman reports. The event's nearly 200 co-chairs included John Paulson of Paulson & Company and Josh Harris and Marc Rowan, the co-founders of Apollo Global Management. Another host, Paul E. Singer of Elliott Management, recently donated $250,000 to support same-sex marriage in Maryland, Politico reports.
Stephen Siderow, co-founder of the hedge fund BlueMountain Capital, is on Bloomberg TV at 1 p.m. Justin Rosenstein, who works with Dustin Moskovitz at the start-up Asana, is on Bloomberg TV at 6 p.m. Coca-Cola, Johnson & Johnson, State Street and UnitedHealth report earnings before the bell. In London, Bloomberg Link hosts a conference on currency markets. The Consumer Price Index for September is out at 8:30 a.m., and data on industrial production for September comes out at 9:15 a.m.
SOFTBANK'S BIG GAMBLE | With a $20.1 billion deal to take control of Sprint, SoftBank of Japan is "making a risky wager that it can break the dominance of Verizon and AT&T in the United States the way it did a similar duopoly that long reigned over the Japanese market," DealBook's Michael J. de la Merced writes. But SoftBank's investors may be concerned that the chief executive, Masayoshi Son, is letting his ego guide his thinking, The Wall Street Journal's Heard on the Street column writes. Mr. Son said on Monday, "Every man wants to be No. 1." Still, SoftBank's shares rebounded on Tuesday, climbing 9.5 percent, after two days of declines.
The deal strengthens Sprint, expanding its customer base and giving it more purchasing power, DealBook notes. But it raises questions about another wireless company, Clearwire, which is seen as a potential takeover target in the future. Clearwire's shares were up nearly 16 percent on Tuesday.
YAHOO'S NEW C.O.O. | Marissa Mayer, who is back at Yahoo after a two-week maternity leave, announced on Monday that she had hired Henrique De Castro, a vice president at Google, to be Yahoo's chief operating officer. Mr. De Castro's compensation will include a $600,000 base salary plus a bonus that could be twice that much, the Bits blog writes.
| Contact: @williamalden | E-mail
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Mergers & Acquisitions »
How the BlackBerry Lost Its Cool | Research in Motion is confronted by a growing number of consumers who say they feel "ashamed" of their BlackBerry devices. NEW YORK TIMES
Rothschild Resigns from Board of Mining Company | The British financier Nathaniel Rothschild said he regretted having partnered with the Bakrie family, an Indonesian dynastic clan that helped him build the London-listed mining company Bumi. DealBook »
CNH Rejects Merger Deal From Fiat Industrial | Fiat Industrial, which manufactures capital goods like trucks and commercial vehicles, had hoped the deal would allow it to obtain a listing in the United States. DealBook »
When the C.F.O. Isn't Wanted on the Board | The Wall Street Journal writes: "Chief financial officers serving as directors at their own companies are a dying breed, thanks to a push for greater board independence." WALL STREET JOURNAL
Flynt to Buy a Movie Distributor | Larry Flynt, the adult entertainment mogul, is paying about $33 million for New Frontier Media, which offers pay-per-view adult programming. WALL STREET JOURNAL
INVESTMENT BANKING »
S.&P. Downgrades Big Spanish Banks | Banco Santander and B.B.V.A., along with nine other Spanish banks, had their ratings cut by Standard & Poor's. BLOOMBERG NEWS
Spain Said to Consider Asking for Credit Line From Europe |
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Citigroup in the Shadows | Bloomberg News writes that Vikram S. Pandit of Citigroup "is among the most vocal critics of shadow banking, the lightly regulated lending that can mask risk in the financial system. He's also among the kings of the business." BLOOMBERG NEWS
Bank of America Hires Chairman of China Operations | Margaret Ren, an investment banker who is a daughter-in-law of a former Chinese premier, has connections in China that could help her in her new role, The Wall Street Journal notes. WALL STREET JOURNAL | REUTERS
Iranian Hackers Blamed for Cyberattacks on Banks |
WALL STREET JOURNAL
A Banker's Experience on Bath Salts | According to a recording released by the Los Angeles police union, a Deutsche Bank executive claimed to have ingested so-called bath salts stimulants at the time of an incident in May, The Los Angeles Times reports. LOS ANGELES TIMES
PRIVATE EQUITY »
A Lack of Private Equity Opportunities in China | The Wall Street Journal reports: "China's private equity investors are finding fewer opportunities and smaller returns compared to even four years ago." WALL STREET JOURNAL
Snack Company Yields a Tasty Profit | The private equity firm VMG Partners made a return of more than eight times on its investment in Snack Factory, which it sold for $340 million to another company, The Wall Street Journal reports. WALL STREET JOURNAL
AXA Private Equity Adds New York Executive to Its Board |
REUTERS
HEDGE FUNDS »
Funds Focused on Emerging Markets Stand Out | Hedge funds focused on emerging markets have had gains of nearly 8 percent this year, compared with about 5 percent for a typical hedge fund, according to Reuters. REUTERS
Financial Advisers and the New Hedge Fund Ad Rules | After hedge funds are able to promote their businesses more freely, some financial advisers could "face pressure from investors attracted to alternative investments they see marketed in glossy magazine ads or on television," The Wall Street Journal writes. WALL STREET JOURNAL
I.P.O./OFFERINGS »
Telefonica Sets Terms for I.P.O. of German Unit | The Spanish telecommunications giant Telefónica, which is seeking to reduce its heavy debt load, says it will raise around $2 billion through an initial public offering of its German business. DealBook »
Fosun Pharmaceutical Said to Plan Hong Kong I.P.O. | The company, which is said to be aiming to raise up to $591 million, would be the "first significant new listing since July in the Hong Kong market," The Wall Street Journal reports. WALL STREET JOURNAL
VENTURE CAPITAL »
The V.C. Deal That Got Away | Norwest Venture Partners, which turned down an opportunity to invest in Workday, "has got to be kicking itself," Fortune's Dan Primack writes. FORTUNE
Start-Up Aims to Make TV More Interactive | Viggle, a start-up based in New York, "hopes to become the entertainment industry's chief loyalty-rewards program," Fortune writes. FORTUNE
LEGAL/REGULATORY »
New York Fed Turns Over New Libor Documents | The Federal Reserve Bank of New York turned over nearly 6,000 pages to a House subcommittee that is examining whether the regulator had turned a blind eye to Libor rate-rigging during the financial crisis. DealBook »
Homeowners Sue Banks Over Libor Manipulation |
BLOOMBERG NEWS
Fed Official on the Shortcomings of Monetary Policy | William C. Dudley, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, spoke on Tuesday about the central bank's policy before the recent expansion of its stimulus: "With the benefit of hindsight, monetary policy needed to be still more aggressive." NEW YORK TIMES ECONOMIX
Nomura Is Fined $3.8 Million for Leaking Information |
BLOOMBERG NEWS
Tax Proposal in Mongolia Threatens Rio Tinto Project | Mongolia's new government is in the process of passing a 2013 budget whose draft proposal includes increasing taxes and royalties by $300 million on a huge copper mine. If Rio Tinto seeks international arbitration to resolve the issue, it could delay the start date for the mine. DealBook »
American Politics and Chinese Data | In the midst of increasingly heated election rhetoric about China, Beijing has released some important economic data as its currency reached record highs, Bill Bishop writes in the China Insider column. What DealBook readers need to know about China this week. DealBook »
Financier Behind 'Rebecca' Is Arrested | Mark C. Hotton, a stockbroker who is accused of defrauding the producers of the Broadway musical "Rebecca," was arrested on Monday, The New York Times reports. NEW YORK TIMES
Law Firm for UBS Whistle-Blower Seeks Share of Award |
BLOOMBERG NEWS
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LOAD-DATE: October 16, 2012
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
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Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
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The New York Times Blogs
(DealBook)
October 16, 2012 Tuesday
Goldman Beats Expectations
BYLINE: WILLIAM ALDEN
SECTION: BUSINESS
LENGTH: 1935 words
HIGHLIGHT: Goldman Sachs swung to a profit in the third quarter. | Andrew Ross Sorkin says lawsuits brought by the government "may have a profound impact" on how businesses view the next crisis. | SoftBank is betting it can break the dominance of Verizon and AT&T.
GOLDMAN BEATS EXPECTATIONS | Goldman Sachs may be getting its groove back. The Wall Street firm said on Tuesday that it swung to a profit in the third quarter, reporting net earnings applicable to common shareholders of $1.46 billion, compared with a loss of $428 million in the quarter a year ago. The third-quarter profit amounted to $2.85 a share, beating the $2.12 a share analysts were expecting. Goldman also said it was increasing its dividend to 50 cents from 46 cents. (The conference call to discuss the results is at 9:30 a.m. Dial 1-888-281-7154 to listen in the United States.)
One risk still looms for Goldman, as a new book by a former employee, Greg Smith, is set to be released next week. But judging by the first chapter, it is not entirely clear what dirt Mr. Smith might reveal in "Why I Left Goldman Sachs," DealBook's Susanne Craig writes. Mr. Smith illustrates Goldman's famously competitive culture with anecdotes about folding stools and a Cheddar cheese salad. The other chapters, with titles like "Welcome to the Casino" and "Monstrosities," may prove more embarrassing for the firm, Ms. Craig notes.
Goldman added a new board member on Monday, naming Adebayo O. Ogunlesi as an independent director. Mr. Ogunlesi, a well-known Wall Street figure who once said he did not fit the mold of a typical investment banker, runs Global Infrastructure Partners, a private equity firm that recently raised a $8.25 billion fund.
Over all, it has been a year of retrenching in the financial industry, and the cutbacks have had an effect on New York City's economy. The City Room blog writes that smaller bonuses on Wall Street were "the main reason Manhattan was the only large county in the country to record a decline in wages in the latest 12-month period for which figures are available, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics in New York."
THE BAILOUT BLUES | Jamie Dimon was hailed as the King of Wall Street when JPMorgan Chase bought Bear Stearns in March 2008 in a government-brokered deal. But he has lately been having second thoughts about Bear, which is the target of a new lawsuit filed by New York's attorney general. Andrew Ross Sorkin writes in the DealBook column: "Whether you love or hate Wall Street, whether you want bankers to go to jail or not, the recent series of suits brought by the government may have a profound impact on how businesses react to being asked to provide assistance when the next financial crisis arrives. Chances are, they won't."
AN INSIDER'S PLAN TO LIMIT BANK SIZE | Daniel K. Tarullo, a Federal Reserve governor, made a splash last week when he urged Congress to consider limiting the size of banks' balance sheets. DealBook's Peter Eavis writes that lawmakers on both sides of the aisle may warm to that idea. "I am completely open to the proposal because of my similar concern about the growing size of institutions that are too big to fail," said Senator David Vitter, a Republican of Louisiana. "Beyond this specific proposal, there is a growing nonpartisan consensus to do a lot more to limit the size of the megabanks."
ON THE AGENDA | Mitt Romney and President Obama meet Tuesday night in the second presidential debate. Mr. Romney, the Republican candidate, has cultivated some well-placed friends on Wall Street, who held a fund-raising event Monday evening, DealBook's Peter Lattman reports. The event's nearly 200 co-chairs included John Paulson of Paulson & Company and Josh Harris and Marc Rowan, the co-founders of Apollo Global Management. Another host, Paul E. Singer of Elliott Management, recently donated $250,000 to support same-sex marriage in Maryland, Politico reports.
Stephen Siderow, co-founder of the hedge fund BlueMountain Capital, is on Bloomberg TV at 1 p.m. Justin Rosenstein, who works with Dustin Moskovitz at the start-up Asana, is on Bloomberg TV at 6 p.m. Coca-Cola, Johnson & Johnson, State Street and UnitedHealth report earnings before the bell. In London, Bloomberg Link hosts a conference on currency markets. The Consumer Price Index for September is out at 8:30 a.m., and data on industrial production for September comes out at 9:15 a.m.
SOFTBANK'S BIG GAMBLE | With a $20.1 billion deal to take control of Sprint, SoftBank of Japan is "making a risky wager that it can break the dominance of Verizon and AT&T in the United States the way it did a similar duopoly that long reigned over the Japanese market," DealBook's Michael J. de la Merced writes. But SoftBank's investors may be concerned that the chief executive, Masayoshi Son, is letting his ego guide his thinking, The Wall Street Journal's Heard on the Street column writes. Mr. Son said on Monday, "Every man wants to be No. 1." Still, SoftBank's shares rebounded on Tuesday, climbing 9.5 percent, after two days of declines.
The deal strengthens Sprint, expanding its customer base and giving it more purchasing power, DealBook notes. But it raises questions about another wireless company, Clearwire, which is seen as a potential takeover target in the future. Clearwire's shares were up nearly 16 percent on Tuesday.
YAHOO'S NEW C.O.O. | Marissa Mayer, who is back at Yahoo after a two-week maternity leave, announced on Monday that she had hired Henrique De Castro, a vice president at Google, to be Yahoo's chief operating officer. Mr. De Castro's compensation will include a $600,000 base salary plus a bonus that could be twice that much, the Bits blog writes.
| Contact: @williamalden | E-mail
Sign up for the DealBook Newsletter, delivered every morning and afternoon.
Mergers & Acquisitions »
How the BlackBerry Lost Its Cool | Research in Motion is confronted by a growing number of consumers who say they feel "ashamed" of their BlackBerry devices. NEW YORK TIMES
Rothschild Resigns from Board of Mining Company | The British financier Nathaniel Rothschild said he regretted having partnered with the Bakrie family, an Indonesian dynastic clan that helped him build the London-listed mining company Bumi. DealBook »
CNH Rejects Merger Deal From Fiat Industrial | Fiat Industrial, which manufactures capital goods like trucks and commercial vehicles, had hoped the deal would allow it to obtain a listing in the United States. DealBook »
When the C.F.O. Isn't Wanted on the Board | The Wall Street Journal writes: "Chief financial officers serving as directors at their own companies are a dying breed, thanks to a push for greater board independence." WALL STREET JOURNAL
Flynt to Buy a Movie Distributor | Larry Flynt, the adult entertainment mogul, is paying about $33 million for New Frontier Media, which offers pay-per-view adult programming. WALL STREET JOURNAL
INVESTMENT BANKING »
S.&P. Downgrades Big Spanish Banks | Banco Santander and B.B.V.A., along with nine other Spanish banks, had their ratings cut by Standard & Poor's. BLOOMBERG NEWS
Spain Said to Consider Asking for Credit Line From Europe |
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Citigroup in the Shadows | Bloomberg News writes that Vikram S. Pandit of Citigroup "is among the most vocal critics of shadow banking, the lightly regulated lending that can mask risk in the financial system. He's also among the kings of the business." BLOOMBERG NEWS
Bank of America Hires Chairman of China Operations | Margaret Ren, an investment banker who is a daughter-in-law of a former Chinese premier, has connections in China that could help her in her new role, The Wall Street Journal notes. WALL STREET JOURNAL | REUTERS
Iranian Hackers Blamed for Cyberattacks on Banks |
WALL STREET JOURNAL
A Banker's Experience on Bath Salts | According to a recording released by the Los Angeles police union, a Deutsche Bank executive claimed to have ingested so-called bath salts stimulants at the time of an incident in May, The Los Angeles Times reports. LOS ANGELES TIMES
PRIVATE EQUITY »
A Lack of Private Equity Opportunities in China | The Wall Street Journal reports: "China's private equity investors are finding fewer opportunities and smaller returns compared to even four years ago." WALL STREET JOURNAL
Snack Company Yields a Tasty Profit | The private equity firm VMG Partners made a return of more than eight times on its investment in Snack Factory, which it sold for $340 million to another company, The Wall Street Journal reports. WALL STREET JOURNAL
AXA Private Equity Adds New York Executive to Its Board |
REUTERS
HEDGE FUNDS »
Funds Focused on Emerging Markets Stand Out | Hedge funds focused on emerging markets have had gains of nearly 8 percent this year, compared with about 5 percent for a typical hedge fund, according to Reuters. REUTERS
Financial Advisers and the New Hedge Fund Ad Rules | After hedge funds are able to promote their businesses more freely, some financial advisers could "face pressure from investors attracted to alternative investments they see marketed in glossy magazine ads or on television," The Wall Street Journal writes. WALL STREET JOURNAL
I.P.O./OFFERINGS »
Telefonica Sets Terms for I.P.O. of German Unit | The Spanish telecommunications giant Telefónica, which is seeking to reduce its heavy debt load, says it will raise around $2 billion through an initial public offering of its German business. DealBook »
Fosun Pharmaceutical Said to Plan Hong Kong I.P.O. | The company, which is said to be aiming to raise up to $591 million, would be the "first significant new listing since July in the Hong Kong market," The Wall Street Journal reports. WALL STREET JOURNAL
VENTURE CAPITAL »
The V.C. Deal That Got Away | Norwest Venture Partners, which turned down an opportunity to invest in Workday, "has got to be kicking itself," Fortune's Dan Primack writes. FORTUNE
Start-Up Aims to Make TV More Interactive | Viggle, a start-up based in New York, "hopes to become the entertainment industry's chief loyalty-rewards program," Fortune writes. FORTUNE
LEGAL/REGULATORY »
New York Fed Turns Over New Libor Documents | The Federal Reserve Bank of New York turned over nearly 6,000 pages to a House subcommittee that is examining whether the regulator had turned a blind eye to Libor rate-rigging during the financial crisis. DealBook »
Homeowners Sue Banks Over Libor Manipulation |
BLOOMBERG NEWS
Fed Official on the Shortcomings of Monetary Policy | William C. Dudley, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, spoke on Tuesday about the central bank's policy before the recent expansion of its stimulus: "With the benefit of hindsight, monetary policy needed to be still more aggressive." NEW YORK TIMES ECONOMIX
Nomura Is Fined $3.8 Million for Leaking Information |
BLOOMBERG NEWS
Tax Proposal in Mongolia Threatens Rio Tinto Project | Mongolia's new government is in the process of passing a 2013 budget whose draft proposal includes increasing taxes and royalties by $300 million on a huge copper mine. If Rio Tinto seeks international arbitration to resolve the issue, it could delay the start date for the mine. DealBook »
American Politics and Chinese Data | In the midst of increasingly heated election rhetoric about China, Beijing has released some important economic data as its currency reached record highs, Bill Bishop writes in the China Insider column. What DealBook readers need to know about China this week. DealBook »
Financier Behind 'Rebecca' Is Arrested | Mark C. Hotton, a stockbroker who is accused of defrauding the producers of the Broadway musical "Rebecca," was arrested on Monday, The New York Times reports. NEW YORK TIMES
Law Firm for UBS Whistle-Blower Seeks Share of Award |
BLOOMBERG NEWS
Sign up for the DealBook Newsletter, delivered every morning and afternoon.
LOAD-DATE: October 16, 2012
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
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The New York Times Blogs
(The Caucus)
October 16, 2012 Tuesday
Romney Donors Meet to Schmooze . . . and Raise More
BYLINE: ASHLEY PARKER
SECTION: US; politics
LENGTH: 633 words
HIGHLIGHT: Perhaps the most valuable experience of the three-day donor retreat in New York City came on Tuesday afternoon when the more than 1,000 donors present kicked-off a speed call-a-thon, with a goal of raising more than $2 million.
So just what did Mitt Romney's high-dollar donors come to the Waldorf-Astoria to do this week?
They chatted punt fakes with Woody Johnson, the owner of the New York Jets and a national finance co-chairman of the Romney campaign, clad in his trademark green tie.
They traipsed onto the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum on Monday evening, braving the spitting rain to be regaled at a gala dinner by the likes of Representative Paul D. Ryan, Mr. Romney's running mate, former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and even Donald Trump.
And they passed through the dimly lighted oak lobby of the storied hotel en route to strategy sessions, as "super PAC" heavy hitters - Carl Forti, who directs the more than $100 million political ad budget of Restore Our Future, a pro-Romney group, and Charles Spies, the group's lawyer - chatted just in front of the reception desk.
But perhaps the most valuable experience of the three-day donor retreat came Tuesday afternoon during a session titled "Make the Difference," when Spencer Zwick, the campaign's national finance chairman, informed the more than 1,000 donors present that they were about to kick-off a speed call-a-thon.
The goal? A cool $2 million in just 45 minutes.
Donors, most of whom had long ago raised the $50,000 entrance fee, were urged to pull out their cellphones and begin dialing for dollars, tapping into their networks for people who had donated to Mr. Romney during the primary but had not yet jumped on board financially for the general election.
A PowerPoint slide urged them to recruit a total of 800 new donations, at $2,500 a piece. "Process today," reminded another bullet point.
(Earlier in the lobby, Mr. Johnson had offered his own theory on rustling up money: Don't send e-mails, he explained, because "that's a warning." Just cold call, and tell your friends that Mitt Romney needs their help.)
Earlier during Mr. Zwick's session, according to people who had seen the PowerPoint presentation, donors had been plied with encouraging numbers: The finance team had always hoped to raise $750 million for the entire campaign, but it was now on track to hit $850 million by Election Day. Roughly $128 million of that haul had been raised online, more than $50 million in the past six weeks. Even small-dollar donations were picking up - 96 percent of the online donations were less than $250. (In fact, in April, the campaign had set an overall fund-raising goal of $800 million, a number it seemed to walk back slightly at the retreat, a strategic lowering of expectations in order to far exceed them.)
Mr. Zwick also explained just what $2 million could buy in the final stretch: Nearly 3,000 30-second ads, for instance, or more than six million pieces of direct mail.
In fact, the Romney campaign has highly specific plans on how to spend whatever additional money it can raise for the push until Election Day. Nearly two-thirds of its fund-raising will go to ad spending, with the other third helping with voter contact and get out the vote initiatives. A small percentage will go to digital outreach.
Between sessions in the lobby, the mood was light-hearted and optimistic, evidence perhaps that Mr. Romney's team feels the Oval Office is truly within reach. Donors were buoyed by Mr. Romney's strong performance in his first debate against President Obama, and were looking forward to Tuesday night's rematch, which they planned to watch at the Roseland Ballroom, where Dennis Miller would provide comic entertainment.
Surveying the scene, Mr. Johnson smiled and said he expected that after Mr. Romney won, he would come back and stay at the Waldorf when he had to be in New York for official business.
Then, he paused and reconsidered. "Actually, he's so cheap, he'll probably still stay at the Courtyard Marriott," he concluded.
LOAD-DATE: October 16, 2012
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The New York Times Blogs
(The Caucus)
October 16, 2012 Tuesday
Second Presidential Debate Fact-Checks and Updates
BYLINE: THE NEW YORK TIMES
SECTION: US; politics
LENGTH: 15796 words
HIGHLIGHT: President Obama and Mitt Romney square off on Tuesday night in Hempstead, N.Y. for the second of three presidential debates. Live coverage begins at 8 p.m. eastern.
President Obama and Mitt Romney square off on Tuesday night in Hempstead, N.Y., for the second of three presidential debates. Live coverage begins at 8 p.m. Eastern. The Times will be providing updates and analysis on our live dashboard. You can also follow along on Twitter @thecaucus, or follow our list of Times journalists covering the debate.
0:36 A.M. | That's a Wrap
The second presidential debate has ended, and the candidates are going home. The Caucus live blog has ended, too. You can rewatch the entire debate, read the transcript and scroll through our fact check feature, and be sure to come back to The Caucus and the rest of NYTimes.com for continuing coverage.
And don't forget to download the Election 2012 iPhone app, which smartly combines our coverage with the best from political news sites, Twitter and blogs from around the Web.
- The New York Times
0:25 A.M. | Still Debating When Obama Called It Terrorism
Mr. Romney's senior advisers and surrogates flooding the spin room seemed to have one thing above all else on their minds: to deny that Mr. Obama identified the attack in Benghazi, Libya, early on as terrorism, and to scold Candy Crowley, the debate moderator, for backing up Mr. Obama when he said he did just that in the Rose Garden.
"The idea the president called out a terrorist attack in the Rose Garden - Governor Romney's correct, the president is wrong,'' said Representative Jason Chaffetz, a Utah Republican who helped lead a House hearing into the attacks last week.
Mr. Chaffetz came armed with a transcript of the president's spokesman, Jay Carney, stating days later that there was no evidence to back up the claim the attack was preplanned, that it was most likely sparked by an anti-Islamic video.
Tom Ridge, a former Homeland Security secretary under George W. Bush, predicted that the most discussed moment of the debate would be "Candy Crowley's trying to say on behalf of the president, 'Well, you did mention terror.'"
"The fact of the matter is,'' Mr. Ridge said, "the president, his ambassador to the United Nations, his secretary of state and even he himself on multiple occasions talked about that incident as being the consequence of some kind of spontaneous demonstration to that ugly movie."
In the Rose Garden on Sept. 12, one day after the attack, Mr. Obama said, "No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation."
But others in his administration said for days that the evidence pointed to a spontaneous attack during a demonstration in reaction to the American-made video.
John H. Sununu, the former governor of New Hampshire, flatly asserted, "The president got caught lying tonight, and he's going to pay a penalty for that."
Democrats strongly disagreed. David Axelrod, the president's top stragetist, said Ms. Crowley's assertion that Mr. Obama "did call it an act of terror" was a highlight of the debate.
"Governor Romney was fact-checked by the moderator when he denied that the president stood in the Rose Garden the day after'' and referred to the attack as terrorism, Mr. Axelrod said.
- Trip Gabriel
0:23 A.M. | Fact-Check: Automatic Weapons
When Mr. Romney was asked about his position on gun control, he erred when he said "We, of course, don't want to have automatic weapons, and that's already illegal in this country to have automatic weapons."
While the sale of new fully automatic machine guns to civilians has been outlawed since 1986, older machine guns were grandfathered into the law and can be sold to civilians in certain states. The law, posted on the Web site of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms contains a section called "transfer or possession of machine guns."
It says: "No person shall transfer or possess a machine gun except: (a) A transfer to or by, or possession by or under the authority of, the United States, or any department or agency thereof, or a State, or a department, agency, or political subdivision thereof. (See Part 479 of this chapter); or (b) Any lawful transfer or lawful possession of a machine gun that was lawfully possessed before May 19, 1986 (See Part 479 of this chapter)."
The National Rifle Association wrote in 1999 that the effect of the law had been "to 'freeze' the number of privately owned fully-automatic firearms at roughly 150,000, an exact figure being unavailable due to privacy protection requirements that apply to tax-based laws such as the National Firearms Act."
- Michael Cooper and Michael Luo
11:44 P.M. | Fact-Check: Different From Bush?
When Mr. Romney was asked how he and former President George W. Bush were different, he said they were different people and because the times were different, "my five-point plan is so different than what he would have done."
But Mr. Romney's five-point plan, which is light on specifics, is an echo of the platform that Mr. Bush ran on in 2000 - energy independence, education, expanded free trade and a get-tough stance toward China, balanced budgets and small business. As Mr. Romney pointed out, Mr. Bush fell short in those areas, for instance by turning balanced budgets of the Clinton era into annual deficits. Still, their campaign platforms are remarkably similar.
- Jackie Calmes
11:44 P.M. | Conservatives Criticize Crowley on Libya Comments
Many conservative commentators quickly trained their sights on a common enemy during the debate: Candy Crowley, the moderator.
Ms. Crowley, they complained, let Mr. Obama speak for longer than Mr. Romney. She fact-checked the Republican without fact-checking the Democrat. And she even told Mr. Romney to take his seat.
One of the lead headlines on the Drudge Report late Tuesday night said, "Candy gives Obama 9 percent more time "
Laura Ingraham, the author and radio host, said on Twitter, "Candy ALWAYS lets Obama blow the clock..."
But the most serious criticism of Ms. Crowley from the right was focused on her handling of an exchange between the two candidates over Libya and when the president declared the attack on the United States diplomatic mission there a terrorist attack.
Mr. Romney accused the president of waiting 14 days before he declared it an act of terror. Ms. Crowley responded: "He did call it an act of terror."
Because Mr. Obama was not direct in his remarks - he initially said of the attack "No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation" - Republicans have pounced, saying he blamed a video that mocked Islam.
Charles Krauthammer, the columnist and Fox News analyst, accused Ms. Crowley of "contaminating" the debate with her intervention. John H. Sununu, a top Romney adviser, said Ms. Crowley "had no business doing a real-time fact check, if you will, because she was dead wrong."
And Ann Coulter Tweeted: "Obama (and Candy) lied, our ambassador died: No, Obama Didn't Call Benghazi "Act of Terror" in Speech."
But what the conservative pundits have not focused on is that Ms. Crowley also fact-checked Mr. Obama in that same breath, saying, "It did as well take two weeks or so for the whole idea of there being a riot out there about this tape to come out." She added, addressing Mr. Romney, "You are correct about that."
- Jeremy W. Peters
11:30 P.M. | Fact-Check: Middle-Class Struggles
Mr. Romney used a series of indicators to argue that the middle class has struggled under the Obama administration. It is true that incomes have fallen and some consumer prices have gone up, even as inflation has increased only mildly.
Mr. Romney said that "the reason I want middle-income taxpayers to have lower taxes is because middle-income taxpayers have been buried over the past four years. You've seen, as middle-income people in this country, incomes go down $4,300 a family even as gasoline prices have gone up $2,000. Health insurance premiums - up $2,500. Food prices up, utility prices up."
It's true that Americans' incomes have fallen markedly in recent years, by $4,520 from January 2009 to August 2012, according to Sentier Research's analysis of Labor Department data.
Overall inflation has been pretty mild, however, thanks to the weak economy. Monthly inflation rates have averaged 0.2 percent over the last four years, about what they were in the previous decade, according to the Labor Department.
That said, there are certain categories of consumer products that have shown bigger price increases that might be more salient for people. Food prices have risen about 7 percent since President Obama took office in January 2009.
Health insurance costs have grown as well. The estimates vary depending on what you are actually measuring and for which population. The average household spent $1,922 on health insurance last year, compared with $1,653 in 2008, an increase of 16.2 percent, according to the Labor Department. The average household spent $3,313 on total health care spending, compared with $2,976 in 2008, an increase of about 10 percent.
On the other hand, household fuel and utility costs, for example, have risen only about 0.6 percent.
- Catherine Rampell
11:22 P.M. | The Caucus Click: Axelrod Spinning
- James Hill
11:13 P.M. | Fact-Check: Fast and Furious
Asked for his position on whether to restrict access to assault weapons, Governor Romney brought up Fast and Furious, the botched gun-trafficking case that led to a politically charged oversight investigation by Congress. But Mr. Romney's description of Fast and Furious, and what is known about it, was misleading in certain significant respects.
Mr. Romney described it as a "program under this administration" under which thousands of weapons "were given to people that ultimately gave them to drug lords" who used them to kill their own people and Americans. He said he could not imagine what its purpose was. He also said that while it had been "investigated to a degree," it was still unclear "how it worked exactly" or "who it was that did this" and "what the idea was behind it." He said the Obama administration had asserted executive privilege to "prevent all the information from coming out."
The operation was exhaustively investigated by the Justice Department's independent inspector general office, which had access to all the disputed documents and which delivered a 471-page report last month that was praised by members of Congress across party lines as comprehensive and fair.
Operation Fast and Furious was an investigation that ran from late 2009 to early 2011 into a gun-trafficking network in Arizona. The ring was using "straw buyers" - front men without criminal records - to purchase weapons in American gun stores and then funneling them to a drug gang in Mexico, which has much stricter gun-control laws. Contrary to Mr. Romney's statement, the network was not given guns; rather agents passively allowed suspects to keep buying guns from gun stores rather than moving swiftly to intervene with straw buyers and seize the weapons at the first opportunity.
This tactic - known as "gunwalking" - was internally controversial within the Phoenix Division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives because it posed a risk to public safety and ran counter to agency traditions. But its purpose is not a mystery. The agents held back because they were frustrated with bringing cases against low-level straw buyers, who were easily replaced and whose cases presented certain legal challenges in Arizona.They wanted to identify higher-level criminals in the network in order to dismantle the entire organization.
As a result, however, the straw buyers continued to acquire weapons freely, obtaining hundreds of guns that are presumed to have reached criminal hands. In December 2010, two weapons that had been purchased by one of the suspects early in the investigation were found near the site of a shootout where a Border Patrol agent, Brian Terry, was killed, as Mr. Romney alluded.
It is also not a mystery who was behind it, and it is somewhat misleading to limit the discussion to the particular operation that took place during the Obama administration. The inspector report concluded that poorly supervised Arizona-based law enforcement officials had developed the gunwalking tactics on their own. It also found that they had used a similar strategy and tactics in an investigation of another Arizona-based gun smuggling network starting in 2006, a case called Operation Wide Receiver. In particular, the report said that William Newell, the special agent in charge of the A.T.F.'s field division in Phoenix at the time of Fast and Furious and part of Wide Receiver, "bore ultimate responsibility for the failures in Operation Fast and Furious." The report also found that the field division had not alerted A.T.F. headquarters about its use of the tactics, and that no one at Justice Department headquarters, under either the Bush or the Obama administrations, had authorized or knew about each operation's tactics at the time they were being used.
Mr. Romney is correct that President Obama asserted executive privilege to shield some Justice Department documents from a Congressional subpoena. The disputed documents do not date from the origins of Fast and Furious, however. They are from after February 2011, by which time the operation was over. The documents - many of which the inspector general quoted from in its report - are e-mails in which officials discussed how to respond to Congressional inquiries and media questions as they struggled to figure out what happened. Mr. Obama has claimed he has a legal right not to comply with the subpoena for them because it would damage the candor of internal executive branch deliberations to allow Congress to compel their disclosure. That dispute is now the subject of a lawsuit filed by Congress.
- Charlie Savage
11:15 P.M. | Fact-Check: Romney Said Tax Rate Was 'Fair'?
Mr. Obama accused Mr. Romney of saying in a "60 Minutes" interview that he believed it was "fair" that he paid a lower tax rate than ordinary workers like bus drivers. Mr. Obama simplified the question Mr. Romney was asked by CBS's Scott Pelley and Mr. Romney's response.
This was the full exchange, which focused on the fairness of the capital gains tax rate:
PELLEY: Now, you made on your investments, personally, about $20 million last year. And you paid 14 percent in federal taxes. That's the capital gains rate. Is that fair to the guy who makes $50,000 and paid a higher rate than you did?
ROMNEY: It is a low rate. And one of the reasons why the capital gains tax rate is lower is because capital has already been taxed once at the corporate level, as high as 35 percent.
PELLEY: So you think it is fair?
ROMNEY: Yeah, I - I think it's - it's the right way to encourage economic growth, to get people to invest, to start businesses, to put people to work.
- Michael Luo
11:08 P.M. | The Reaction: Better for Obama
"This time, President Obama showed up."
That was the conclusion of the Democratic analyst Joe Trippi on Fox News immediately after Tuesday's debate, echoed by commentators on the Internet and on all the major networks.
Brit Hume, seated next to Mr. Trippi on Fox, said Mr. Obama would "probably be declared the winner on most cards."
Indeed, on ABC, the conservative columnist George Will said, "Barack Obama not only gained ground that he had lost, he cauterized some wounds that he inflicted on himself by seeming too distant and disengaged."
On CNN, the longtime analyst David Gergen said "the night goes to Barack Obama." On MSNBC, the Rev. Al Sharpton credited Mr. Obama with his "best performance of his career as a debater."
"Tonight Mitt Romney was up against a different man," said the MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, who added that "Democrats will be thrilled."
Republicans tended to call the debate a draw, as the former George W. Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer did on Twitter at the halfway mark and again after the debate.
"Even GOP not declaring a Romney win," observed the Obama campaign national press secretary Ben LaBolt on Twitter.
As the second hour of the debate began, another former Bush press secretary, Dana Perino, wrote on Twitter, "As everyone predicted, each side will be able to say their candidate did well tonight." She predicted that the mainstream media would say, "Obama stops slide."
Most of the focus afterward was in fact on Mr. Obama, although Ben Smith of Buzzfeed noted, "Romney did, again, come away looking like a guy who could be president, which is probably the most important thing." Steve Schmidt, the Republican strategist, said on MSNBC, "I'm not sure that the president's performance is enough to arrest Mitt Romney's momentum in the race."
Either way, there was this observation from Mr. Will on ABC, a compliment to both candidates and to the moderator, Ms. Crowley: "I have seen every presidential debate in American history, since the four of Nixon and Kennedy in 1960. This was immeasurably the best."
- Brian Stelter
11:01 P.M. | Fact-Check: Libya Attack Called Act of Terror
Once Mr. Obama said "Please proceed," it was probably not a good idea for Mr. Romney to proceed.
The issue was Libya, and Mr. Romney took Mr. Obama to task for saying that he had initially called the attack on the American consulate in Benghazi an "act of terror."
"Please proceed," Mr. Obama said, smirking.
Mr. Romney, apparently not aware that he was walking into a trap, plowed ahead.
"Is that what you're saying?" he asked, pressing his point.
Mr. Obama smirked again. "Please proceed, Governor."
Mr. Romney kept on, until the moderator, Ms. Crowley, intervened. "He did, in fact, sir."
And so he did. The day after the attack in Libya, Mr. Obama, in the Rose Garden, said: "No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for."
Correction: An earlier version of this item incorrectly stated that Mr. Obama did not not call the attack an "act of terror" in the weeks after the event. Mr. Obama did refer to it using that language again in the days after his initial statement.
- Helene Cooper
11:02 P.M. | Voters' Voices: An Informed Assessment
LARGO, Fla. - If undecided voters are often also "low information voters," then the independents here Tuesday night would certainly fall into the category of high information voters. Three are retirees who spend a lot of their time reading news. And Mr. Nystrom, the waiter, is a close follower of economic data across the states because he is hoping to leave Florida for a better job. He has a college degree in technology, and he has not been able to use it around Largo.
As such, these viewers have as many answers as the candidates, and they suggested that the answers the candidates provided actually open a host of new questions that, for now, will go unanswered. They did not watch this debate passively. They were active participants.
On the issue of trade with China, for instance, Mr. Bach, Ms. Siegrist, Mr. Nystrom and Mr. Fechko had so much to say, they drowned out the television for a moment.
"China is never
"Romney doesn't .
"Guys, guys!"
"Quiet."
Then came the concluding statements.
"The last question was the best part of the debate for the president," Mr. Bach said. "He came out strong. He turned the debate of two weeks ago totally around. There was no comparison. He brought out his passion and his experience and his concern. Romney played defense a lot of the night."
Romney was faulted for reversing himself too much.
"I've watched 20 of the 22 Republican debates and I don't like that Romney has positions now that he did not have previously," Mr. Fechko said, listing issues such as abortion, immigration and taxes.
But Mr. Obama was also faulted for his "wishy-washy" position on gun control and because his statement on the attack in Libya seemed weak.
The group did not like the terms winner and loser, but the consensus seems to be this:
"If people are using the debates only as their guide as to how they will vote, then Obama certainly helped himself tonight," Mr. Fechko said.
- Susan Saulny
10:54 P.M. | Fact-Check: U.S. Military Spending at 4% of G.D.P.
In a rapid-fire exchange on dueling tax rate plans, Mr. Obama said Mr. Romney wanted to give tax breaks to the wealthy - which he said would decreases government revenue, but then add large sums to the military budget, as well. Like all statistics, these on military spending can be viewed from different angles to offer different perspectives.
"Governor Romney then also wants to spend $2 trillion on additional military programs, even though the military's not asking for them," Mr. Obama said.
In the previous debate, of the vice presidential candidates, Mr. Romney's running mate, Paul D. Ryan, denied that the Republicans proposed to increase military spending more than $2 trillion over a decade. But the Pentagon would need $2.3 trillion more than is projected through fiscal year 2022 at current spending levels, adjusted for inflation.
That is because military spending as a share of the economy's total output is expected to dip below 4 percent of the gross domestic product later in the decade. To keep it at that level would require the additional spending. The drop in military budgets as a share of G.D.P. is due less to any reductions for the Pentagon and more to the fact that a growing piece of the federal budget pie is being consumed by spending for entitlement programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security as more baby boomers reach retirement age.
To be sure, Mr. Romney has vowed to spend at least 4 percent of the nation's gross domestic product on national defense. In setting that goal, he has lots of company: Mr. Obama's first chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, also urged early in his tenure that military spending never drop below 4 percent of the gross domestic product.
Yet both Admiral Mullen and the defense secretary with whom he worked the most, Robert M. Gates, also came to realize that the nationwide economic downturn meant that the fire hose of money flowing to the Pentagon after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, was no longer sustainable. Both Admiral Mullen and Mr. Gates then pushed ahead with a sweeping series of defense spending adjustments, including canceling or slowing some weapons programs, shrinking the size of the military's personnel rosters and slimming the civilian bureaucracy. Those cuts have been taken ever deeper under Mr. Obama's current defense secretary, Leon E. Panetta.
Regardless of who is the next president, he will have to shape his military budgets based on two realities: the nation's economic condition - and a Congress that carries out its own agenda on defense.
The wars of today are fought differently, with different weapons that offer more bang for the buck than earlier generations. And today's national security environment requires a different size force.
Since the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe, the military's roster has shrunk. Remember those (expensive) heavy armored divisions standing watch across the Fulda Gap in Germany to deter the Soviet Army? Gone. The arsenal of bombers, attack jets, warships and nuclear warheads has diminished, as well, as the White House and Pentagon tried to fit defense dollars to the changing national security environment.
And the public's representatives in Congress, where the budgets must be approved, have made clear that there is no appetite for paying the tab for a large standing military sized to the needs of 1970. After all, personnel costs are the largest part of the Pentagon budget.
Defense Department spending doubled in the decade since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, but deficit-reduction measures urged by both Democrats and Republicans have forced the Defense Department to reduce budget proposals for the next decade.
To hit those deficit-reduction targets, the Obama administration has offered more than $450 billion in cuts that would reduce the military budget by roughly 7 percent or 8 percent over the next 10 years, even beyond the spending reductions that are expected to come naturally from the withdrawals first from Iraq and from Afghanistan.
The Obama White House and the Pentagon are joined at the hip in urging Congress to reach a budget deal that would avert even deeper cuts in military spending in a process of across-the-board reductions call sequestration.
- Thom Shanker and Jackie Calmes
10:55 P.M. | Fact-Check: Broken Promise on Immigration Reform?
"Now, when the president ran for office," Mitt Romney said, "he said that he'd put in place, in his first year, a piece of legislation - he'd file a bill in his first year that would reform our - our immigration system, protect legal immigration, stop illegal immigration. He didn't do it." Mr. Romney is right about that, and some Latino voters have been disappointed.
President Obama made the promise, particularly to Latinos, during the summer of 2008. In an interview with Jorge Ramos of Univision, the Spanish-language network, he said, "What I can guarantee is that we will have in the first year, an immigration bill that I strongly support."
When he has come under attack from Mr. Romney during the campaign for failing on that promise, Mr. Obama has largely blamed Republicans. At a new encounter with Mr. Ramos at a town hall meeting in Miami last month, Mr. Obama said he had not anticipated that Republicans who previously supported reform "suddenly would walk away."
One measure of Mr. Obama's efforts was the attempt in December 2010 to pass the Dream Act, a bill that would give legal status to at least 1.2 million young undocumented immigrants who came to the United States when they were children. After an intense campaign by the White House, the bill passed the House of Representatives. In the Senate, it failed - by five votes - to gain the 60 votes needed to go to the floor. Five Democrats voted against the bill. But all Republicans but three voted against it, including many who had supported it in the past, giving the president grounds to say the Dream Act was "blocked by Republicans."
Last month in Miami, Mr. Obama said his lack of progress on immigration legislation was "my biggest failure so far." With no prospect of passing legislation in Congress, Mr. Obama used executive authority in June to offer reprieves from deportation to hundreds of thousands of young undocumented immigrants.
- Julia Preston
10:49 P.M. | Fact-Check: Employing Women in Massachusetts
Mr. Romney said that as governor, he employed more women in senior state government positions than did any other state administration, but there have been conflicting reports as to whether that is the case.
A 2004 study by the University of Albany Center for Women in Government and Civil Society supported that contention; according to that study, 50 percent of Massachusetts policy-making posts were held by women in 2003, compared with an average of 32 percent for state governments as a whole. But Factcheck.org, of the Annenberg Center on Public Policy, took a different position: over Mr. Romney's four years as governor, it stated, 31 percent of all appointments were women. And the share of women named to senior-level posts actually declined slightly, to 27.6 percent, it said. The organization said that a Romney administration work force official "cherry-picked statistics to make Romney's record on appointing women to government positions look better than it is."
- Michael Wines
10:45 P.M. | Fact-Check: Fewer Women Have Jobs?
Governor Romney criticized President Obama's economic performance by saying that fewer women have jobs than four years ago. But that is not correct, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Mr. Romney said: "In the last four years, women have lost 580,000 jobs. That's the net of what's happened in the last four years." But according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are 253,000 more women working in the United States than was the case in January 2009, when President Obama took office. According to the B.L.S., there were 67,222,000 women working this September, while the bureau said there were 66,969,000 women working in January 2009.
- Steven Greenhouse
10:43 P.M. | Fact-Check: Calling China a Currency Manipulator
Mr. Romney said that China had been artificially holding down the value of its currency for years and that President Obama had passed up the opportunity to label China as a currency manipulator. Though the Obama administration has never named China as a currency manipulator, no other administration since 1994 has.
Every six months, the Treasury Department issues a report in which it can identify nations as currency manipulators. The Obama administration has never named China as a currency manipulator. Nor has any administration since 1994, opting instead for behind-the-scenes pressure that has prodded China to let its currency, the renminbi, rise.
Since 2005, the renminbi has appreciated about 30 percent against the dollar, according to a July report by the International Monetary Fund that revised the renminbi's status from "substantially" to "moderately undervalued." Mr. Romney's advisers have said that China has more recently intervened to weaken the currency. But Michael Pettis, a finance professor at Peking University and a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment, says that while the renminbi has fallen by 1 percent since February, the fall is a result of capital flight, not government intervention.
Even if the United States formally identified China as a currency manipulator, that in itself would only trigger bilateral consultations. Economists point out that the United States and China are already negotiating over the renminbi's value - and have been for many years. Mr. Romney has promised that if China does not compromise, he will follow up by instructing the Commerce Department to impose countervailing duties on Chinese imports on a case-by-case basis. Economists warn that that might trigger a trade war with China in which both sides lose.
- Sharon LaFraniere
10:39 P.M. | Fact-Check: Manufacturing Jobs
Toward the end of the debate, Mr. Romney and Mr. Obama had a spirited back and forth on exports and manufacturing jobs. Mr. Obama has campaigned on his record of bringing back manufacturing jobs to America, but Mr. Romney has argued that manufacturing jobs have shrunk on Mr. Obama's watch.
Both candidates have a point.
Manufacturers have about 610,000 fewer employees on payroll than they did when Mr. Obama took office. But Mr. Obama took over when the economy was still in free fall, months before the worst recession since the Great Depression ended and months more before employers felt confident in adding workers. Manufacturing firms started adding jobs in mid-2010, and have added about 400,000 positions since then.
Mr. Obama has furthermore promised to create one million new manufacturing jobs in the next four years. How realistic is the goal? It could certainly happen. Manufacturing employers would need to add about 21,000 workers per month for the next four years. In the past year, they have added about 14,500 new workers a month.
Even if the economy added those million manufacturing jobs, though, it would not imply that manufacturing has really recovered as a jobs powerhouse, or ever will. By the end of 2016, Mr. Obama wants there to be about 13 million manufacturing jobs in America. That is about the same number of manufacturing jobs there were when he won election in 2008.
- Annie Lowrey
10:40 P.M. | Before Debate Ends, Spinning Begins
And here they come! Even before the debate had ended, the spinners had flooded the zone of the press filing center. The Democrats arrived first, with blue signs proclaiming Axelrod, Schumer, Psaki and Kerry. They were quickly swarmed by the gentlemen and ladies of the press. A few minutes later came an influx of red signs with Republicans: Sununu, Jindal and Chaffetz. First the two teams were on opposite sides of the room, but now blue and red are intermingling.
Is there still a debate going on?
- Trip Gabriel
10:37 P.M. | Fact-Check: Romney on the Dream Act
"Now, Governor Romney just said that, you know, he wants to help those young people, too," President Obama said, referring to young undocumented immigrants. "But during the Republican primary, he said, I will veto the Dream Act that would allow these young people to have a chance." Since the primaries, Mitt Romney has softened his position on the Dream Act, a bill that would give legal status to young undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children. But not by much.
Mr. Romney did say during the primaries that he would veto the Dream Act, a measure supported mainly by Democrats that has long been stalled in Congress. In June, Mr. Romney shifted his position to say he would support giving legal resident green cards to "illegal immigrants who served in our military" - one group who would be eligible under the Dream Act.
In a town hall meeting last month in Miami with Univision, the Spanish-language network, Mr. Romney said he would also consider giving green cards to "kids that get higher education," echoing another part of the Dream Act. But Mr. Romney said he preferred the approach of Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican from Florida who started work last spring on an alternative to the Democrats' bill.
However, few details are known of Mr. Rubio's proposal, because he never offered a written blueprint. In June, after President Obama announced he would give temporary reprieves from deportation to young immigrants - in part to upstage Mr. Rubio - the senator set aside his efforts.
Under the Dream Act, by independent estimates at least 1.2 million young undocumented immigrants could be eligible for legal status.
- Julia Preston
10:35 P.M. | Fact-Check: Daylight on Israel?
Mr. Romney said that "the president said that he was going to put daylight between us and Israel." Is he correct?
Mr. Romney's campaign cites a newspaper account of a meeting with Jewish leaders at the White House in 2009 as evidence for Mr. Romney's statement. In that account, published in The Washington Post, people at the meeting said Mr. Obama had said that "there was no space between us and Israel" during the George W. Bush administration, which he said had hurt the ability of the United States to influence Israeli actions or cajole Arab nations. "When there is no daylight, Israel just sits on the sidelines, and that erodes our credibility with the Arab states," the newspaper quoted Mr. Obama as saying.
An Obama administration official said they did not know whether Mr. Obama made that statement during what was a private meeting.
The newspaper account did not quote Mr. Obama as explicitly stating that his goal was to put distance between the United States and Israel, as Mr. Romney characterized Mr. Obama's intentions during a recent speech. Instead, the account indicates Mr. Obama was complaining that what he suggested was the Bush administration's unwillingness to challenge the Israelis had reduced the American government's leverage over Israel and hurt its reputation with Muslim countries. At the same time, a plain reading of the account would also suggest that Mr. Obama wanted for his administration to be seen as less of a rubber stamp for Israel than the Bush administration was.
Obama administration officials have said that there is no daylight whatsoever between the United States and Israel on the issue of preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.
A broader question is how much "daylight" there has been between the two countries since Mr. Obama took office. Mr. Obama angered some Israeli leaders, like Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, by publicly stating that Israel's 1967 borders adjusted though land swaps should be the starting point for settlement negotiations with the Palestinians, and by pushing Israel to curb settlement construction in the West Bank.
But many experts are puzzled by the Romney camp's claim that Mr. Obama has been weak on Israel, saying the opposite is actually true. Even Israel's own defense minister - and former prime minister - Ehud Barak has repeatedly and enthusiastically praised Mr. Obama's support, telling CNN in July: "I should tell you honestly that this administration under President Obama is doing in regard to our security more than anything that I can remember in the past." Other experts cite Mr. Obama's extensive military aid to Israel, as well as his unwavering opposition at the United Nations to Palestinian statehood.
- Richard A. Oppel Jr.
10:35 P.M. | Fact-Check: Romney on Immigration
What is Mr. Romney's strategy on illegal immigration? His positions have varied over the past year, but he says he opposes amnesty for illegal immigrants in most cases.
President Obama said that Mitt Romney's "main strategy" to curb illegal immigration would be to "encourage self-deportation."
Mr. Romney has never precisely clarified what he would do about more than 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States. During the Republican primaries he called for tough enforcement to pressure them to leave the country. Since June he has moderated that position, saying he could support some measures that would allow a limited group of illegal immigrants to remain here legally.
Mr. Romney says he opposes any amnesty. During a primary debate in January, he said he would seek a mandatory nationwide program to verify the legal status of all new hires, expanding an existing federal program known as E-Verify, which currently is voluntary. With that program in place, he said, illegal immigrants would soon discover they could not get jobs and "they're going to self-deport."
Mr. Romney was pressed for more details on the self-deportation strategy during a town hall meeting last month in Miami with Univision, the Spanish language network. But he did not provide them. "I believe people make their own choices as to whether they want to go home," he said.
But he said he would not favor "a mass deportation effort, rounding people up, 12 million people." Mr. Romney said, "Our system is not to deport people."
He has said he would support giving permanent resident green cards to illegal immigrants who serve in the military - probably a group numbering tens of thousands. Mr. Romney has said he would "put in place a permanent solution" for illegal immigration, but he has not described what it would look like or how he would get around the roadblocks in Congress that stalled President Obama's efforts to pass legislation. Most Republican lawmakers in Washington have rejected any legal status for illegal immigrants, calling it amnesty.
- Julia Preston
10:31 P.M. | Fact-Check: 'Pioneers of Outsourcing?'
Mr. Obama accused Mr. Romney of investing in companies that were pioneers in outsourcing to China. Is this true?
This is a tweak of a long-running attack line the Obama campaign has used against Mr. Romney, based on investments made by the private equity firm he founded, Bain Capital. This time Mr. Obama softened the blow by accusing Mr. Romney of merely investing in the companies, as opposed to being more directly involved in those outsourcing decisions.
Fact-checkers, including Politifact.com, FactCheck.org and the Washington Post's Fact Checker column, had questioned the more direct line of attack on outsourcing, because most of the companies cited by the Obama campaign were investments that occurred after Mr. Romney had left day-to-day management of Bain in 1999 to run the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. Mr. Romney was indisputably involved with at least one Bain-owned company that outsourced jobs overseas - to China, in particular - Holson Burnes Group, a picture frame and photo album manufacturer that Bain owned from 1987 to 1995.
But FactCheck.org, which examined the issue, pointed out that it was unclear whether the company's outsourcing increased or decreased under Bain, or if the manufacturing overseas came at the expense of American jobs.
The question of whether Bain Capital ever invested in such companies, with Mr. Romney benefiting as an investor, is a much less controversial one. Several of Bain's investments did have operations in China, although it would be a stretch to call them "pioneers" in the practice.
It is also important to point out that since 2002, when he was elected governor of Massachusetts, Mr. Romney's investments have been managed through an independent trustee.
- Michael Luo
10:31 P.M. | Obama Takes Responsibility on Libya Security
One question heading into the debate: how would the president handle Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's acceptance of responsibility for the violence in Libya?
His decision was to embrace the responsibility.
"Secretary Clinton has done an extraordinary job," he said. "But she works for me."
He also was aggressive in pushing back against Mr. Romney's accusation that his administration has played politics in the aftermath of the killings of four Americans in Libya.
Looking straight at Mr. Romney, he said: "The suggestion that anybody on my team, the secretary of state, our U.N. ambassador, anybody on my team, would play politics or mislead, when we've lost four of our own, is offensive, Governor."
- Michael D. Shear
10:29 P.M. | Voters' Voices: Blame and Evasion
LARGO, Fla. - On the issue of the recent attack on American diplomats in Benghazi, Libya, Mr. Romney is criticizing the president.
"I'm waiting for him to say it was the president's fault, which it seems he is hinting at," Mr. Bach said.
Mr. Romney was critical of Mr. Obama for taking many days to acknowledge that the attack was terrorism.
But when Ms. Crowley supported the president's assertion that he called the attack an act of terror in the Rose Garden on the day after it happened, Mr. Bach said, "That's right, no distortions tonight, my friend!"
It seems clear by now that Mr. Bach is leaning toward favoring the president. But he is not completely on board.
When the question turned to gun control and Mr. Obama began a long anecdote, Mr. Bach spoke loudly toward the television: "O.K., O.K. What's your policy, sir? Answer!"
"He broached it but didn't answer it completely," Mr. Bach said.
Mr. Nystrom added: "It's such a tough issue. It's like a lost cause."
Mr. Fechko said: "You could see Obama sort of dancing around it, because he knows he can't come flat out for gun control in the current environment."
- Susan Saulny
10:26 P.M. | Romney and Obama Spar Over Terrorism Label
Mr. Obama had the look of a man who was watching his rival walk right into a trap.
The president had just said that he declared the killings in Libya to be an act of terror the day after the attack.
Mr. Romney started to correct the president, saying that he wanted to get that on the record. He turned to the president, asking for him to say it again.
"Continue, Governor," Mr. Obama said, looking confident.
Mr. Romney again accused the president of waiting 14 days before he declared the incidents in Libya to be the work of terrorists.
"Check the transcript," Mr. Obama said.
And then Ms. Crowley, the moderator, piped up.
"He did call it an act of terror," Ms. Crowley said.
"Can you say that a little louder, Candy?" Mr. Obama said.
- Michael D. Shear
10:25 P.M. | The Caucus Click: The Student Section
- James Hill
10:24 P.M. | Fact-Check: Terrorism and Security in Libya
The Obama administration has drawn criticism for shifting assessments of what really happened in Benghazi, Libya, and for questions of security at the diplomatic mission there.
Asked who had denied added security that was requested for embassies in Libya, Mr. Obama did not directly answer, although he did say, "I am ultimately responsible for what's taking place there." Mr. Romney questioned why "it took a long time" for the facts to come out.
The Obama administration has come under fire for shifting assessments of what really happened in Benghazi - and what happened before Benghazi.
The administration initially described the attack on the diplomatic post as a spontaneous outgrowth of protests against an anti-Islam video made in the United States. Days later, officials termed it a terrorist attack planned by Islamic extremists and dropped references to any protest.
Journalistic reporting from Libya indicates that the video was a motivating factor for many who participated in the attack but there was no protest; the assailants have been described as members of Ansar al-Shariah-Benghazi, a local Islamist extremist group that shares ideological commonalities with al Qaeda but not its international aspirations and has not been shown to have direct organizational ties.
Americans on the ground sounded increasing alarms about the dicey security situation in the months leading up to the attack, and two security officials testified before Congress last week that they sought to keep more security personnel for Libya but were turned down by the State Department in Washington.
The requests were for more guards in Tripoli, rather than in Benghazi, and State Department officials testified that they would not have stopped the attack even if the requests had been approved. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. said at last week's debate that the White House was not made aware of those requests.
The Obama team has hit back at Republican critics by claiming that House Republicans cut $300 million from embassy security. Congress did make relatively small cuts after Republicans took control in the 2010 elections. For the current fiscal year, House Republicans voted to increase spending on diplomatic security by about $250 million, still about $220 million less than Mr. Obama requested. A State Department official testified that security decisions in Libya were not affected by budget constraints.
- Peter Baker
10:21 P.M. | Fact-Check: Romney and Arizona Immigration Law
Mitt Romney's statements about immigration measures in Arizona have been widely misquoted by Democrats - and were misquoted again Tuesday night by President Obama - to make it appear he embraced as his "model" a tough and polarizing police enforcement law in that state.
It is true that Mr. Romney has spoken favorably of Arizona's police law, known as S.B. 1070. He defended the state's decision to pass it and he criticized President Obama for bringing a lawsuit to try to stop it. But what Mr. Romney calls his model is a less controversial law that made it mandatory for Arizona employers to use a federal electronic verification system, known as E-Verify, to check the immigration status of new hires.
"What I like about the Arizona law was a measure that says we're going to have an employment verification system so that employers know who they're able to hire and who they're not able to hire," Mr. Romney said last month, speaking to a Latino audience in a televised town hall meeting in Miami.
President Obama is right that Mr. Romney embraced some immigration hard-liners early in the campaign. During the primaries Mr. Romney welcomed the endorsement of Kris Kobach, a conservative lawyer who is now secretary of state of Kansas, and who was an author of Arizona's police law. He has also provided templates for tough immigration enforcement bills in many other states. Mr. Kobach's law-and-order views are regarded as extreme by many Latino and immigrant rights groups. More recently Mr. Romney has played down the role of Mr. Kobach in his campaign.
By the way, President Obama also supports mandatory worker verification, but only as part of a package that includes legal status and work authorization for millions of illegal immigrants.
- Julia Preston
10:20 P.M. | Fact-Check: Contraceptive Coverage
Mr. Obama mentioned a provision of his signature health care law that requires most insurance plans offered by employers to provide free birth control. Mr. Romney, he said, opposes the requirement and believes that "employers should be able to make the decision" as to whether their female workers get contraceptive coverage.
Mr. Obama was correct: Mr. Romney is against the requirement, which he has described as an attack on religious liberty Mr. Romney has said he would abolish the requirement.
Churches were exempt from the requirement when theObama administrationannounced it last year. Still, it provoked furious criticism from Roman Catholic institutions and other religious and conservative groups, who called the exemption too narrow.
In February, the administration offered what Mr. Obama described as "an accommodation" for church-affiliated schools, universities, hospitals and charities that object to the requirement. Under that plan, which has yet to be finalized, such institutions would not have to "pay for, provide or facilitate the provision of" contraceptive coverage. But their female employees could get such coverage directly from their insurance companies at no cost.
Roman Catholic bishops and other conservatives were not appeased by the compromise proposal. One of their concerns is that some religiously affiliated organizations choose to insure themselves. They also say it is impossible to guarantee that the premiums paid by objecting organizations for their employees' overall medical coverage would not help finance birth control.
Mr. Romney supported a Republican effort, known as the Blunt amendment, that would have let any employer or insurance company deny coverage for contraceptives and other items they objected to on religious or moral grounds. But the Senate in March narrowly voted to kill the effort.
Opponents have filed at least 35 lawsuits around the country seeking to have the contraception requirement overturned.
- Abby Goodnough
10:15 P.M. | Fact-Check: Tariff on Chinese Tires
President Obama said, "We had to make sure that China was not flooding our market with cheap tires" and therefore took action to save 1,000 jobs. It is true that in 2009, the Obama administration imposed a duty on Chinese tires, but last month the administration let the tariff expire.
The United Steelworkers Union, an Obama political supporter, sought the action, and many economists criticized it as politically motivated.
A study by the Peterson Institute for International Economics found that the tariff protected at most 1,200 American jobs. But last year alone. the institute found, it cost American consumers $1.1 billion in higher-priced tires.
Moreover, China responded by imposing tariffs on imports of American chicken parts that cost American poultry producers an estimated $1 billion. Last month, the Obama administration quietly let the tire tariff expire. Critics say that it recognized the economic costs of the sanction were too great.
- Sharon LaFraniere
10:14 P.M. | Voters' Voices: Better Off, or Worse?
LARGO, Fla. - Will the next four years be like the last four years? And has Mr. Obama kept his promises? An unenthusiastic audience member who voted for Mr. Obama in 2008 wanted to know.
Mr. Romney argued that Mr. Obama's policies had crushed the middle class, but Mr. Obama stated a list of his accomplishments, what he called promises kept, including killing Osama bin Laden and passing health care reform.
"The question, are you better off?'' Mr. Bach said. "Nobody's asking, 'Are you worse off than four years ago?' That's what I want to know."
Ms. Siegrist, who is taking notes on a legal pad with a pencil, interjected: "Well, there are an awful lot of poor people. The numbers keep multiplying."
The topic turned to immigration.
Now Mr. Bach is furiously scribbling on his notepad as Mr. Obama describes the Dream Act.
"We have a prime example in Florida of what Obama is talking about, a high school valedictorian who finished at the top of his law class and can't get a license because he's illegal," Mr. Bach said.
After a tense exchange between the candidates about overseas investments that diverted significantly from the topic of immigration, Mr. Nystrom asked: "Did the moderator just ask them to sit down? What's going on?"
- Susan Saulny
10:14 P.M. | Fact-Check: Doubling the Deficit?
Mr. Romney just repeated the false charge - which he also made during the first debate - that Mr. Obama has doubled the deficit.
"He said when he was running for office, he would cut the deficit in half," Mr. Romney said of Mr. Obama on Tuesday night. "Instead he's doubled it."
The just announced that the federal budget deficit was about $1.1 trillion in 2012, approximately $200 billion less than the shortfall recorded in 2011. Measured as a share of the economy, as economists prefer, the deficit has declined more significantly - to 7.0 percent of the economy's total output in 2012 from 10.1 percent in 2009.
- Michael Cooper
10:12 P.M. | Fact-Check: Obama Unemployment Promises?
Mr. Romney charged that Mr. Obama promised the unemployment rate would be 5.4 percent by now. (It is currently 7.8 percent.) This is an old canard based on a report released before Mr. Obama even took the oath of office.
Two economists with the incoming administration, Jared Bernstein and Christina Romer, ran some numbers estimating the job creation potential of a stimulus bill to arrest the economy's free fall. They forecast that if such a bill were enacted, unemployment would never rise above 8 percent and would fall to about 5.4 percent by now.
But that was a projection made before economists really understood the severity of the recession, the historic plunge in output and huge job losses. Moreover, it was a projection by White House economists, not a promise Mr. Obama made.
- Annie Lowrey
10:10 P.M. | Fact-Check: Changes in Romney Tax Policy?
Has Mr. Romney's position on tax cuts for the wealthy changed? While he said here that "I'm not looking to cut taxes for wealthy people," this is a shift from his statements during the Republican primary race.
Mr. Romney said Tuesday night that "I'm not looking to cut taxes for wealthy people" - which, as Mr. Obama noted, is a change from how he described his tax plans during the Republican primaries.
At a Republican primary debate this winter, when Rick Santorum charged that Mr. Romney might raise taxes on "the top 1 percent," Mr. Romney countered, "We're going to cut taxes on everyone across the country by 20 percent, including the top 1 percent."
Mr. Obama noted the change Tuesday night. "And when Governor Romney stands here, after a year of campaigning, when during a Republican primary he stood on stage and said, 'I'm going to give tax cuts' - he didn't say tax rate cuts, he said 'tax cuts to everybody,' including the top 1 percent, you should believe him because that's been his history," Mr. Obama said.
You can see a video of some of Mr. Romney's shifting tones here.
- Michael Cooper
10:05 P.M. | Romney Focuses on Obama Record
Mr. Romney just landed on what is the strongest argument any challenger running against an incumbent, particularly an incumbent in charge during difficult times. He ran through a list of statistics showing the extent to which the economy has struggled under Mr. Obama and offered a compliment that would have sounded discordant at the last debate: That Mr. Obama is a great speaker.
But, he added, "We have a record to look at."
- Adam Nagourney
10:02 P.M. | Fact-Check: Romney Investment in Chinese Company
President Obama said Mr. Romney invested in a Chinese company that conducted video surveillance on citizens. Is that correct?
The investment was actually made through a fund managed by Bain Capital, the private equity firm Mr. Romney founded and ran until 2001. Mr. Romney has as much as $2.25 million invested in three Bain Capital funds with sizable stakes in at least seven Chinese companies,including an electronics retailer accused of selling computers with pirated Microsoft software. He has millions more invested in Bain funds that control an auto parts company that is closing a United States factory and moving equipment and jobs to China.
Mr. Romney says his fortune is managed by a blind trust over which he has no control. However, the trust, managed by a law firm that also works for Bain Capital, would most likely not meet federal requirements for independent management should he become president because of the close relationship between the law firm, Mr. Romney and Bain.
- Michael McIntire
10:03 P.M. | Obama Attacks Romney on Contraception
Mr. Obama aggressively raised the issue of contraception - an issue that he all but ignored at the first debate with Mr. Romney.
Focusing on the impact of Mr. Romney's policies on women - and with an eye, no doubt, on the all-important women's vote - Mr. Obama accused him of doing harm to women and families.
"A major difference in this campaign is that Governor Romney feels comfortable having politicians in Washington decide the health care decisions" for women, Mr. Obama said.
He accused Mr. Romney of wanting to eliminate financing for Planned Parenthood and of opposing the policies that make contraceptives affordable.
"These are not just women's issues; these are family issues. These are economic issues," Mr. Obama said. "I've got two daughters, and I want to make sure that they have the same opportunities that anyone's sons have."
When he got the chance, Mr. Romney accused the president of distorting his proposals.
"I just note that I don't believe bureaucrats in Washington" should control health care decisions for women, he said. "Every woman in America should have access to contraceptives."
- Michael D. Shear
10:01 P.M. | The Twitter Spin Room
Twitter, the social network of choice among political reporters, pundits and those who love them, is also the new spin room - and it saw a tremendous reaction to President Obama and Mitt Romney's first few answers to voter questions about jobs and energy.
The first questioner, a college student named Jeremy, was quickly christened the new "Joe the Plumber" - a reference to the Ohio man who asked Mr. Obama about taxes during a campaign stop in 2008 and became a metaphor for the middle class. The candidates' heated exchange a few minutes later was accompanied by one-word reactions - "wow" chief among them.
The social network was a virtual spin room, one used especially aggressively by surrogates for Mr. Obama to assert that he had improved since the debate two weeks ago, when his performance was widely derided.
A few minutes into the debate Stephanie Cutter, the Obama deputy campaign manager, reposted a comment from a supporter who said, "Welcome back, Mr. President." Then she reposted another: "Obama is back."
Commentators who had criticized Mr. Obama two weeks ago - most notably Andrew Sullivan of The Daily Beast - seemed to agree.
"Obama's back on," Mr. Sullivan wrote on his live blog at 9:07 p.m. "I recognize this guy. Energy; focus; ability to relate."
Obama campaign aides also promoted a hashtag with the phrase #RealRomney, pushing the point of view that Mr. Romney's real opinions are unknowable - foreshadowing Mr. Obama's claims that Mr. Romney's answers on Tuesday night were not accurate.
- Brian Stelter
10:00 P.M. | Fact-Check: Candidates on Coal
President Obama said that coal jobs and coal production was up. True, but the increases are modest.
Mr. Romney said that Mr. Obama was hostile to coal and that the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency had said that no future coal-burning plants would be built in the United States. In fact, the administrator, Lisa P. Jackson, proposed emissions standards for future coal-burning plants that would require them to be as clean as a plant using natural gas as a fuel. The technology to accomplish this does not yet exist, but utilities are swiftly shifting from coal to natural gas anyway because natural gas is now so plentiful and cheap.
Mr. Obama said that coal jobs and coal production were up during his administration, which is true, but the increases are modest and much of the additional coal production is being shipped overseas.
Mr. Obama also noted that as governor of Massachusetts Mr. Romney had cracked down on one coal-burning plant, saying that coal "kills people." Mr. Romney did in fact accuse a utility of failing to live up to its promises to clean up emissions from one Massachusetts coal plant, saying, "I will not create jobs or hold jobs that kill people. And that plant kills people and PG&E has been given a notice to have it cleaned up by 2004 and they have thumbed their nose at the people of Massachusetts and Salem Harbor by not cleaning it up on time. "
- John M. Broder
10:00 P.M. | Romney Stresses Moderate Positions on Reproduction
Mitt Romney's campaign, in an effort to appeal to women who hold more moderate views on reproductive issues, is releasing a new commercial that highlights his support for contraception and abortion in limited circumstances.
"You know, those ads say Mitt Romney would ban all abortions and contraception seemed a bit extreme, so I looked into it," says a woman identified as Sarah Minto, who is shown on camera searching on Google for "Romney on abortion."
Ms. Minto adds: "It turns out Romney doesn't oppose contraception at all. In fact, he thinks abortion should be an option in cases of rape, incest or to save a mother's life."
The ad is Mr. Romney's most aggressive attempt to rebut attempts by the Obama campaign to paint him as extreme on women's rights. Read more...
- Jeremy W. Peters
9:58 P.M. | Romney Distances Himself From Bush
Mr. Romney pretty much threw President Geoge W. Bush under the bus.
Among the things he said about Mr. Bush:
* That he didn't crack down on Chinese trade practices.
* That he increased the deficit.
* That he didn't balance the budget.
* That he didn't increase trade with Latin America.
* That he didn't focus on small business.
"President Bush and I are different people," he said. "President Bush had a very different path for a very different time."
- Michael D. Shear
9:56 P.M. | Fact-Check: Spending, Borrowing and Higher Taxes?
Mr. Romney just charged that "a recent study has shown that people in the middle class will see $4,000 a year higher taxes as a result of the spending and borrowing of this administration" - a claim that FactCheck.org recently examined and labeled "nonsense."
The figure is derived from a study by the American Enterprise Institute that attempts to calculate "the real annual cost of servicing the debt for households at various levels of income." A blogger with the institute laterwrote that the results "could mean a $4,000 a year middle-class tax hike."
- Michael Cooper
9:50 P.M. | Fact-Check: Oil and Gas Drilling
Mr. Romney repeated his assertion that all the increase in domestic oil and gas production had come on private, not public lands, and that the Obama administration had cut the number of oil and gas drilling permits on public lands in half. Neither assertion is fully true.
Mr. Romney and Mr. Obama engaged in a sharp exchange on energy policy, sparked by a question on gasoline prices that never got answered. They disagreed about oil production on public as well as private lands, a dispute they have had throughout the campaign.
Oil and gas production on public lands has fluctuated during the Obama administration, but it has increased modestly (about 13 percent for oil and about 6 percent for gas) in the first three years of the Obama presidency, compared to the last three years of the Bush administration, according to an analysis from the Energy Information Administration. Production on private lands has increased more quickly, particularly through hydraulic fracturing for oil and gas in Texas, North Dakota and the Marcellus Shale formation in Pennsylvania and Ohio.
Regarding drilling permits, the Department of Interior produced a report earlier this year showing that drilling permits received and issued by the agency had indeed declined from the last years of the Bush administration to the first years of the Obama administration. In fiscal year 2007, the government issued 8,964 permits to drill on public lands; in 2008 the figure was 7,846. The numbers for 2009 and 2010 were 5,306 and 5,237. This is a reduction, but not by half, as Mr. Romney asserted.
Mr. Obama said here that 7,000 permits had been granted but were not being used by oil companies, an accurate figure, according to the Interior Department.
The administration froze all deep-water drilling and slowed shallow-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico after the Deepwater Horizon blowout and spill in 2010. Since then, the Interior Department has approved more than 750 drilling permits for the gulf and production is approaching pre-spill levels, although it is below what was projected before the accident.
Before Deepwater Horizon, gulf oil production was 1.75 million barrels a day, and it was projected to increase to 2.2 million barrels a day by this year.
Instead, because of the yearlong halt on new drilling, production is about 700,000 barrels a day lower than forecast. Much of that oil is being replaced by Saudi imports, experts said.
Mr. Obama stated that renewable energy production had doubled during his presidency, which is true, and that oil imports were at their lowest level in 16 years, also accurate. He also said that the boom in natural gas production could produce 600,000 new jobs, a highly optimistic estimate, but he qualified it with the word "potentially."
But Mr. Obama mischaracterized Mr. Romney's energy plan, saying it was written by oil companies and favored only traditional sources of energy - oil, gas and coal. But Mr. Romney's energy plan does include a place for renewables, although he would sharply cut back on federal subsidies for wind, solar and other alternative energy sources.
Mr. Romney, to illustrate his charge that Mr. Obama was hostile to the oil industry, said that the Obama administration had criminally prosecuted oil companies working in North Dakota for killing migratory birds. True. In September 2011, the United States attorney for North Dakota charged seven oil and natural gas companies for killing 28 migratory birds found dead near oil waste lagoons.
- John M. Broder
9:50 P.M. | Voters' Voices: The Peanut Gallery Speaks
LARGO, Fla. - When the topic turned to Mr. Romney's tax plan - and Mr. Romney said, "I'm not looking to cut taxes on wealthy people" - Mr. Obama's comeback answers drew kudos.
"The president seems much more comfortable now, speaking on knowledge and experience now, not on the script," Mr. Bach said.
Speaking about the Romney tax plan, Mr. Obama said, "Nobody who looks at it, who's serious, thinks it adds up."
The crowd here said, "Details, details!"
But just as quickly, the candidates and the moderator began speaking over each other and the viewers said, "Quiet!"
- Susan Saulny
9:48 P.M. | Fact-Check: Balancing the Budget
Mr. Romney correctly stated that he produced a balanced budget during each of his four years in office. But that's hardly unusual: every governor does it. The Massachusetts constitution requires that the budget be balanced.
- Michael Wines
9:46 P.M. | Fact-Check: No Tax Increases?
Can Mr. Romney keep his promise not to increase taxes on working-class families? Studies show that is a promise that might be hard for him to keep.
"I will not under any circumstances increase taxes on the middle class," Mr. Romney promised at the debate, taking aim at Democratic arguments that he would raise taxes on working-class families to finance tax cuts for the rich.
But studies show that is a promise that might be hard for Mr. Romney to keep. Mr. Romney has said he wants to get rid of the alternative minimum tax and cut marginal tax rates by 20 percent, without widening the deficit. He would accomplish that goal by clearing out the underbrush of credits, loopholes and preferences in the code, though not those for investment and savings. He has also promised that his plan will be "distributionally neutral" - that he will not raise the tax burden on the poor or middle class.
But, according to a study by the respected Tax Policy Center, if you cut tax rates by 20 percent, you give the wealthy a multibillion-dollar tax break. Even if you take away all of their credits and loopholes and preferential rates, the gap is still about $86 billion in 2015. If the rich are paying less, then the poor and middle class must pay more if you're going to raise the same amount of money.
In the debate, Mr. Romney said that he might put a cap on deductions - $25,000 per household, he suggested - to raise money to pay for the rate cuts. But tax economists said such a proposal still might not raise enough money from the wealthy and might result in an increased tax burden on the middle class or a bigger deficit.
- Annie Lowrey
9:44 P.M. | Reaching Out to the Middle Class
The middle class should feel loved.
Both Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney are doing their best to connect with middle-class voters, each saying that his entire tax plan caters to them.
Mr. Romney repeatedly talked about "middle-income" folks, saying that his tax plan would lower taxes on them.
"Middle-income taxpayers have been buried during the last four years," Mr. Romney said. "The middle-income families in America have been crushed over the past four years."
Mr. Obama chimed in, too.
"I want to continue those tax cuts for middle-class families and for small business," he said.
Of course both men disagreed that the other was genuine about his interest in the middle class. Both aggressively accused the other of lying about his intentions.
"What he says is he's going to make sure that this doesn't add to the deficit and he doesn't raise middle-class taxes," Mr. Obama said of his rival.
"You're going to be paying for it," Mr. Obama said, looking at the television audience. "You can't buy this sales pitch."
Mr. Romney retorted that "I will not under any circumstances reduce the share that's being paid by the higher incomes."
And he added, "The president's spending, the president's borrowing will cause the taxes to go up" for the middle class.
- Michael D. Shear
9:41 P.M. | Fact-Check: College Graduates Without Jobs?
Mr. Romney said that "with half of college kids graduating this year without a college - or excuse me, without a job and without a college-level job, that's just unacceptable." Is it true that half the students graduating from college this year don't have a "college-level job"?
It's not clear what numbers he is referring to, but Mr. Romney might be talking about numbers from last year. An analysis of 2011 Labor Department data by researchers at Northeastern University, Drexel University, and the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank, found that about 1.5 million, or 53.6 percent, of people with bachelor's degrees under the age of 25 last year were jobless or employed in jobs that did not require a college degree. That was the highest share in at least 11 years.
- Catherine Rampell
9:38 P.M. | Fact-Check: Tax Increase on Small Business
Mr. Romney just warned that Mr. Obama's plan to let the Bush-era income tax cuts for the highest-earning Americans expire would hurt small businesses. But 97 percent of small businesses do not earn enough to be hit by the higher rates.
Mr. Romney just warned, as he often does, that Mr. Obama's plan to let the Bush-era income tax cuts for the highest-earning Americans expire would hurt small businesses. But 97 percent of small businesses do not earn enough to be hit by the higher rates, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation of Congress.
Mr. Obama wants to roll back the Bush tax cuts on income above $200,000 for individuals and income above $250,000 for households, raising the top marginal rate to 39.6 percent from 35 percent now. Some small businesses, who file taxes as "S corporations," would be hit by the higher rates, but the Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that only 3 percent would earn enough to be hit by the new, higher top marginal rates. And not all of those businesses are exactly small: thousands of them would have receipts of more than $50 million a year, the committee found.
The Romney campaign noted that those few businesses play an important role and said that they should not be burdened with higher taxes.
Of the businesses that would be subjected to the higher rates, many are sole proprietors - a classification so amorphous it can include everyone from corporate executives who earn income on rental property to entertainers, hedge fund managers and investment bankers.
Pluralities of likely voters and independent voters have said in that they supported letting the Bush-era tax cuts on higher earners expire.
Would repealing those tax cuts kill jobs? Economists generally agree that raising taxes, and taking money that would otherwise cycle through the economy, can cost jobs; that is one of the reasons Mr. Obama's stimulus plan included tax cuts. But it is worth noting that the rates Mr. Obama wants to return to were last seen during the Clinton administration - a time when the nation created 22.7 million jobs, as the Romney campaign itself has noted.
- Michael Cooper
9:35 P.M. | Voters' Voices: The Moderator's Job
LARGO, Fla. - Mr. Obama's first aggressive-looking jabs at Mr. Romney, on the issue of oil and gas, drew some praise. "Throw it back at him, baby!" Mr. Bach said.
When the candidates stepped toward each other and traded questions directly, Mr. Fechko wondered when the moderator would step in. "The aggression is making Romney look rude, to me. He's speaking and I didn't notice Candy Crowley recognize him."
Well, Mr. Nystrom said, "Candy looks like she wants to interject. Here she goes."
And she did. They traded words about who would have the last words. Mr. Romney said he deserved to give the last answer.
"The aggression is not working tonight, Romney," Mr. Bach said. Referring to Ms. Crowley he added, "You're dealing with a strong woman there."
- Susan Saulny
9:30 P.M. | Against the Rule, Candidates Engage Directly
Mr. Romney and Mr. Obama are blatantly and repeatedly breaking the rules.
Under the memorandum agreed to by both campaigns, the two candidates are not to engage each other directly.
So much for that.
On the issue of energy production, both men have turned to each other and repeatedly accused each other of lying.
"Not true," Mr. Obama said directly to Mr. Romney about the production of oil. "We have actually produced more."
Mr. Romney responded directly, and aggressively, saying that oil production is down.
"It's just not true," Mr. Obama said.
"It's absolutely true," Mr. Romney said, looking directly at the president.
- Michael D. Shear
9:24 P.M. | Fact-Check: 'Let Detroit Go Bankrupt'?
Did Mitt Romney really say "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt"? Yes. Though he did not write the headline that continues to haunt him - that task fell to an editor - he did argue in a New York Times op-ed article that General Motors and Chrysler should go through a managed bankruptcy.
But while those companies did ultimately file for bankruptcy, Mr. Romney's claim ignores key facts about the automaker's stability at the time.
Detroit was so fragile at the time that without the government assistance it received before heading into a court-supervised bankruptcy process, it could have collapsed.
At the time Mr. Romney wrote that article (he did not write the headline himself, but had to approve it per a New York Times policy allowing outside op-ed writers the chance to veto any editors' changes), the financial markets had ground to a halt. It was November 2008, and there was little available liquidity for anyone seeking financing. There were certainly no financial institutions - not even Bain Capital, Mr. Romney's private equity firm - looking to invest to the tune of the $80 billion the car companies needed at the time.
No private companies would come to the industry's aid, and the only path through bankruptcy would have been Chapter 7 liquidation, not the more orderly Chapter 11 reorganization that the company ultimately followed, people inside and outside the car companies have said.
In fact, the task force asked Bain if it was interested in investing in General Motors' European operations, according to one person with direct knowledge of the discussions.
Bain declined, this person said, speaking anonymously to discuss private negotiations.
- Jeremy W. Peters
9:23 P.M. | Candidates Not Holding Back
Here's another bit of conventional wisdom that we can throw out the window: That candidates would be restrained from attacking each other, directly and intensely, because there is an audience in the room. Already, Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney are facing each other, challenging each other and acting as if there is not another person in the room. "You'll get your chance in a moment," Mr. Romney said.
- Adam Nagourney
9:20 P.M. | Voters' Voices: Scripted or Authentic?
LARGO, Fla. - After Mr. Obama's first couple of answers, Mr. Bach had an observation: "It seems that he's trying really hard to include his talking points, but it's not coming from the heart."
But Ms. Siegrist interjected, "That's what they're both doing."
Listening to Mr. Obama's third answer, about oil and gas, Mr. Bach continued, "He's worried too much about the scripted points."
- Susan Saulny
9:18 P.M. | Fact-Check: Pell Grants for College
Mr. Romney said he wanted to keep the Pell Grant program growing. This a new position for him
Barely a minute into his first reply of the debate, Mr. Romney said, "I want to make sure we keep our Pell Grant program growing" a new position for him. In the first debate, he said, "I don't have any plan to cut education funding and grants that go to people going to college," and even that position came as a surprise to many analysts.
The governor and his campaign have repeatedly criticized President Obama's expansion of the Pell Grant program, which they have said is unsustainable. Mr. Romney's says he would "refocus Pell Grants dollars on the students who need them most." For months, this was widely interpreted as meaning that fewer people would qualify for Pell Grants - a question the Romney campaign declined to clarify.
Mr. Romney would also restore banks to their role in making student loans. Mr. Obama eliminated that role and used some of the savings to pay for the Pell Grant expansion.
- Richard Pérez-Peña
9:17 P.M. | Candidates Begin With Sharp Exchanges
It took less than a minute for Mr. Obama to take a swing at his rival, accusing Mr. Romney of saying that he wanted Detroit to go bankrupt four years ago.
"When Governor Romney said we should let Detroit go bankrupt, I bet on the American auto industry," Mr. Obama said.
That dig produced exactly the expected response from Mr. Romney, who indignantly charged that the president eventually pushed to take the auto companies through bankruptcy too.
"That was precisely what I recommended and what happened," Mr. Romney said.
But the president fired right back, quickly becoming aggressive the way his supporters said he did not during the first debate.He accused Mr. Romney of supporting a bankruptcy for the auto industry without supporting the financial resources that made it possible. And he quickly attacked Mr. Romney as an elitist who cares about the rich.
"Governor Romney doesn't have a five-point plan. He has a one-point plan," Mr. Obama said. "And that is to make sure folks at the top play by a different set of rules."
- Michael D. Shear
9:17 P.M. | Voters' Voices: You Aren't What You Wear
LARGO, Fla. - The first few moments of the debate brought an observation: "So Romney has a blue tie on but the President is wearing red?" Mr. Fechko said, sounding a bit amused. "I just find it odd. But it probably has no real meaning. It's nothing official, but we associate red with Republicans and blue with Democrats. They don't do anything without calculation, so perhaps it does mean something."
- Susan Saulny
9:14 P.M. | Fact-Check: 12 Million Jobs
Mr. Romney has promised to create 12 million jobs over the next four years if he is elected president. That is actually about as many jobs as the economy is already expected to create, according to some economic forecasters.
In its semiannual long-term economic forecast released in April, Macroeconomic Advisers projected that the economy would add 11.8 million jobs from 2012 to 2016. Moody's Analytics, another forecasting firm, projects similar job growth. That means Mr. Romney believes his newly announced policies would add an extra 200,000 jobs on top of what people already expected, or a jobs bonus of about 2 percent.
Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody's Analytics, said that he expected the economy to remain on about the same path regardless of who is elected, under the assumption that whoever wins will "reasonably gracefully address the fiscal cliff, increase the Treasury debt ceiling without major incident, and achieve something close to fiscal sustainability."
Mr. Romney's camp may be suggesting that his policies would create 12 million jobs in excess of those already on track to be produced.
When asked by The Washington Post how the 12 million number was produced, the campaign cited three studies, all of which were problematic in this context.
One study finding that seven million jobs would be created by Mr. Romney's tax plan refers to job creation over a decade, not four years.
Another apparently intended to support the claim that Mr. Romney's energy policies would create three million jobs, but that number referred to an eight-year projection for policies largely already in place, not a four-year time frame for an alternative policy proposed by Mr. Romney.
Finally, Mr. Romney and his campaign have said that two million jobs could be created if the United States got tougher on China's infringement of intellectual property rights. That number has been sourced to a May 2011 report from the International Trade Commission.
It did not specifically analyze a Romney proposal; it simulated what would happen if China enacted a "substantial improvement" in intellectual property rights so that intellectual property was about as protected in China as it is in the United States. It found that the United States would gain about 2.1 million full-time equivalent jobs, at least under the economic conditions the country faced in 2011. It is not clear how the United States could force China to effect this change, though.
- Catherine Rampell
8:58 P.M. | Voters' Voices: Undecided in Florida
LARGO, Fla. - Here on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, in a swing county in an important swing state, the leader of the local Independent Party has gathered several friends to debate the debate - coffee, red sangria and beers in hand.
"Well, we'll see how many distortions come out tonight," said Ernie Bach, the Independent Party's state chairman and a longtime political activist. "Perception is reality. Say something over and again, and people will believe it."
He was readying his troops, all independent voters. Chuck Fechko, 63, a retired accountant, Alyse Siegrist, 76, a retired food broker for grocery stores, and Scott Nystrom, 33, a restaurant server, voiced their agreement.
Mr. Nystrom's not entirely unserious idea of the moment is to start his own "super PAC" to counter the weight of the Democratic and Republican fund-raisers who have, in his words, "so distorted this race."
Mr. Fechko offered some advice regarding a name: "You'll needs words like Future, America, Together and Action. But personally, I'd go for something funny and sarcastic. Let's keep thinking about it."
For now, with the naming issue on the back burner, attention has turned to what people want to see Tuesday night, in what they expect will be yet another crucial night for both President Obama and his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney.
"This one should be pretty good, given what's already happened," Mr. Fechko said. "Common wisdom in the past has been that debates are entertaining and interesting. But these seem to actually change poll numbers. So anything is possible."
- Susan Saulny
8:52 P.M. | A Fresh Round of Spin Before Debate Begins
Pencils sharpened?
Fresh batteries in voice recorders?
O.K., let's go. It's time to pre-spin the debate. And here they come, into the blue-carpeted pit at the front of the press center, a thundering herd of Republican and Democratic surrogates to foreshadow themes and amplify their candidates' messages.
(Reader warning: some mature content to follow)
Gov. Bob McDonnell, Republican of Virginia, asked how Mr. Romney would parry President Obama's effort to paint him as unfriendly to women: "The whole theory that Republicans are somehow engaged in a war on women is very much contrived. Everybody knows that. The recent polls show women have actually given Mitt Romney his bump.''
Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts (and stand-in for Mr. Romney in the president's debate prep), on how Mr. Romney would portray himself: "Tonight I'll bet you'll hear him stand up there and say, 'Wow, was I bipartisan in Massachusetts, I want to do for the country what I did in Massachusetts.' Well, country, be warned. What he did in Massachusetts according to the speaker was give marching orders. According to the Senate president, was be disengaged.''
John H. Sununu, a former Republican governor of New Hampshire, asked what he thought of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's accepting responsibility for American deaths in Benghazi, Libya: "She deserves credit for trying to save the president's butt and throwing herself under the bus. But shame on the president for having her do that.''
Alan Simpson, the former Wyoming Senator, on why Representative Paul D. Ryan rejected the bipartisan report of the Simpson-Bowles debt reduction commission: "I said, 'If you voted against it because you're afraid of Grover Norquist, I have no respect for you whatsoever.' He said, 'No, we feel if you get rid of the employer deduction of employee health care, the employers will panic and go to Obamacare'. I said, 'That's good enough for me.' "
Hey, this guy's pretty good. Let's ask another question: Is Mr. Romney being honest with voters about how he will pay for his tax cuts?
"Nobody's honest with anybody. It's mush all around. They haven't mentioned Social Security solvency once. These kids" - indicating Hofstra University students looking on - "will be picking crap with the chickens when they're 65."
And now, let the combat begin.
- Trip Gabriel
8:43 P.M. | Advice From Obama's Debate Coach
What are Mr. Obama's top advisers telling him ahead of Tuesday night's debate?
For the most part, that's a secret. But a memo from Ron Klain, the president's chief debate coach, may give some clues.
The memo of debate-prep "rules," penned years ago and posted online again recently by Third Way, a Democratic-leaning think tank in Washington, urges candidates to write their "dream post-debate headline" as they prepare.
"As you consider potential answers, or lines, or any other element of debate strategy and tactics, ask yourself: Is this approach helping to win that "dream" headline?" Mr. Klain writes.
Mr. Obama got none of his dream headlines after the first debate. Nor did he satisfy Mr. Klain's second rule in the seven-page memo: to develop a list of "three items you MUST say in the debate."
The president was roundly criticized after the first debate for failing to mention any of his top priorities: Mr. Romney's "47 percent" comment; the abortion issue; Bain Capital; or Mr. Romney's taxes. It's possible Mr. Klain has stressed rule No. 2 in the days leading up to this debate.
And then there's rule No.10, which gets at one of the other criticisms of Mr. Obama's initial performance - that he was sleepwalking through the first debate. "Punches are good, counterpunches are better," says rule No. 10.
"If you develop five zippy replies to your opponents' five most commonly used lines, the odds are high that you will get a chance to use two or three," Mr. Klain writes. "And remember to also game out your opponents' likely replies to your most common lines: nothing is more effective in a debate than a counter-counter punch!"
There are 21 rules in all. The entire memo can be seen here.
Among some of the more interesting ones: Rule 3 encourages candidates to study what their opponent has been saying in the days just before the debate. "All candidates are creatures of habit. You can use that to your advantage: 90% of what your opponent will say in the debate will have come out of his mouth in the week before the debate," Mr. Klain writes.
Or Rule 13, which says that a candidate can lose a debate at any time during the event, but that "you can only win it in the first 30 minutes." He explains: "The viewers, the reporters and even your opponent form a sense of the debate dynamic in the early going. Indeed, for debates held at night, reporters (on deadline) usually write first drafts of their stories before the debate is half over."
And, finally, Rule 20: "If in doubt, don't." Candidates are often uncertain if something they say will come out right, Mr. Klain writes.
"At that moment remember the advice that some elementary school teacher once gave you: 'If in doubt, don't,' " Mr. Klain writes. "Better to fail to make a point during a debate (leaving open the possibility it can be made post-debate) than to make a point that goes awry."
- Michael D. Shear
8:32 P.M. | The Caucus Click: Romney Backstage
- Josh Haner
8:19 P.M. | Romney's Practice Sessions
Mitt Romney may have a unseen weapon for this town hall-style debate: dozens of secretive practice sessions that began many months ago.
Aides to Mr. Romney began organizing frequent, off-the-record discussions with voters six months ago, with a specific goal in mind: making the candidate comfortable talking to ordinary people about their troubles and supplying him with anecdotes to tell during crucial moments of the campaign.
The sessions, typically held before or after public events in far-flung locales, around a small table with light food and beverages, had the advantage of being shielded from reporters, so that any of Mr. Romney's awkward moments or offhand remarks remained private. Aides said he had witnessed - and learned to react to - men and women become emotional about everything from foreclosed homes to their children's academic achievements.
Most important, the roundtable discussions offered Mr. Romney a chance to become a practiced retail politician in intimate settings, something at which he is likely to excel Tuesday night at Hofstra.
- Michael Barbaro
8:21 P.M. | First Lady Makes Pre-debate Fund-Raising Pitch
President Obama's campaign has sent dozens of fund-raising e-mails to supporters from Michelle Obama, the first lady.
But the one that arrived in in boxes at just before 8 o'clock tonight uses a word that none of them did before in describing her husband.
"Fighting."
In the fund-raising pitch, Mrs. Obama describes herself as proud of her husband and eager to see him on the stage facing Mr. Romney for a second time. And she obliquely acknowledges the criticism that Mr. Obama did not seem to be aggressive the last time.
"Tonight at the debate, you're going to see the guy who will always be out there fighting tirelessly for you," she writes. "Show Barack you're with him by donating $5 or more."
- Michael D. Shear
8:11 P.M. | The Caucus Click: A Protest Kiss
- James Hill
8:08 P.M. | On Debate Day, an Apology to the President
What happens when you are quoted saying something unflattering about the president just days before a critical second debate?
Well, if you're the leader of a Democratic-leaning think tank in Washington and one of the president's most visible supporters, you apologize, fast.
That's what happened to Neera Tanden, the president of the Center for American Progress.
Ms. Tanden was quoted in a New York Magazine article this week as saying the following about Mr. Obama: "The truth is, Obama doesn't call anyone, and he's not close to almost anyone. It's stunning that he's in politics, because he really doesn't like people. My analogy is that it's like becoming Bill Gates without liking computers."
That's pretty tough stuff, especially coming from the leader of an organization dedicated to implementing policies that Mr. Obama supports. (Ms. Tanden was a top supporter of Hillary Clinton during the 2008 Democratic primaries.)
It's a sure bet that folks at the White House, and in Mr. Obama's Chicago headquarters, were not happy at all.
And so Ms. Tanden tweeted her apology Tuesday morning: "I was trying to say how President Obama, who I admire greatly, is a private person, but I deeply regret how I said it. I apologize."
- Michael D. Shear
7:31 P.M. | The Caucus Click: Crossing Paths
- James Hill
6:59 P.M. | Predebate Scenes From the Postdebate Spin Room
HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. - Two hours before the candidates step on the stage at Hofstra University here, the cavernous spin room is already crackling with narratives and counternarratives - most about how pugilistic President Obama is likely to be.
"They all say he's going to come out swinging," said Senator Rob Portman, the Ohio Republican who played Mr. Obama in mock debates to prepare Mitt Romney. "He's going to be a new Barack Obama - new, different, improved."
But an hour earlier, Stephanie Cutter, Mr. Obama's deputy campaign manager, insisted, "He is not looking to come here to score punches on Mitt Romney; he's coming in here to describe what a second term of an Obama presidency would look like."
She said the expectations of a very combative Mr. Obama were largely a creation of the Romney campaign. At the same time, Ms. Cutter said the president would be "passionate" about making his case for a second term. She said that Mr. Obama would hold Mr. Romney to account for his statements, but that it would not be his primary thrust.
"We'll do our best to keep Mitt Romney honest," she said, "but that could take all night." Read more...
- Mark Landler
6:56 P.M. | Town Hall Format Poses Risks for Candidates
If either President Obama or Mitt Romney had a robotic sidekick like the one in the campy, 1960s television show "Lost in Space," it might now be bleeping wildly and warning: "Danger! Danger!"
The threat? Voters.
Both candidates have had some of their most awkward and politically fraught moments when confronted directly by voters.
Mr. Obama was caught off guard during a 2010 economic town hall forum on CNBC when an African-American woman declared herself profoundly disappointed in him. He grinned awkwardly and then rambled for four minutes, providing new evidence of the political peril from a still sluggish economy.
At the Iowa State Fair in 2011, Mr. Romney's answer to a combative voter provided one of the most enduring - and damaging - moments in his campaign. "Corporations are people, too, my friend," a defensive Mr. Romney responded, a line that would dog him in the months ahead.
Tonight, there will many opportunities for such a moment, as described in the following piece. Read more ...
- Michael D. Shear
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October 16, 2012 Tuesday
In New Ad, Romney Stresses Moderate Positions on Reproductive Issues
SECTION: US; politics
LENGTH: 356 words
HIGHLIGHT: Mitt Romney's campaign, in an effort to appeal to women who hold more moderate views on reproductive issues, is releasing a new commercial that highlights his support for contraception and abortion in limited circumstances.
Mitt Romney's campaign, in an effort to appeal to women who hold more moderate views on reproductive issues, is releasing a new commercial that highlights his support for contraception and abortion in limited circumstances.
"You know, those ads say Mitt Romney would ban all abortions and contraception seemed a bit extreme, so I looked into it," says a woman identified as Sarah Minto, who is shown on camera searching on Google for "Romney on abortion."
Ms. Minto adds: "It turns out Romney doesn't oppose contraception at all. In fact, he thinks abortion should be an option in cases of rape, incest or to save a mother's life."
The ad is Mr. Romney's most aggressive attempt to rebut attempts by the Obama campaign to paint him as extreme on women's rights.
Mr. Romney has long struggled with women. All year polls have shown President Obama with a sizeable advantage. But as the race tightens in the final three weeks before the election - and one major poll showing this week that the Republican nominee is significantly narrowing the gender gap - the Romney campaign is moving dramatically to showcase its more moderate positions.
This strategy is not without risk. Many socially conservative Republicans have long been wary of Mr. Romney, who as a candidate for United States Senate said that abortion should be "safe and legal" and touted his pro-gay rights positions.
Reproductive rights have continued to bedevil Mr. Romney over the course of this election. Just last week he raised eyebrows when he denied to the editorial board of The Des Moines Register that he would pursue anti-abortion legislation. "There's no legislation with regards to abortion that I'm familiar with that would become part of my agenda," he said.
Mr. Romney's advisers have long said that they believed the election would turn on the economy, and that is where Ms. Minto ends her statement in the ad.
"I'm more concerned about the debt our children will be left with," she says as she looks into the camera. "I voted for President Obama last time. We just can't afford 4 more years."
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USA TODAY
October 16, 2012 Tuesday
FINAL EDITION
What to watch;
Wall Street tunes into 2nd debate in series
BYLINE: Adam Shell, @adamshell, USA TODAY
SECTION: MONEY; Pg. 3B
LENGTH: 245 words
Using a sports analogy, investors are viewing the three presidential debates between President Obama and Republican rival Mitt Romney as a best-of-three series of verbal sparring that has the power not only to crown a White House winner, but also to affect the money-making game on Wall Street.
On most Wall Street scorecards, the first debate in Denver was won by Romney, which has turned the presidential race into a too-close-to-call political brawl. Today, the second debate in the series moves to Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y.
Given that two of the biggest uncertainties hanging over markets are the Nov. 6 election and the looming economic squeeze of higher taxes and government spending cuts, better known as the fiscal cliff, this is must-see TV for Wall Street. While there is important stuff like a slew of corporate earnings results and fresh economic data being watched closely by investors this week, those economic indicators amount to a "sideshow" compared with politics and fixing the nation's fiscal woes, David Kelly, chief global strategist at JPMorgan Funds told clients in a note titled "Sideshows."
"The second presidential debate," Kelly says, "is clearly the most important event of the week."
The debates are critical because they could determine the election winner, which will have big implications on the future taxation of stocks and how the fiscal cliff gets resolved. The close race is causing uncertainty, the one thing the market hates.
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October 16, 2012 Tuesday
FINAL EDITION
Romney trails Obama in Sept. fundraising
BYLINE: Fredreka Schouten, and Christopher Schnaars, USA TODAY
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 7A
LENGTH: 568 words
Republican Mitt Romney and the Republican National Committee raised more than $170million in September, the biggest monthly haul of the campaign, but trailing slightly behind the $181million collected by President Obama and affiliated Democratic committees last month.
The fundraising left Romney and allied Republican committees with $191million in available cash to spend in the final full month of the presidential contest, and his campaign pushed to raise more.
"With less than a month left, we will continue the hard work of raising the resources to ensure Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan can win in November," Spencer Zwick, Romney's top fundraiser said in a statement, as the campaign's top donors and fundraisers gathered Monday for the start of a three-day retreat at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York City.
The events include a private party at a midtown Manhattan ballroom where donors can watch televised coverage of Tuesday's town hall presidential debate at Hofstra University in nearby Long Island. Donors also will hear presentations from top campaign strategists and RNC chairman Reince Priebus.
Romney's campaign has relied heavily on larger donors, who can write checks of up to $75,800 to a joint fundraising committee he operates with the Republican National Committee and several state parties. More than $97 million -- or nearly $6 out of every $10 -- Romney and the Republican Party reported raising last month came through the joint fundraising effort, new filings show.
That reliance on big donors puts added pressure on Romney to find fresh sources of cash to sustain his campaign in the final sprint to Election Day.
By contrast, Obama's campaign has drawn on a wider pool of smaller donors that he can tap repeatedly for donations before they hit contribution limits. That frees him to focus more on campaigning and less on fundraising in the weeks ahead.
Filings late Monday from the joint fundraising committee also show that 42 federal lobbyists raised a total of $9million on Romney's behalf between July 1 and Sept. 30.
After marshaling his resources over the summer, Romney has begun an advertising barrage, spending nearly $19million last week alone in nine key battleground states, according to data collected by the National Journal. That tops the $18.1million Obama spent during the same period in those states.
In North Carolina, a state Obama won slightly by more than 14,000 votes four years ago, Romney pumped $1.4million into television commercial last week while Obama spent nearly $830,000. He also outspent the president on the air in Iowa, Nevada, Virginia and Wisconsin.
Romney's campaign did not say whether the candidate has tapped his fortune. In August, Romney borrowed $20million to remain competitive with Obama, and aides say he did not seek another loan in September.
Obama has not disclosed how much cash he had on the bank at the end of September. Those numbers and other details of both campaigns' fundraising and spending won't come until Saturday when they make disclosures to the Federal Election Commission.
Monday was the deadline for congressional candidates to detail their fundraising to federal regulators.
In one of the nation's most expensive and hotly contested Senate races, Democrat Elizabeth Warren raised $12.1million in the quarter, surging past the nearly $7.5million collected by Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown, the Republican she wants to unseat.
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Election 2012
October 16, 2012 Tuesday 9:47 PM EST
How the town hall debate will work
BYLINE: Rachel Weiner
LENGTH: 206 words
Tonight's town hall debate at Hofstra University will work a little differently than the previous presidential and vice presidential debates. Here's what to expect.
There will be no opening (or closing) statements from President Obama and Mitt Romney; moderator Candy Crowley will introduce the candidates. Then town hall participants, undecided voters selected by the Gallup Organization, will start asking questions. Romney gets the first question.
After each question, both candidates get two minutes to respond. Crowley will then ask a follow-up question. The candidates will have another two minutes total to discuss, but that time can be extended at Crowley's discretion. The Presidential Debate Commission is hoping to get through 13 questions.
Both campaigns objected to Crowley's intention to ask follow-up questions, having agreed themselves that she would not do so. But that agreement did not include Crowley or the commission.
In all, there will be 82 town hall members on the stage. Only Crowley will know the questions in advance. The town hall participants have already submitted their questions to her. With a small team of helpers, she's chosen the people who will get to speak and the order in which they will do so.
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October 16, 2012 Tuesday 9:39 PM EST
Jesse Jackson Jr. says he is 'not well'
BYLINE: Sean Sullivan
LENGTH: 648 words
Make sure to sign up to receive "Afternoon Fix" every day in your e-mail inbox by 5(ish) p.m.!
EARLIER ON THE FIX:
Independents to presidential election: "Booooo"
Crossroads GPS hits Angus King with first ad in Maine Senate race
How redistricting leads to a more partisan Congress - in two charts
5 charts that set the scene for the second presidential debate
8 third quarter fundraising reports that matter
What Republicans in Pennsylvania have in common with Charlie Brown
How the Clintons are doing some heavy lifting for Obama
Wonk|Fix previews the second presidential debate! (VIDEO)
Can a strong ground game help Obama stop Romney's momentum?
What to watch for in the second presidential debate
WHAT YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED:
* Moderator Candy Crowley will be allowed to ask follow up questions during tonight's town hall debate between President Obama and Mitt Romney. Both campaigns wanted to limit Crowley's role, but the Commission on Presidential Debates said Tuesday afternoon that it wasn't budging.
* Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) said in an interview that he is "not well" and has doctor's appointments twice a day near his home in Washington. Jackson underwent treatment for bipolar disorder at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota earlier this year. Jackson also faces a federal investigation of his campaign's finances.
* The conservative super PAC American Crossroads launched a $11.1 million ad buy that asks Obama: "Where are the jobs you promised?" The ad will air in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio and Virginia. Notably, it won't air in Wisconsin, where Republicans have been bullish about competing, but polling shows Obama still leads. Restore Our Future, the super PAC supporting Romney, is up in Wisconsin.
* Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) had a big third quarter, raising $5.4 million. Brown's take was nearly $1 million more than state Treasurer Josh Mandel (R), who raised $4.5 million. Both candidates spent big, with Brown dishing out $7 million and Mandel using $5 million.
* Ross Perot, the Texas billionaire who was twice a third-party presidential candidate in the 1990s, endorsed Romney. "At stake is nothing less than our position in the world, our standard of living at home, and our constitutional freedoms," Perot wrote in a Des Moines Register op-ed announcing his decision.
WHAT YOU SHOULDN'T MISS:
* Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will campaign with Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan (Wis.) in Ohio on Wednesday. The event outside of Cleveland will mark the first time Rice has stumped with the GOP ticket. Rice's speech was a big hit at the GOP convention in Tampa, so it's a bit surprising she has not campaigned more.
* Obama's pre-debate meal tonight: steak and potatoes.
* Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) outraised former congressman Pete Hoekstra (R) during the third quarter and ended the period with more money in the bank. Stabenow raised nearly $1.8 million and ended September with more than $2.8 million, while Hoekstra brought in $1.4 million and banked $1.1 million.
* The Bipartisan Policy Center will host its fourth annual political summit at Tulane University in New Orleans on Nov. 15. James Carville and Mary Matalin will co-host "Beyond the Ballot: A Government in Transition," which will look back at the November election and ahead to the transition between the campaign and governing.
THE FIX MIX:
A Hot N Cold cover:
With Aaron Blake
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October 16, 2012 Tuesday 9:13 PM EST
What to watch for in the second presidential debate
BYLINE: Chris Cillizza;Aaron Blake
LENGTH: 1644 words
President Obama and Mitt Romney will take the stage tonight at Hofstra University for their second general election debate - the most important debate since, well, their first debate 13 days ago.
VIDEO: The town hall debate you've already seen: We take a look back on how President Obama and Mitt Romney have responded to Americans' questions on domestic and foreign policy issues.
Given President Obama's stinker of a performance the first time out - 71 percent of likely voters said Romney won in a new Washington post-ABC News poll - the pressure will be on the incumbent to show he has a pulse (and probably a bit more) tonight.
But what are the other storylines/questions to keep an eye on? We outlined a few in our Monday Fix column, and we offer a few more below. Also make sure to tune into The Fix tonight; we'll be live-tweeting the debate, which starts at 9 p.m. eastern time, and then will offer up our take on the winners and losers once it concludes.
* Can Obama find a groove?: There's a common misconception floating around the political world that Obama is a proven and gifted debater who simply had an off night in the first debate. But a look back at the totality of Obama's debate performances on the national stage suggests that his showing in Denver was not entirely inconsistent with what he has done in the past. During the 2008 general election debates against John McCain, Obama was sober, serious and guarded - in large part because he was clearly ahead and because the Arizona senator seemed to constantly be trying to score a 10-point basket. The result? The then-Illinois senator was deemed to be a (narrow) winner. While Obama was more animated in the 2008 debates than he was in the first presidential debate of this election, his style - professorial rather than populist - wasn't much different. While the assumption is that Obama will do significantly better than he did the first time around, there's a deeper, underlying question: What if Obama just isn't a very good debater? He needs a strong showing this evening in order to dispel that notion.
* Obama's 'porridge' question: In the first debate, Obama was clearly too cool, seemingly disengaged from the proceedings and giving off an "I want to be somewhere else" vibe. But, arguably, Joe Biden was too hot in the vice presidential debate - scoffing at, laughing at and generally ridiculing Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan throughout the proceedings. For Obama to "win" this debate, he has to find some middle ground between his own debate performance and that of his vice president, with a finger on the scale toward being too hot rather than too cold. The issue with that strategy is that - as we mentioned above - it's not really who Obama is. He is the cool, cerebral politician, not the knife-fighting scrapper who grinds out political victories. But tonight he'll need to show some fight without coming across as manufacturing outrage. It's a fine line to walk and a test that Obama has never really had to pass in past national debates.
* Winning once is hard; winning twice is harder: Romney entered the first debate with large majorities assuming that Obama would whup him. Not so in this debate where, according to new Pew Research Center data, 41 percent of people think Obama will win and 37 percent think Romney will emerge victorious. In conversations with lots of sharp GOP operatives and elected officials, there is real concern that Romney benefited from a sort of perfect storm in the first debate (lots of economic talk, Obama checked out, a less-than-assertive moderator, etc.) that he simply won't be able to recreate this time around. While we tend to think that is a bit too pessimistic - Romney has proven he is an able debater repeatedly during his two presidential bids - it is true that the GOP nominee almost certainly faces a tougher task in this debate than he did in the first one. Expectations are a tough thing to live up to - stepping over a low bar is a hallmark of The Fix's professional life - and Romney's first debate performance set the bar much, much higher, even if he's not necessarily the clear favorite.
* WWCCD (What will Candy Crowley Do?): The hubbub over what role debate moderator Candy Crowley can - and should - play consumed the 24 hours before the actual debate. (The Fix has sounded off on it here.) And, whether Crowley likes it or not - knowing her, our guess is she hates being the story rather than covering it - that controversy means that the political class will be heavily focused on how she decides to preside over the debate. (What people should be focused on: Crowley is only the second woman to ever moderate a presidential general election debate.) Crowley herself said Monday that she envisions her role as no different than past moderators of these sort of town hall formats. "There will be questioners to the right and left of me and in front of the candidates, and they will have the questions," Crowley told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Monday. "And as was the case in the Charlie Gibson town-hall meeting and the Tom Brokaw town-hall meeting in presidential campaigns past, there was a time after that for follow-up and for furthering the discussion." Here's hoping Crowley does interject when she feels it necessary to get the candidates to more directly answer the questions being asked of them by the town hall participants.
* The town hall test: As we noted in our Monday column, the town hall format - all of the questions will be asked by undecided likely voters - makes it tougher for both candidates to go negative against one another. But there's also another challenge for Romney and Obama in a town hall setting: They will be getting questions from real people who, very possibly, will tell of the emotional struggles they have faced over the past few years. That reality puts a premium on empathy which, to be frank, is not a real strong suit for either man. (For evidence of the power of empathy - or a lack thereof - check out how George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton answered a question about how the national debt had personally impacted them.) While neither Obama nor Romney is naturally empathetic as a politician, they are bad at empathy for different reasons. Romney is too conscious of stepping off script in a way that might jeopardize his overall performance. Obama is simply opposed to what he views as the false theatrics of politics. Both men will likely be called upon to connect with an audience member (or members) tonight. Can either do so convincingly? That will say a lot about who "wins."
Clinton takes 'responsibility' for Benghazi: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is providing Obama with a bit of political cover, telling CNN on Monday that any failures in the lead-up to the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, rest on her shoulders.
"I take responsibility," Clinton said in response to a question about culpability. She added: "I want to avoid some kind of political gotcha."
Democrats have accused Republicans of exploiting the tragedy for political gain, but uncomfortable questions continue to dog the Obama campaign - especially given that the consulate asked for increased security before the attacks. That request was denied.
On Sunday, top Obama adviser David Axelrod said that the decision was handled by the State Department and never reached Obama's desk.
Clinton's decision to own the situation will undoubtedly help Obama. But if the situation mushrooms into something bigger than it is now, she may jeopardize her own potential 2016 presidential campaign. Of course, that was probably the case regardless of what she said Monday.
Fixbits:
A new Suffolk University poll in New Hampshire shows Obama and Romney tied at 47 percent.
Michelle Obama's motorcade was involved in an accident Monday.
The president of a charity that Paul Ryan stopped by on Saturday says Ryan was uninvited, and he is worried that the stop could threaten donations to the charity by making it appear partisan.
Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) has endorsed former Hawaii governor Linda Lingle (R) in the state's open Senate race after endorsing Rep. Mazie Hirono in the Democratic primary.
A new Democratic party ad hits Indiana GOP Senate candidate Richard Mourdock for saying "we need more zealots in the Republican Party." Meanwhile, Mourdock sought to put some distance between himself and the tea party at a debate Monday night.
The Washington Post's editorial board endorses Tim Kaine in the Virginia Senate race.
Former Wisconsin governor Tommy Thompson's (R) son apologizes for a birther joke.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) takes on Danny Tarkanian, the GOP congressional candidate threatening to steal a newly created and Democratic-leaning seat.
Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-Tenn.) faces a potential medical ethics investigation after a report that he had an affair with a patient and urged her to get an abortion.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee cancels its final week of ad reservations in a series of districts - some from a position of strength and some from a position of weakness.
The New York Times has a great graphic showing the shifting presidential vote in recent decades - by state.
Must-reads:
"Making Mitt: The Myth Of George Romney" - John R. Bohrer, BuzzFeed
"Wisconsin, the land of persuadable voters" - Joel Achenbach, Washington Post
"Obama, Romney have ways to make you vote" - Ann Gerhart, Washington Post
"In battleground Ohio, Obama and Romney fight for blue-collar swing voters" - Jason Horowitz, Washington Post
"Is the Supreme Court About To Swing Another Presidential Election?" - Richard L. Hasen, Slate
"Montana Senate race is coming down to the wire" - Paul Kane, Washington Post
"How Large Is Obama's Advantage In Ohio?" - Nate Cohn, The New Republic
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October 16, 2012 Tuesday 8:12 PM EST
TRUTH, FAL SEH O O DS and the effort to tell them apart
BYLINE: Eli Saslow
SECTION: Style; Pg. C01
LENGTH: 1387 words
PHILADELPHIA - It was going to be another busy night of deciphering truth in an election that regularly stampedes it, so Rob Farley unlocked the spartan office of Factcheck.org and waved to the night janitor.
He walked past portraits of six politicians framed on the wall - three Republicans and three Democrats - and sat at a desk surrounded by books with titles such as "Dirty Politics," "Electoral Dysfunction," and "Throw Them All Out." He powered up two computer screens just in time for the beginning of last week's vice presidential debate and listened as the moderator asked her first question.
Farley jiggled his knee and twirled a pen as the candidates began to answer. "Huh-uh. Not true," he said a moment later, leaning away from the screen, shaking his head.
Ninety seconds into the debate, he hunched over his keyboard to begin his first correction of the night.
"Well," he wrote, "that didn't take long."
For Farley and his six co-workers at Factcheck.org, a nonpartisan nonprofit group on the University of Pennsylvania campus, the presidential election has become a predictable cycle of ambiguity and distortion: Candidates speak in half-truths and exaggerations, which are then amplified by the media and sensationalized in attack ads. Misinformation burns a trail across the Internet. The public trust erodes.
The mission of Factcheck.org is etched onto a small sign in the company's office - "Just The Facts." But rarely are facts absolute in the election of 2012. There are Mitt Romney's facts and President Obama's facts, liberal facts and conservative facts. There are facts provided by the mainstream media ("sometimes slanted," Farley says), think tanks ("flawed"), analysts ("opinionated") and television commercials ("not to be trusted"). There are Internet facts that are not, in fact, facts at all.
As Obama and Romney prepare for their second debate Tuesday, just three weeks from Election Day, the presidential campaign is less a referendum on the facts than a fight over whose facts to believe.
It is Farley's job to sort that out. He moved to Pennsylvania 10 months ago after several years as an investigative reporter and political fact-checker in Florida, a job that suits his natural fastidiousness. On the night of the vice-presidential debate, there was a dust remover on one side of his desk, a lint remover on the other and a can of Apple-Cinnamon Glade perched high on the shelf. He had taped a headline from The Onion to the wall behind one of his computers: "Valiant Fact-Checkers Once Again Save American Political System from Descending into Corruption."
"Everybody else has a side in this race," he said, "and it is my job to walk right down the middle."
Factcheck.org has tried to build its organization in the perilous middle at a time when fact-checking has come in vogue. A few other nonprofits and several media organizations - including The Washington Post - also employ political fact-checkers, making the field considerably more crowded than it was during the last presidential election. In a campaign season rife with voter skepticism, there are instant fact-checkers, television fact-checkers and fact-checkers employed by both campaigns.
Factcheck.org is among the most exhaustive in its pursuit of impartiality, publishing its findings daily on a Web site, disclosing all of its financial donations and linking to secondary sources. Employees are banned from using the word "lie," because management considers it too judgmental. They never grade truth on a scale - no half-true or mostly true - because doing so could be seen as subjective.
Their office has no communal space and no TV, so the fact-checkers stayed at their desks during the debate, watching feeds on their computers and e-mailing one another ideas for items to check later that night. Farley consulted with mathematicians to verify the candidates' figures and searched archives to compare their promises with others they had made before. Most of the misstatements he heard were ones he already had corrected and would probably correct again.
"If we judge our success on whether or not the candidates correct their talking points, then this is a serious exercise in futility," Farley said. But he judged success based on thoroughness, so he listened to the debate and tried to confirm what he heard against a transcript - which he planned to verify by listening to the debate again.
On this night, what Farley heard was the soundtrack of an election in which the truth is on trial, and everyone considers himself a fact-checker.
"Not a single thing he said is correct," Vice President Biden said at one point, nodding in the direction of Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.).
"Oh, perfect for us," Farley said, making a note on his legal pad.
"All this loose talk. Not true. Not true," Ryan said to Biden. "These are indisputable facts!"
Farley turned to his computer and began another e-mail to his co-workers. "We dispute, no?"
He had first been drawn to this work - "kind of a calling," he said - because so many people seem to base decisions on facts that had been distorted. Polls show 64 percent of voters are influenced by campaign ads, and studies indicate that most ads contain at least one misrepresentation. A few weeks ago, Obama told "60 Minutes": "Do we see . . . mistakes that are made and areas where there's no doubt that somebody could dispute how we are presenting things? Yeah, you know, that happens in politics."
According to Factcheck.org, it is happening with increasing frequency in this election, which is dominated by complicated issues that make it easy to cherry-pick facts. There's the issue of the economy, "with a study and a number to suit everybody," Farley said. There's health-care reform, "where you need to make a clarification per sentence," he said.
And now, in the vice presidential debate, there was a deceptively simple question about taxes: Under Mitt Romney's plan, the moderator asked, who would pay more and who would pay less?
Biden said: Millionaires will pay $250,000 less on average, and the middle class will pay more.
Ryan said: Six studies confirm that's not true.
Two answers. Two conflicting statements. And during the next two hours in an election when facts are fluid, they came to mean so many different things.
For liberal MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, it meant: "We now know the Romney campaign is clueless on taxes."
For the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, it meant: "Romney's tax plan would boost economic growth and do so in a neutral manner."
For a chain e-mail sent by a pro-Democratic group to its message group: "Vote for Obama unless you want millionaires to get richer while you go broke!"
For a Facebook post shared by hundreds of conservatives: "Vote for Romney if you still believe in facts and studies."
Finally, long past midnight, Farley stared at his computer screen and deciphered what the statements mean at Factcheck.org: "Biden falsely claims . . . " he wrote. And then: "Ryan inflates the number of 'studies'. . ."
He and his co-workers corrected more than a dozen items for their Web site until their boss dismissed them with a final e-mail at 4:19 a.m. Farley drove home to the Philadelphia suburbs, to a house in a swing district targeted by incessant campaign ads and mailings - another place with so many versions of the truth. He tried to sleep for two hours and then came back to the office at 7:30 a.m. for a television interview. "This is our chance to clarify the facts," he said. He drank a Diet Coke to wake himself up. He used the lint roller to clean his jacket.
The TV studio connection didn't work, so he agreed to do the interview by phone. He sat at his desk and waited for the call. His e-mail was mounting with notes from partisan officials disputing his facts and a few mass mailings from the campaigns that chopped his findings and turned them into half-truths to benefit one side. His facts were fluid now. The phone rang. "Factcheck, this is Rob," he said. He listened to a question from the radio interviewer, who tried and failed to summarize one of Factcheck.org's findings from the previous night.
"Actually, that's not quite what we're saying here," Farley said. Already his facts had been obscured by the cycle of misinformation, and he began to offer another correction.
saslowe@washpost.com
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The Fix
October 16, 2012 Tuesday 7:53 PM EST
What Republicans in Pennsylvania have in common with Charlie Brown
BYLINE: Chris Cillizza
LENGTH: 705 words
The Fix grew up as a big Peanuts fan - and specifically a Charlie Brown lover. (His nerdy cynicism appealed to the boyish Fix.)
And so, when we see two new independent polls in Pennsylvania - one conducted by Quinnipiac University, the other by Muhlenberg College - that show former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney well within striking distance of President Obama - we think of Charlie Brown. And specifically his failed attempts to kick a football held by Lucy.
Forgot that moment? Thanks to the glory of You Tube we can all relive it together:
So what does Charlie Brown constantly being fooled by Lucy have to do with the tightening presidential race in Pennsylvania you ask?
Simple. Like Charlie Brown, Republicans convince themselves every four years that the math in Pennsylvania can add up to a majority for their candidate. And, every four years, Democrats pull the ball away at the last minute and carry the Keystone State.
Let's take a quick stroll through the recent electoral history of Pennsylvania. The last time a Republican won it at the presidential level was in 1988 when then Vice President George H.W. Bush took 51 percent of the vote. In the five elections since then the Republican nominee has won 36 percent, 40 percent, 46 percent, 48 percent and 44 percent in the state - for an average over those five elections of just under 43 percent of the vote. (Worth noting: That average is artificially low due to the fact that in 1992 and 1996 Ross Perot's independent candidacy siphoned off a considerable percentage of the major party vote in Pennsylvania and elsewhere.)
The closest Republicans came during those five elections was in 2004 when George W. Bush lost the state by 144,000 votes (out of almost 5.8 million cast) to Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry.
It's worth digging deeper into those 2004 results to understand why Republicans find the football, er, Pennsylvania so alluring but always wind up flat on their backs electorally speaking when all is said and done.
In that 2004 race, Bush won a majority of the counties in Pennsylvania - basically everything in between Philadelphia in the east and Pittsburgh in the west. And yet, those two anchor cities on opposite sides of the state were more than enough to deliver the state to Kerry.
Here's a look at the four major counties in those two regions and how the 2004 vote broke out.
* Allegheny (Pittsburgh): Kerry 363,674 (57%), Bush 268,387 (42%)
* Philadelphia (Philly): Kerry 517,054 (80%), Bush 124,710 (19%)
* Delaware (inner Philly suburbs): Kerry 157,531 (57%), Bush 116,728 (42%)
* Montgomery (inner Philly suburbs): Kerry 217,342 (56%), Bush 172,206 (44%)
Roughly 43 percent of all Kerry's vote in the state of Pennsylvania came from those four counties. His margin over Bush in those four counties was 573,570 votes - or roughly four times his overall statewide margin.
And that's Republicans' problem in Pennsylvania in a nutshell (This is Austin Powers in a nutshell). They win lots and lots of sparsely populated counties in the vast middle of the state but lose the big population counties in the east and west by such vast margins that the math just doesn't add up.
Could 2012 be different? Of course. History is the best guide until it isn't anymore - and states are always shifting due to demographic changes and the broader national political atmosphere.
But, for all the chatter of late about the competitiveness of Pennsylvania, there's very little evidence that Republicans are putting their money where their mouth is.
According to ad buy information provided to the Fix, Romney's campaign has yet to spend a dime in Pennsylvania on television and the panoply of conservative outside groups dumping cash into key states have combined to spend just $10 million. By way of comparison, Romney and outside GOP groups have already spent more than $68 million on ads in Ohio.
Is it possible that Romney's performance in the first debate coupled with ongoing economic unrest in Pennsylvania has turned the state into an emerging Republican opportunity? Sure.
But the weight of history and the lessons that Charlie Brown can teach us provide a strong counter-argument to the idea that Pennsylvania belongs in the narrow group of swing states this fall.
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Election 2012
October 16, 2012 Tuesday 2:12 PM EST
Rand Paul helping Todd Akin with ad campaign
BYLINE: Tom Hamburger
LENGTH: 559 words
Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul (R) jumps in to the Missouri Senate race Wednesday with a statewide television ad critical of Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill for her votes on foreign aid to countries that have seen violent demonstrations critical of the United States.
Paul is the latest Republican to defy party leaders and help the beleaguered Senate candidacy of Todd Akin, abandoned by the national GOP in August after telling a television interviewer that woman generally do not get pregnant in cases of "legitimate rape." Top Republicans, including presidential nominee Mitt Romney and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ken.), asked Akin to drop out and cut national party support for his campaign.
Akin apologized but sank in the polls, surviving with a small cadre of defiant supporters, mostly Christian conservatives. McCaskill leads in most polls, but Akin's numbers have recovered from the 20-point gap that emerged after his rape comment.
Akin's support among national conservatives has slowly been growing. The National Federation of Independent Business announced this week that it is supporting Akin.
Paul's political committee, RandPAC, has been active in Ohio, West Virginia and Florida hitting the anti-foreign aid favorite theme - a Paul favorite. The ads have gotten push-back from Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.), who says the cuts would compromise American foreign policy.
The ad launching Wednesday in Missouri hits McCaskill for opposing legislation that would cut foreign aid to countries critical of the United States. The ad features pictures of anti-American mobs as an announcer intones: "Our debt keeps climbing. But Claire McCaskill works with Barack Obama to send our money overseas to radicals who attack our embassies, burn our flag and kill our diplomats. . . It's time to bring our tax dollars home and send Claire McCaskill home too."
McCaskill's campaign rejected this view of foreign aid. "Todd Akin's position on this issue is so extreme, he would be one of only 10 senators to cut this foreign aid funding," said campaign communications director Caitlin Legacki. "Sen. Roy Blunt, as well as every member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, including Sen. John McCain, voted against this bill because these overly-simplistic solutions in a dangerous, complex world put our allies and American interests at risk."
Paul's chief of staff, Doug Stafford, said the Kentucky senator decided to back Akin with the six-figure ad buy because he "accepts that Congressman Akin apologized" for his rape comments.
"One or two mistaken sentences or thoughts doesn't change the fact that there are dozens of issues on which Claire McCaskill is truly bad on and on which Todd Akin would be a significant improvement," Stafford said.
The help from Paul comes at a critical time for Akin. McCaskill has broken state records in fundraising while Akin has had trouble finding financial support even as his poll numbers began to recover.
Paul now joins fellow conservative Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) in providing material assistance. DeMint's Senate Conservative Fund has pledged as much as $300,000 to help Akin. In addition, Graham and Sen. Tom Coburn (Okla.) lent their names to Akin fundraising efforts. Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee and former House speaker Newt Gingrich have agreed to campaign in Missouri on behalf of Akin.
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The Washington Post
October 16, 2012 Tuesday
Suburban Edition
TRUTH, FALSEHOODS and the effort to tell them apart
BYLINE: Eli Saslow
SECTION: STYLE; Pg. C01
LENGTH: 1385 words
DATELINE: PHILADELPHIA
PHILADELPHIA - It was going to be another busy night of deciphering truth in an election that regularly stampedes it, so Rob Farley unlocked the spartan office of Factcheck.org and waved to the night janitor.
He walked past portraits of six politicians framed on the wall - three Republicans and three Democrats - and sat at a desk surrounded by books with titles such as "Dirty Politics," "Electoral Dysfunction," and "Throw Them All Out." He powered up two computer screens just in time for the beginning of last week's vice presidential debate and listened as the moderator asked her first question.
Farley jiggled his knee and twirled a pen as the candidates began to answer. "Huh-uh. Not true," he said a moment later, leaning away from the screen, shaking his head.
Ninety seconds into the debate, he hunched over his keyboard to begin his first correction of the night.
"Well," he wrote, "that didn't take long."
For Farley and his six co-workers at Factcheck.org, a nonpartisan nonprofit group on the University of Pennsylvania campus, the presidential election has become a predictable cycle of ambiguity and distortion: Candidates speak in half-truths and exaggerations, which are then amplified by the media and sensationalized in attack ads. Misinformation burns a trail across the Internet. The public trust erodes.
The mission of Factcheck.org is etched onto a small sign in the company's office - "Just The Facts." But rarely are facts absolute in the election of 2012. There are Mitt Romney's facts and President Obama's facts, liberal facts and conservative facts. There are facts provided by the mainstream media ("sometimes slanted," Farley says), think tanks ("flawed"), analysts ("opinionated") and television commercials ("not to be trusted"). There are Internet facts that are not, in fact, facts at all.
As Obama and Romney prepare for their second debate Tuesday, just three weeks from Election Day, the presidential campaign is less a referendum on the facts than a fight over whose facts to believe.
It is Farley's job to sort that out. He moved to Pennsylvania 10 months ago after several years as an investigative reporter and political fact-checker in Florida, a job that suits his natural fastidiousness. On the night of the vice-presidential debate, there was a dust remover on one side of his desk, a lint remover on the other and a can of Apple-Cinnamon Glade perched high on the shelf. He had taped a headline from The Onion to the wall behind one of his computers: "Valiant Fact-Checkers Once Again Save American Political System from Descending into Corruption."
"Everybody else has a side in this race," he said, "and it is my job to walk right down the middle."
Factcheck.org has tried to build its organization in the perilous middle at a time when fact-checking has come in vogue. A few other nonprofits and several media organizations - including The Washington Post - also employ political fact-checkers, making the field considerably more crowded than it was during the last presidential election. In a campaign season rife with voter skepticism, there are instant fact-checkers, television fact-checkers and fact-checkers employed by both campaigns.
Factcheck.org is among the most exhaustive in its pursuit of impartiality, publishing its findings daily on a Web site, disclosing all of its financial donations and linking to secondary sources. Employees are banned from using the word "lie," because management considers it too judgmental. They never grade truth on a scale - no half-true or mostly true - because doing so could be seen as subjective.
Their office has no communal space and no TV, so the fact-checkers stayed at their desks during the debate, watching feeds on their computers and e-mailing one another ideas for items to check later that night. Farley consulted with mathematicians to verify the candidates' figures and searched archives to compare their promises with others they had made before. Most of the misstatements he heard were ones he already had corrected and would probably correct again.
"If we judge our success on whether or not the candidates correct their talking points, then this is a serious exercise in futility," Farley said. But he judged success based on thoroughness, so he listened to the debate and tried to confirm what he heard against a transcript - which he planned to verify by listening to the debate again.
On this night, what Farley heard was the soundtrack of an election in which the truth is on trial, and everyone considers himself a fact-checker.
"Not a single thing he said is correct," Vice President Biden said at one point, nodding in the direction of Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.).
"Oh, perfect for us," Farley said, making a note on his legal pad.
"All this loose talk. Not true. Not true," Ryan said to Biden. "These are indisputable facts!"
Farley turned to his computer and began another e-mail to his co-workers. "We dispute, no?"
He had first been drawn to this work - "kind of a calling," he said - because so many people seem to base decisions on facts that had been distorted. Polls show 64 percent of voters are influenced by campaign ads, and studies indicate that most ads contain at least one misrepresentation. A few weeks ago, Obama told "60 Minutes": "Do we see . . . mistakes that are made and areas where there's no doubt that somebody could dispute how we are presenting things? Yeah, you know, that happens in politics."
According to Factcheck.org, it is happening with increasing frequency in this election, which is dominated by complicated issues that make it easy to cherry-pick facts. There's the issue of the economy, "with a study and a number to suit everybody," Farley said. There's health-care reform, "where you need to make a clarification per sentence," he said.
And now, in the vice presidential debate, there was a deceptively simple question about taxes: Under Mitt Romney's plan, the moderator asked, who would pay more and who would pay less?
Biden said: Millionaires will pay $250,000 less on average, and the middle class will pay more.
Ryan said: Six studies confirm that's not true.
Two answers. Two conflicting statements. And during the next two hours in an election when facts are fluid, they came to mean so many different things.
For liberal MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, it meant: "We now know the Romney campaign is clueless on taxes."
For the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, it meant: "Romney's tax plan would boost economic growth and do so in a neutral manner."
For a chain e-mail sent by a pro-Democratic group to its message group: "Vote for Obama unless you want millionaires to get richer while you go broke!"
For a Facebook post shared by hundreds of conservatives: "Vote for Romney if you still believe in facts and studies."
Finally, long past midnight, Farley stared at his computer screen and deciphered what the statements mean at Factcheck.org: "Biden falsely claims . . . " he wrote. And then: "Ryan inflates the number of 'studies'. . ."
He and his co-workers corrected more than a dozen items for their Web site until their boss dismissed them with a final e-mail at 4:19 a.m. Farley drove home to the Philadelphia suburbs, to a house in a swing district targeted by incessant campaign ads and mailings - another place with so many versions of the truth. He tried to sleep for two hours and then came back to the office at 7:30 a.m. for a television interview. "This is our chance to clarify the facts," he said. He drank a Diet Coke to wake himself up. He used the lint roller to clean his jacket.
The TV studio connection didn't work, so he agreed to do the interview by phone. He sat at his desk and waited for the call. His e-mail was mounting with notes from partisan officials disputing his facts and a few mass mailings from the campaigns that chopped his findings and turned them into half-truths to benefit one side. His facts were fluid now. The phone rang. "Factcheck, this is Rob," he said. He listened to a question from the radio interviewer, who tried and failed to summarize one of Factcheck.org's findings from the previous night.
"Actually, that's not quite what we're saying here," Farley said. Already his facts had been obscured by the cycle of misinformation, and he began to offer another correction.
saslowe@washpost.com
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The New York Times
October 15, 2012 Monday
Late Edition - Final
Five Tips for the Presidential Campaigns After Tuesday's Debate
BYLINE: By MICHAEL D. SHEAR
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; THE CAUCUS; Pg. 12
LENGTH: 733 words
The most important time for the presidential candidates this week may be after Tuesday night's debate.
True, the 90 minutes that they spend in the town-hall-style debate on Long Island on Tuesday night could be a game changer if one candidate performs terribly, as President Obama was perceived to have done two weeks ago.
But if the debate is seen to be more of a draw, then the winner will be decided in the hours and days after -- with perceptions shaped by whichever campaign manages the post-debate time more effectively.
Here are five aspects both campaigns must consider:
TWITTER In the old days (meaning four years ago), campaigns would send e-mails to reporters during the debate, hoping to shape their coverage afterward. Years earlier, runners would drop printed news releases at each desk in the cavernous filing center where reporters covering a debate were working.
Now, both campaigns have armies of supporters posting on Twitter as soon as the debate begins. They are armed with hashtags and snarky observations as they seek to guide the early reaction to the debate.
Last Thursday, Republicans quickly seized on Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.'s grin. The week earlier, they were posting about Mr. Obama's listlessness, even before the debate ended.
On Tuesday, Democrats will be ready to post about what they hope will be a re-energized president. And the team of Mr. Obama's Republican rival, Mitt Romney, will be standing by to do the opposite. Neither side can control Twitter and its millions of users. But they can try to influence it.
THE SPIN ROOM But Twitter does not mean that the campaigns can forget about the journalists. The old-fashioned spin room -- which used to be in a separate room from the reporters -- is now just a designated area where campaign officials and surrogates eagerly make themselves available to reporters.
After Mr. Obama's performance two weeks ago, Mr. Romney's spinners were out in force, grinning from ear to ear. Mr. Obama's advisers slinked out late, hardly able to contain their gloom.
The goal on Tuesday will be for Democrats to argue that Mr. Obama was more forceful, without veering into what some saw as the overly aggressive territory Mr. Biden staked out during the vice-presidential debate. The goal? Shape the newspaper stories and the early-morning conversations, which can help to set the tone for the rest of the day.
THE CANDIDATES The best way to slow down a negative narrative -- or enhance a helpful one -- is to use the candidate quickly after a debate.
Two weeks ago, after Mr. Obama's performance rattled his supporters, the Democratic campaign followed through with two huge, preplanned rallies. Despite the damage he had done to his campaign the night before, Mr. Obama was feisty and aggressive. That helped dampen the criticism a bit.
Likewise, Mr. Romney added a brief campaign stop in Colorado that morning, showing off his energy and enthusiasm coming off a good night.
But there are risks. During the nominating campaign, Mr. Romney often stepped on his own success by making a gaffe the morning after a good debate or a primary night victory. Both candidates will need to avoid making any news that might take away from a victory.
THE ADS Most of the voters in key battleground states are not likely to attend a rally this week. However, they will see the ads produced by the candidates.
Mr. Obama produced an attack ad just hours after his debate with Mr. Romney, and another -- an ad featuring Big Bird -- a few days later. Mr. Romney went up quickly with ads promoting his five-point economic plan, to reinforce the idea that he has provided specifics to voters.
Bet on more ads -- quickly -- after Tuesday night's contest.
MORE DEBATE PREP One big challenge for the campaigns will be the short amount of time between Tuesday's debate and the final one, which will take place next Monday. The campaigns will need to try to shape perceptions from the first, even as they prepare for the next.
Both campaigns have shown a willingness to sequester their candidate for large chunks of time as they prepare. Mr. Obama spent the weekend in Williamsburg, Va., getting ready. Mr. Romney has continued to spend parts of each day in prep sessions.
No matter how much the candidates and their staff members try to respond to the aftermath of Tuesday's debate this week, they cannot forget the reality: Another is right around the corner.
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The International Herald Tribune
Media Share Blame for Negative Ads
BYLINE: By ALBERT R. HUNT | BLOOMBERG NEWS
SECTION: Section ; Column 0; Foreign Desk; LETTER FROM WASHINGTON; Pg.
LENGTH: 928 words
WASHINGTON -- John Geer, one of the most thoughtful and engaged U.S. political scientists, is a fan of negative campaigns.
A central tenet of democracy, says Mr. Geer, a professor at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, ''is to criticize those in power.'' Further, he notes that casting an informed vote for a politician is like buying a car, requiring knowledge of the good and bad, and the candidate will give you only half the story.
Yet even Mr. Geer is shaking his head at this year's race. ''This is setting records for the most negative campaign,'' he says.
The hundreds of thousands of television commercials broadcast by the presidential candidates are lopsidedly negative; this is the case with 80 percent of those put out by President Barack Obama and 84 percent of those by Mitt Romney. It is all the more true of spending by outside groups; the ''super PACs'' on both sides, along with business, conservative and labor organizations, are running negative ads more than 90 percent of the time, according to CMAG, an advertising tracking unit at the analysis firm Kantar Media.
At the presidential level, Mr. Geer says, the negativity is predictable.
''These ads work; it's a polarized electorate, and both candidates offer material. There's an incumbent with a checkered record and a challenger who can't even talk about his record,'' he said. ''That's a perfect cocktail for negativity.''
Negative campaigning is woven into the U.S. political fabric, and the attacks this year are not as vituperative or personally vindictive as in some earlier contests. They are, however, more pervasive, and they define the candidates and contests. Much of the $2 billion expected to be spent on the 2012 presidential race will focus on the handful of closely competitive states, and the vast majority of the money will pay for negative messages.
Campaign strategists for both parties dismiss public criticism. There are innumerable examples that this stuff works and few to the contrary, they say. A study in The American Journal of Political Science last year showed that the more engaged voters, those more likely to vote, are the least offended by negative pitches.
The news media are often the guiltiest parties. If Mr. Romney or Mr. Obama offers a thoughtful policy prescription in Ohio this week, it will be less likely to get attention, especially on cable television, than an attack, the more vitriolic the better.
Some television ads are designed primarily to attract media coverage. Last week, the Obama campaign cut short a commercial making fun of Mr. Romney for his refusal to list any of the trillions of dollars of tax loopholes he has promised to eliminate, even as he vowed to do away with U.S. government funding for public television, including the popular children's program ''Sesame Street'' and its icon, Big Bird. The commercial was less an advertising tool than a way to get coverage, including clips rebroadcast on news programs.
This strategy developed in 1964 with a Democratic ad suggesting that Barry Goldwater, the Republican challenger to President Lyndon B. Johnson, would start a nuclear war. It ran only once but got enormous media coverage.
The greatest con job, though, was in 2004, when a group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which was funded by wealthy Texas conservatives, produced a series of television commercials questioning the heroic military service in Vietnam of the Democratic presidential candidate, John Kerry. It was sleazy and successful; one search during that campaign found that the phrase ''swift boat'' had received 40 percent more coverage than the continuing Iraq War.
In the last half-dozen presidential campaigns, the news media have attempted to bring more accountability by initiating ad watches and fact checks. Mr. Geer argues that this often has a perverse effect, encouraging ads that will get attention but imposing little penalty for lack of veracity.
Campaigns should set precedents for governing. Ronald Reagan's did so in 1980, as did Bill Clinton's in 1992 as well as, for the most part, Mr. Obama's four years ago.
This campaign, with little more than three weeks to go, has been a failure on that score. The winner will face huge challenges: a possible national security crisis with Iran, persisting instability in South Asia and, domestically, the need for unpopular actions on taxes and entitlements and decisions on whether and how to alter Mr. Obama's health-care law, which was enacted in 2010. There is little that either side offers on the stump, and nothing in the television commercials, that deals with these realities, positively or negatively.
Mr. Obama savages Mr. Romney's record of shipping jobs overseas as a private-equity executive and his holding of bank accounts in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands. Last week, a new commercial criticized an earlier investment in Huawei Technologies, the Chinese telecommunications giant, charging that the Republican nominee was ''putting profits for China ahead of security for America.''
Mr. Romney, in an ad, suggests that Mr. Obama is falsely accusing him of proposing a $5 trillion tax cut. Actually, Mr. Romney has proposed a $4.8 trillion tax cut. He claims that would be offset by closing loopholes but refuses to tell voters what they would be and draws phony analogies to a successful reform of the tax code under Mr. Reagan.
One of these candidates will wake up as president-elect Nov. 7 and may try to claim a mandate he does not have. ''We now have an excess of negativity,'' said Mr. Geer, the would-be defender of negative campaigns.
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Late Edition - Final
What's On Today
BYLINE: By KATHRYN SHATTUCK
SECTION: Section C; Column 0; The Arts/Cultural Desk; Pg. 8
LENGTH: 763 words
8 P.M. (Nickelodeon) KIDS PICK THE PRESIDENT: THE CANDIDATES President Obama, above, addresses children's questions about gun control, jobs, illegal immigration, same-sex marriage, outsourcing, bullying and obesity in this election edition of ''Nick News With Linda Ellerbee.'' The views of Mitt Romney, whom Nickelodeon executives said declined to participate in the show because of scheduling conflicts, are represented in video clips. After this episode children can vote online at nick.com/kpp. The results will be announced next Monday.
8 A.M. (TV Land) SABRINA (1995) Julia Ormond will always have Paris in this remake, directed by Sydney Pollack, of the 1954 romantic confection about a chauffeur's daughter who falls for the sons of the manor (Harrison Ford and Greg Kinnear). ''Mr. Pollack's new film runs straight up against a snobbish and dated story, Billy Wilder's status as a national treasure and Audrey Hepburn's heart-stopping way of purring the word 'Paris' with music in her voice,'' Janet Maslin wrote in The New York Times. Still, she added, ''blossoming into radiant color, this film has picture-postcard charms that the black-and-white earlier version could only hint at.''
11 A.M. (HBO) LIFE AS WE KNOW IT (2010) Holly Berenson (Katherine Heigl, right, with child) runs an upscale food shop in Atlanta; Eric Messer (Josh Duhamel) is a womanizing jock who directs live sports events on television. Their mutual best friends (Hayes MacArthur and Christina Hendricks) think they'd be great together, leading to one horrible blind date. Then their friends die in a car crash, leaving behind a baby girl, and Holly and Eric as her guardians. Voilà! Instant family, full of love (for the child) and mutual loathing (for each other). In The Times, Stephen Holden called this romantic comedy from Greg Berlanti bland, with ''not a single deviation from formula.''
12:45 P.M. (Showtime 2) LOST IN TRANSLATION (2003) An American movie star (Bill Murray) cashing in on his celebrity to make an ad in Japan meets a young woman (Scarlett Johansson) who has been deserted by her husband (Giovanni Ribisi) in this comic melodrama written and directed by Sofia Coppola. As they escape the confines of the Tokyo Hyatt, something like love ensues. Mr. Murray ''supplies the kind of performance that seems so fully realized and effortless that it can easily be mistaken for not acting at all,'' Elvis Mitchell wrote in The Times. ''The corollary of this is that Ms. Coppola's direction is so breezily assured in its awareness of loneliness that the film could potentially be dismissed as self-consciously moody rather than registering as a mood piece. But it's bound to be recognized as a movie worthy of the kind of Oscar attention occasionally given to films that challenge audiences subtly.'' Mr. Murray received a best-actor nomination; Ms. Coppola won for best original screenplay.
1:30 P.M. (FX) THE WRESTLER (2008) Mickey Rourke, left, in the comeback role that earned him an Oscar nomination, plays an aging wrestler trying to rally for his return to center ring in this drama from Darren Aronofsky. A. O. Scott, writing in The Times, complimented Mr. Rourke's ''sly, hulking grace'' and added that, ''like its hero, the movie has a blunt, exuberant honesty, pulling off even its false moves with conviction and flair.''
7 P.M. (Sundance) A GOOD YEAR (2006) Russell Crowe reunites with the director Ridley Scott (''Gladiator'') in this celebration of French food and wine, adapted from Peter Mayle's 2004 novel about Max Skinner, an aggressive London bond trader who inherits a small vineyard from his Uncle Henry (Albert Finney). Soon enough Max (Mr. Crowe), soothed by the memories of summers spent amid the grapevines, has morphed into a bon vivant who has fallen for a beautiful bistro owner (Marion Cotillard). Then a young Californian (Abbie Cornish) shows up and announces that she is his uncle's illegitimate daughter -- which would make her Henry's true heir. Writing in The Times, Stephen Holden called the film ''an innocuous, feel-good movie'' and advised viewers ''to make a reservation at an upscale French restaurant immediately after seeing the film or risk going home feeling deprived.''
9 P.M. (Travel) ANTHONY BOURDAIN: NO RESERVATIONS Mr. Bourdain dines and drinks his way through Rio de Janeiro as he accompanies his wife, Ottavia Busia, to a jiu-jitsu competition.
10 P.M. (Military) THE BROKAW FILES Tom Brokaw, the former NBC News anchor, revisits significant moments from his broadcasts, starting with the 40th anniversary of D-Day. KATHRYN SHATTUCK
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October 15, 2012 Monday
'Obama Phone'
BYLINE: JULIET LAPIDOS
SECTION: OPINION
LENGTH: 331 words
HIGHLIGHT: A Tea Party group has turned the viral video into an ad.
Last month the Drudge Report hyped a video of an African-American woman at an Ohio rally claiming the president had given her a free phone. "Everybody in Cleveland, low minorities, got Obama phones Keep Obama in president, you know! He gave us a phone, he's gonna do more." Dozens of news sites took it upon themselves to explain that the Obama campaign was not in fact operating an electronics-for-votes ring in swing states, but that there is in fact a government program that provides low-income people with free or cheap phones. It started under George W. Bush, not his successor.
Now the Tea Party Victory Fund, a super PAC, has turned the misleading clip into an ad, which will run in three predominantly white Ohio counties. A text overlay reads "have Barack Obama's policies empowered or enslaved Americans?" The ad also notes that 1 in 7 Americans are on food stamps.
Anyone who's listened to Mitt Romney's 47 percent comments will get the obvious implication: Democrats win by hooking Americans on government programs. The Tea Party Victory Fund even sent out a fundraising note connecting the dots: "This commercial is a microcosm of the difference between Republicans and Democrats. The Republicans want to create an environment where free people make their own choices and pursue their dreams. President Obama and the Democrats want to create a dependency on Government [sp] that ensures that Americans will continue to rely on Washington from cradle to grave."
Left unsaid but just as obvious is that the Tea Party Victory Fund jumped on the 'Obama phone' video because it features a black woman. The ad fits into the narrative that minorities are moochers and that government programs transfer wealth from white people to black people. If it shows anything in microcosm, it's the Tea Party's Southern Strategy.
The Lying Precedent
How to Energize the Liberal Base
Sarah Palin: Stop Using My Words Against Me
Vice-Presidential Debate Preview
A Cynical Portrait of Two Political Bases
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October 15, 2012 Monday
American Politics and Chinese Data
BYLINE: BILL BISHOP
SECTION: BUSINESS
LENGTH: 813 words
HIGHLIGHT: In the midst of increasingly heated election rhetoric about China, Beijing has released some important economic data as its currency hits record highs. What DealBook readers need to know about China this week.
In the midst of increasingly heated election rhetoric about China, Beijing has released some important economic data as its currency hits record highs.
SEPTEMBER'S TRADE NUMBERS weremixed, and at leastone analyst suggested that the upside surprise in export data was a result of the introduction of the iPhone 5.
The inflation rate of 1.9 percentwas close to the slowest rate since 2010 and China's broad measure of money supply, known as M2, grew at 14.8 percent, the fastest rate in 14 months.
On Thursday, Beijing will release third-quarter gross domestic product figures. The consensus forecast is 7.4 percent, below Beijing's 7.5 percent target and possibly a "a rare treat to the perma-bears."
CHINA'S CURRENCY, the renminbi, continues to hit record highs, at one point on Monday making an intraday high for the third day in a row. The reasons for the surge are unclear, withsuggestions including increased confidence in a Chinese recovery and "electioneering" in the last month before the United States election.
On Friday, the United states Treasury delayed until mid-November a semiannual, Congressionally mandated report that must declare whether China manipulates its currency. Delays of this report are not uncommon, but it certainly is convenient to push it past the election.
Zhou Xiaochuan, head of the People's Bank of China, said in a speech over the weekend that the value of the renminbi was set by the market and the value was near equilibrium. Mr. Zhou's deputy delivered the speech at the annual International Monetary Fund conference, held this year in Tokyo, as Mr. Zhou declined to attend, apparently as a result of an islands dispute with Japan.
Not everyone agrees that the currency's value is determined by the market or trades near equilibrium.
Both Mitt Romney and his running mate, Paul D. Ryancriticized the Obama administration for delaying the release of the currency report, with Mr. Romney repeating his claim that "Day 1, I will label China a currency manipulator. We got to get those jobs back and get trade to be fair".
CHINA DOES NOT SEEM PLEASED at the idea of a Romney presidency. Last month, Xinhua, the official news service, sounded almost like an Obama campaign ad when it wrote that Mr. Romney's China-bashing talks were "useless" to the United States economy.
Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithneraddressed the merits of labeling China a currency manipulator in April, saying that:
Nothing would happen, except you would diminish the incentive they have to move. It comes with no effective sanction or action. If it had been an effective way to get change in China, then bipartisan, Democrat and Republican presidents over time would have embraced that basic strategy. But it had no merit as a basic strategy. And it does carry the risk of a trade war, which is why there's so much opposition to that basic policy.
Mr. Geithner's comments remind us that United States policy toward China has actually been remarkably consistent over the last 30-plus years, across Republican and Democratic administrations.
Romney supporter and "old wise man" of the United States-China relationship, Maurice R. Greenberg, told Bloomberg News that he expected Mr. Romney to maintain that bipartisan consistency and "abandon his China stance" if elected:
Do you want China to be an enemy or a friend?" Greenberg, 87, asked. "We have a choice between a trade agreement or a trade war. I choose a trade agreement and I hope that we will."
CHINA IS UNLIKELY TO BE SWAYED by threats over its currency. Arthur Kroeber of GK Dragonomics explained the political economy of the renminbi in a Foreign Policy magazine essay last year. Mr. Kroeber said that the Chinese government considered the exchange rate not just as a price but as a tool in a broader development strategy and suggested that:
U.S. policy should therefore de-emphasize the exchange rate, where the potential for success is limited, and instead focus on keeping the pressure on China to maintain and expand market access for American firms in the domestic Chinese market -- which in principle is provided for under the terms of China's accession to the World Trade Organization.
Therein lies one of the main problems in the United States-China economic relationship, one that is succinctly explained in James McGregor's new book "No Ancient Wisdom, No Followers: The Challenge of Chinese Authoritarian Capitalism."
Mr. McGregor argues that China's state-owned enterprises and authoritarian capitalist system, the "China Model", may be increasingly incompatible with the global trade system.
Americans deserve a substantive discussion about China from our presidential candidates, and perhaps they will get one, as one of the topics for the third debate is "the rise of China and tomorrow's world."
Candidates Debate Rise of China; China Debates Reform
On Wall Street, Time to Mend Fences With Obama
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October 15, 2012 Monday 10:29 PM EST
Free Candy Crowley!;
The two presidential campaigns are objecting to the idea that Tuesday's debate moderator, Candy Crowley, plans to ask follow up questions. Why this is a ridiculous -- and cynical -- request.
BYLINE: Chris Cillizza
LENGTH: 644 words
Campaigns like control. The less variables in any given situation, the better.
And so, it shouldn't be surprising that the legal teams for President Obama and Mitt Romney - in a rare moment of bipartisanship - have complained to the Commission on Presidential Debates regarding moderator Candy Crowley's assertions that she plans to follow up on questions asked by the townhall audience.
Writes Time's Mark Halperin who broke the story:
"In the view of both campaigns and the commission, those and other recent comments by Crowley conflict with the language the two campaigns agreed to, which delineates a more limited role for the moderator of the town-hall debate. The questioning of the two candidates is supposed to be driven by the audience members themselves - likely voters selected by the Gallup Organization. Crowley's assignment differs from those of the three other debate moderators, who in the more standard format are supposed to lead the questioning and follow up when appropriate."
Do we understand why the campaigns want Crowley, one of the best political journalists in the business, to be seen but not heard? Absolutely. Is it an absolutely ridiculous request? Absolutely.
For anyone who wonders why, go back and think how many town halls politicians have held over the years and how many of them have yielded any news or genuine insight into the candidates or their positions. If that number isn't zero, it's darn close.
While we are all in favor of "regular" people getting to directly question the candidates, the simple fact is that the likelihood is that these questions will be broad rather than narrow - a reality that will allow Obama and Romney to stick with their pre-determined talking points. That means a news-less debate and less new information for voters still trying to make up their minds.
Moderators matter. Journalism may not be the most popular profession these days but it is absolutely true that years of practice - like Crowley has had - trying to draw politicians out beyond their comfort zones is a skill. Not everyone can do it. (Yes, we understand the self-interest in making this argument. A reporter defending the inherent value and unique talents of reporters. What a shock! But, simply because it's self serving doesn't mean it's not true.)
Put another way: Does anyone doubt that last week's debate between Vice President Joe Biden and Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan wasn't improved - and made more edifying for the "regular" viewer - by moderator Martha Raddatz bringing her knowledge to the table and interjecting herself in the debate?
Or, take it out of politics and put it in the sports context. Does anyone think the NFL replacement refs were better than the regular refs? Asking pointed questions that politicians don't have easy answers to is a skill not unlike judging pass interference. It's a judgment call that you only get good at with experience.
To be clear: the campaigns' desire to keep Crowley on the sidelines is not born out of any grand desire to "let the people be heard". Instead, it is a cynical play to avoid risk for both sides. The less direct questioning and, as importantly, direct follow ups the candidates are subjected to, the less chance there is they stray off their talking points and - gasp! - reveal a bit of their true characters.
You may not like or trust the media. But in Tuesday night's debate, you want Crowley to be an active moderator with the freedom to bring her knowledge to bear on the arguments being put forward by the candidates. You just do.
Read more from PostPolitics
Obama's 'trustworthy' advantage, and what it means for the second debate
Presidential race remains close nationally
'Saturday Night Live' spoofs the VP debate
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October 15, 2012 Monday 10:05 PM EST
Democrat Tammy Baldwin outraises Republican Tommy Thompson in Wisconsin Senate race
BYLINE: Sean Sullivan
LENGTH: 854 words
Make sure to sign up to receive "Afternoon Fix" every day in your e-mail inbox by 5(ish) p.m.!
EARLIER ON THE FIX:
5 myths about political polling
Gallup shows Romney pulling ahead in swing states
A recent history of second presidential debates (VIDEO)
8 deep(ish) thoughts on the Washington Post-ABC poll
Why the early vote looks good for Democrats
Free Candy Crowley!
Elizabeth Warren raised $12.1 million in third quarter
Obama's 'honest and trustworthy' advantage - and what it means for the second debate
WHAT YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED:
* Mitt Romney raised $170.4 million last month in conjunction with with the Republican National Committee, marking the campaign's best month to date, and coming in just shy of President Obama's September total of $181 million.
* Romney is no longer slated to appear on "The View" with wife Ann Romney on Thursday. His campaign cited scheduling difficulties as the reason for the cancellation.
* Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) outraised former governor Tommy Thompson (R) during the third quarter and ended the period with more money in the bank. Baldwin brought in $4.6 million and banked $3.5 million while Thompson raised $3.6 million and finished with $2 million cash on hand.
* Pennsylvania Republican Senate nominee Tom Smith loaned his campaign a whopping $10 million during the third quarter, suggesting he thinks he can defeat Sen. Bob Casey (D). Aside from the loan, Smith raised about $1.6 million while Casey brought in about $1.5 million.
* The League of Conservation Voters will spend at least $450,000 in the Arizona Senate race on a TV ad hitting Rep. Jeff Flake (R) for sponsoring uranium mining legislation the narrator says would "threaten the Colorado River."
* Angus King, the former independent governor, raised $1.1 million for his Senate bid during the third quarter, roughly doubling Republican nominee Charlie Summers's $507,000 total. King finished the period with $464,000 in the bank. Summers ended with $189,000.
* Rep. John Tierney (D-Mass.) trails Republican challenger Richard Tisei 50 percent to 33 percent in a poll conducted for the National Republican Congressional Committee last Wednesday and Thursday by McLaughlin & Associates. Relatives of Tierney's wife have faced legal issues related to gambling, complicating the congressman'd bid.
* Rep. Connie Mack (R-Fla.) is up with a new $1 million statewide buy for a TV ad featuring his mother, Priscilla Mack.
WHAT YOU SHOULDN'T MISS:
* Rep. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) leads former congresswoman Heather Wilson (R) 48 percent to 39 percent, according to an Albuquerque Journal poll of the New Mexico Senate race conducted last Tuesday though last Thursday.
* The Republican Governors Association announced Monday that its 527 arm outraised the Democratic Governors Association's 527 arm $14.8 million to $7.6 million during the third quarter.
* Connecticut Republican Senate nominee Linda McMahon released a new ad hitting Rep. Chris Murphy (D) for using a Norwegian submarine in his own ad that touts "new subs in Groton." Groton is a town in Connecticut.
* Rep. Mary Bono Mack (R) and Democrat Raul Ruiz are running about even in California's 36th District, according to a poll conducted for Ruiz's campaign by Lake Research from Oct. 2-4. Ruiz is at 46 percent support in the survey, while Bono Mack is at 43 percent. Obama leads Romney by five points in district, according to the survey.
* Rep. Jerry McNerney (D) leads Republican challenger Ricky Gill 47 percent to 38 percent in California's 9th District race, according to a poll conducted for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee from last Monday through last Wednesday by Global Strategy Group. McNerney runs slightly behind Obama in the poll. The president leads Romney 51 percent to 42 percent in the district, according to the poll.
* Former Nebraska senator and governor Bob Kerrey (D) is putting $330,000 behind a harsh TV ad that seeks to cast doubt about state Sen. Deb Fischer's (R) character by pointing to a legal dispute she had over land with a neighbor. Fischer is a heavy favorite to win retiring Sen. Ben Nelson's (D) seat.
* Rep. Robert Dold (R-Ill.) is skipping a candidate forum Monday night hosted by 23 Jewish organizations, citing a disagreement with the organizers over format. Dold debated 10th District Democratic challenger Brad Schneider twice on Sunday. Dold's district is the most Democratic one currently held by a Republican.
* Kerry Bentivolio, reindeer farmer and Republican nominee in Michigan's 11th District used to work as a Santa Claus impersonator. And he once said during court proceedings: "I'd like to say I'm really Santa Claus and I play somebody else the rest of the year."
THE FIX MIX:
Tree timeout!
With Aaron Blake
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QUOTE OF THE WEEK "I think it's fair to say I was just too polite."
- President Obama,responding to his performance in this month's first debate
BY THE NUMBERS
1 day The time remaining until the next presidential debate. Most observers regarded last week's debate between Vice President Biden and Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan (Wis.) to be largely a draw. Thus, debate-related momentum didn't change direction much from where it was after Mitt Romney's widely praised performance against President Obama on Oct. 3 - meaning the pressure is still squarely on the president to turn in a good showing Tuesday.
4The number of rough new TV ads that top Senate contenders hit their opponents with last week. In Missouri, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D) unleashed three commercials aimed against embattled Rep. Todd Akin (R), each featuring a victim of sexual assault. Akin's remark in an August interview that "legitimate rape" rarely causes pregnancy has dramatically hurt his standing in a state that Republicans were once bullish about picking up. Meanwhile, in Arizona, Rep. Jeff Flake (R) enlisted the help of former surgeon general Richard Carmona's former boss in a spot that alleges that the Democrat had issues with women and anger - accusations that the Carmona camp denies. With about three weeks left until Election Day, candidates across the map are unveiling their harshest attacks yet.
$4.5 million Rep. Michele Bachmann's third-quarter fundraising haul. Most Senate candidates probably didn't raise that much, a reminder of the Minnesota Republican's loyal network of donors. Bachmann is not among the most vulnerable House incumbents, but she faces a competitive race against Democrat Jim Graves. She isn't taking the challenge lightly.
BEST THING THATHAPPENED TO REPUBLICANS
Democrats panicked. For maybe the first time this year, Democrats got a little frazzled when it came to the presidential race. A poor debate performance from President Obama lingered for days afterward, with Democrats searching for answers as to just how such a catastrophe could have occurred. The Obama campaign even released an ad featuring Big Bird - a move that seemed to fall flat and suggested desperation to change the subject. "That's my party: Irrational overconfidence followed by irrational despair," Democratic consultant Jim Jordan told Politico.
BEST THING THATHAPPENED TO DEMOCRATS
President Obama's swing state advantage held strong. Despite national polls shifting in Mitt Romney's favor, the first swing state polling since the first presidential debate this month largely showed Obama holding onto his strong position in most swing states. A Mason-Dixon poll in Florida, which showed Romney leading by seven points, was the lone exception. Everywhere else, the polls shifted a couple points or not at all.
- Aaron Blake
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The Fix
October 15, 2012 Monday 4:55 PM EST
Obama's 'honest and trustworthy' advantage - and what it means for the second debate
BYLINE: Chris Cillizza;Aaron Blake
LENGTH: 1151 words
President Obama is regarded as significantly more honest and trustworthy than Mitt Romney in a new Washington Post-ABC News poll - a finding that could inform the incumbent's strategy heading into the second debate of the general election Tuesday night.
Fifty-five percent of likely voters said that Obama is "honest and trustworthy," while 41 percent said he was not. For Romney, on the other hand, 47 percent said he could be described as honest and trustworthy, while an equal 47 percent said that he could not.
Not surprisingly, the question of trustworthiness drew heavily partisan reactions. Among registered voters, nearly nine in 10 (88 percent) of self-identified Democrats said the incumbent was honest and trustworthy while just 22 percent of Republicans said the same. More than eight in 10 (82 percent) of Republicans said Romney was honest and trustworthy; 19 percent of Democrats agreed.
Among electorally critical independents, Obama's margin was slightly smaller than with the overall electorate. Fifty-one percent of independents viewed Obama as honest and trustworthy, as compared to 44 percent who don't see him that way. Forty-five percent of independents called Romney honest and trustworthy, while 43 percent said he wasn't.
But in the handful of swing states identified by the Post (along with Democratic-leaning Ohio), Obama's lead is even more pronounced on the question. Fifty-six percent of swing-state voters said the incumbent is honest and trustworthy, while just 44 percent said the same of Romney.
Obama's edge on the question could be an important piece of the strategy he adopts in the second presidential debate - set for 9 p.m. Tuesday at Hofstra University on Long Island.
During the first debate 12 days ago, Obama seemed unwilling to repeatedly challenge Romney on the Republican's assertions of fact, preferring to defer to moderator Jim Lehrer or simply let the argument go by without rebutting it. (One notable exception was the exchange over Romney's tax plan; "For 18 months he's been running on this tax plan," said Obama. "And now, five weeks before the election, he's saying that his big, bold idea is, 'Never mind.'"
Given the Post-ABC poll numbers, Obama would do well to highlight when and how he believes Romney is bending the truth or shaping facts to his advantage and then directly appeal to the public with some sort of, "Who are you going to believe; me or him?" question.
While Obama struggled to frame the first debate in those terms, his vice president did not. Joe Biden repeatedly cast Romney and running mate Paul Ryan as serial fabricators willing to say or do anything to get elected.
"Who (do) you believe, the (American Medical Association), me, a guy who's fought his whole life for this, or somebody who would actually put in motion a plan that knowingly cut - added $6,400 a year more to the cost of Medicare?" asked Biden at one point in the vice presidential debate last week.
Of course, Romney will have some role in all of this too. In the first debate, Romney came across as the more knowledgeable and credible messenger on a variety of policy questions. He will almost certainly stick to the formula that delivered him a clear win in that debate. Obama, then, must find ways to call Romney on what he believes to be the former Massachusetts governor's exaggerations or misstatements and then rely on his edge on the honest/trustworthy question to tip the scales in his favor with the audience.
Libya flares as political issue: The political controversy over the situation in Libya continues to show no signs of abating, just a day and a half before the second of three presidential debates.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.), one of the GOP's chief foreign policy surrogates, took to CBS's "Face the Nation" on Sunday to suggest the Obama administration might have engaged in a cover-up.
"I think they've been misleading us, but it finally caught up with them," Graham said, adding: "Either they're misleading the American people or incredibly incompetent."
The Obama campaign, meanwhile, continued to say that Republicans are using the situation for political gain.
Top Obama adviser David Axelrod said on "Fox News Sunday" that there "is no doubt (Romney) is working hard to exploit this issue," and suggested that Obama and Biden, who discussed the issue at Thursday's vice presidential debate, weren't aware of requests for more security at the consulate in Benghazi.
"I think what (Biden) was talking about was what he and the president knew, because these matters were being handled at the State Department," Axelrod said.
Another Obama adviser, Robert Gibbs, assured that nobody wanted to get to the bottom of what happened more than the president.
Meanwhile, the father of former ambassador Chris Stevens says his death shouldn't be a political issue.
Fixbits:
A new Obama ad points to economic progress.
Another poll - this one automated - shows Romney making real gains in Florida.
Former senator Arlen Specter, who represented Pennsylvania for most of 30 years as a Republican but switched parties at the end of his tenure, has died.
Former Wisconsin governor Tommy Thompson's (R) son makes a joke about sending Obama back "to Kenya."
The Reno Gazette-Journal endorses Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) for a full term. And Heller outraised Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-Nev.) in the third quarter.
The Arizona Daily Star endorses Democrat Richard Carmona in the state's open Senate race.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) contribute money to a former Paul aide who resigned from Paul's 2010 campaign after an image of a lynching appeared on his website. The aide is running for the state legislature and has denied any relationship to the image.
A poll conducted for the New Hampshire Freedom Fund - a group allied with the Democratic Governors Association - shows Democrat Maggie Hassan leading the state's open governor's race 49 percent to 43 percent over Republican Ovide Lamontagne. The poll was conducted by the Feldman Group from Oct. 8-10.
The National Republican Congressional Committee is up with $6 million worth of ads in 16 House districts.
Its Democratic counterpart, the DCCC, raised $15.3 million in September, winning the month by nearly $3 million.
An independent Siena College poll shows Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) at 49 percent and challenger Maggie Brooks (R) at 44 percent.
A GOP poll gives freshman Rep. Bill Johnson (R-Ohio) an eight-point lead in his rematch with former congressman Charlie Wilson (D).
Embattled Rep. David Rivera (R-Fla.) breaks his silence.
Must-reads:
"Marriott is mainstay for Romney campaign" - Jason Horowitz, Washington Post
"Obama hunkers down in debate prep" - Amy Gardner, Washington Post
"Same-sex marriage forces seek 1st poll win" - AP
"Moderator Role Under Scrutiny - Before the Debate" - Mark Halperin, Time
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Election 2012
October 15, 2012 Monday 4:09 PM EST
Actresses target Romney on abortion;
MoveOn.org is out with a new ad featuring celebrities Scarlett Johansson, Eva Longoria and Kerry Washington encouraging women to vote for President Obama.
BYLINE: Rachel Weiner
LENGTH: 123 words
MoveOn.org Political Action is out with a new ad featuring celebrities Scarlett Johansson, Eva Longoria and Kerry Washington encouraging women to vote for President Obama.
In the ad, the actresses say that Mitt Romney is for ending Planned Parenthood funding and overturning Roe v. Wade. "We have Republicans trying to redefine rape," Johansson says. "Trying to force women to undergo invasive ultrasounds," Longoria adds.
All three actresses spoke at the Democratic National Convention.
The ad was produced and directed by Rob Reiner and his wife Michele Reiner. It will air nationally on shows primarily watched by women.
On Friday, President Obama released his own ad suggesting that Romney could compromise women's access to birth control.
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Election 2012
October 15, 2012 Monday 1:06 PM EST
Ad Watch: Obama camp says we're on right track
BYLINE: Rachel Weiner
LENGTH: 102 words
Obama for America, "Main Street"
What it says: "When you look at the President's plan I don't think there can be any question that we're on the right course for today's economy."
What it means: Obama is pushing back on Mitt Romney's dour assessment of the economy, highlighting an auto industry plant that has hired more workers. Only 42 percent of likely voters agree that we're on the "right track" in a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, but Obama's numbers on this question are improving.
Who will see it: Voters in Colorado, Iowa, Nevada and Virginia.
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Election 2012
October 15, 2012 Monday 1:40 AM EST
Ad watch: Romney says Obama letting China win
BYLINE: Rachel Weiner
LENGTH: 76 words
Mitt Romney campaign, "Failing American Workers"
What it says: "Under Obama, we've lost over half a million manufacturing jobs. And for the first time, China is beating us."
What it means: Forget Libya. let's talk about China.
Who will see it: The Romney team didn't say, but according to a Republican media buyer his campaign just bought $458,555 worth of air time in Ohio for the next four days.
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The Washington Post
October 15, 2012 Monday
Suburban Edition
SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A02
LENGTH: 471 words
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
"I think it's fair to say I was just too polite."
- President Obama, responding to his performance in this month's first debate
BY THE NUMBERS
1 day The time remaining until the next presidential debate. Most observers regarded last week's debate between Vice President Biden and Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan (Wis.) to be largely a draw. Thus, debate-related momentum didn't change direction much from where it was after Mitt Romney's widely praised performance against President Obama on Oct. 3 - meaning the pressure is still squarely on the president to turn in a good showing Tuesday.
4The number of rough new TV ads that top Senate contenders hit their opponents with last week. In Missouri, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D) unleashed three commercials aimed against embattled Rep. Todd Akin (R), each featuring a victim of sexual assault. Akin's remark in an August interview that "legitimate rape" rarely causes pregnancy has dramatically hurt his standing in a state that Republicans were once bullish about picking up. Meanwhile, in Arizona, Rep. Jeff Flake (R) enlisted the help of former surgeon general Richard Carmona's former boss in a spot that alleges that the Democrat had issues with women and anger - accusations that the Carmona camp denies. With about three weeks left until Election Day, candidates across the map are unveiling their harshest attacks yet.
$4.5 million Rep. Michele Bachmann's third-quarter fundraising haul. Most Senate candidates probably didn't raise that much, a reminder of the Minnesota Republican's loyal network of donors. Bachmann is not among the most vulnerable House incumbents, but she faces a competitive race against Democrat Jim Graves. She isn't taking the challenge lightly.
BEST THING THATHAPPENED TO REPUBLICANS
Democrats panicked. For maybe the first time this year, Democrats got a little frazzled when it came to the presidential race. A poor debate performance from President Obama lingered for days afterward, with Democrats searching for answers as to just how such a catastrophe could have occurred. The Obama campaign even released an ad featuring Big Bird - a move that seemed to fall flat and suggested desperation to change the subject. "That's my party: Irrational overconfidence followed by irrational despair," Democratic consultant Jim Jordan told Politico.
BEST THING THATHAPPENED TO DEMOCRATS
President Obama's swing state advantage held strong. Despite national polls shifting in Mitt Romney's favor, the first swing state polling since the first presidential debate this month largely showed Obama holding onto his strong position in most swing states. A Mason-Dixon poll in Florida, which showed Romney leading by seven points, was the lone exception. Everywhere else, the polls shifted a couple points or not at all.
- Aaron Blake
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The New York Times
October 14, 2012 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
At the Corner of Hope and Worry
BYLINE: By DAN BARRY
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; THIS LAND | DONNA'S DINER; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 3956 words
ELYRIA, Ohio
Another day begins with a sound softer than a finger-snap, in an Ohio place called Elyria. In the central square of this small city, the gushing water fountain applauds the early-morning chorus of sparrows. A car clears its throat. A door slams. And then: click.
The faint sound comes as 7:00 flashes on the clock of the Lorain National Bank building, looming over the square. The pull of a string -- click -- has sent life pulsing through a neon sign, announcing to all of Elyria that, once more, against the odds, Donna's Diner is open.
Its proprietor, Donna Dove, 57, ignites the grill that she seems to have just turned off, so seamlessly do her workdays blend into one endless shift. She wears her blond hair in a ponytail and frames her hazel eyes with black-rimmed glasses that tend to get smudged with grill grease. She sees the world through the blur of her work.
A dozen years ago, Donna found a scrap of serendipity on the sidewalk: a notice that a local mom-and-pop restaurant was for sale. After cooking for her broken family as a child, after cooking for county inmates at one of her many jobs, she had come to see food as life's binding agent, and a diner as her calling. She maxed out her credit cards, cashed in her 401(k) and opened a business to call her own.
Donna's Diner. Donna's.
You know this place: It is Elyria's equivalent to that diner, that coffee shop, that McDonald's. From the vantage point of these booths and Formica countertops, the past improves with distance, the present keeps piling on, and a promising future is practically willed by the resilient patrons.
It is where the recession and other issues of the day are lived as much as discussed. Where expectations for a certain lifestyle have been lowered and hopes for salvation through education and technology have been raised. Where the presidential nominees Barack Obama and Mitt Romney each hope that his plan for a way back will resonate with the Donna Doves, who try to get by in places like Elyria -- where the American dream they talk about can sometimes seem like a tease.
But for now, at least, the door to Donna's is open. So take a seat. Have a cup of coffee. Maybe some eggs.
This morning, as usual, Pete Aldrich is helping Donna through the new-dawn isolation, turning on the coffee and being compensated by food and tips from the occasional delivery. In his early 50s, well-educated and from regional royalty, he has hit some hard times, and may or may not have slept in his car last night, cocooned by his bundled possessions.
Pete tries, though, he tries. He often leaves straight from Donna's for a job interview, hustling out with purpose, no matter that his thick-lensed eyeglasses are missing one arm. Something will turn up.
That is the communal hope. Donna, for example, is dogged by the day's anxieties. Why are her receipts going down? What lunch special can she offer to clean out the refrigerator? Should she buy less perch for her Friday fish fry? Can she slide a month on her electric bill? Since she already doesn't have health insurance, what else can she cut?
''I'm just going in circles and circles and circles,'' Donna says one day, gazing through smudged glasses. ''And not getting anyplace.''
The fresh aroma of coffee face-slaps the air. Soon the Breakfast Club regulars, that gaggle of Elyrian past and present, will be here to renew their continuing discussion of what was, is and isn't in this city of 55,000. The presidential election sometimes serves as a conversation starter, like a curio placed between the salt and pepper shakers.
The talk will continue as yolk stains harden and refills turn tepid. Their Ohio is a swing state, after all, and their Elyria sits precariously on that swing. More Democratic than Republican, it has several global companies and the memory of many more; an embattled middle class and encroaching poverty; and the faint sense that the Next Big Thing better arrive before even its beloved park fountain, visible from the diner's front window, gets shut off.
Of course, the friendly political quarrel between the regulars Speedy Amos, 86, Republican, and Jim Dall, 89, Democrat, dates back to ''I Like Ike'' and ''All The Way With Adlai.'' And John Haynes, lawyer, Democrat, and Jack Baird, councilman, Republican, will debate without ever changing minds. It will be others, the quiet, still-undecided ones, who will help to make the big decision, Obama or Romney.
The diner waits. Pete sips coffee and reads The Chronicle-Telegram through the damaged glasses he hopes to replace someday. Donna stands by the front door, near her Friday fish fry sign, peering through the plate-glass window with expectation. If it were only about location -- well, she has it.
Her diner, in an 1880s brick building at the corner of Middle Avenue and Second Street, sits along the central park, Ely Square, where the fountain's mist blesses those who linger and a statue of a Union soldier rises from slab memorials for every American conflict from the War of Independence (1775-1783) to the War on Terrorism (2001- ).
The diner is near the majestic old courthouse, circa 1881, now mostly empty, in some disrepair and too costly to renovate. It is a short walk from the sleek new courthouse, where the Judge, a regular customer (grilled chicken, cottage cheese, fruit), ruminates in his chambers with an unlit cigar in his mouth and a portrait of Che Guevara on his wall.
It is a few storefronts away from a temp agency, where a large man in an Ohio State cap (cheeseburger, fries) dispatches the work-hungry to fleeting jobs, and a short walk from Loomis Camera, 62 years on the square, where the nonagenarian owner displays a decades-old portrait of his wife, before her arthritis, back when she was a beautiful trapeze artist, an airborne ballerina.
Finally, the diner faces City Hall, where the new mayor (bacon-lettuce-tomato-and-fried-egg sandwich and a side salad) confronts the challenges of a postindustrial, recession-haunted American city. A fourth-generation Elyrian, Mayor Holly Brinda takes hope in the city's entrepreneurial hothouse of a community college and in northeastern Ohio's can-do DNA. But some nights she cannot sleep.
Donna also knows what it means to lose sleep in Elyria, as she stands beside her closed cash register, a diner's miscellany spread out before her: a jar of 25-cent mints that certain people think are free; a spill of business cards for Vinnie's Collision Center and LePue Drain Cleaning; a box of minted toothpicks favored by the Judge; a small Southern Comfort bottle half-filled with the maple syrup that sweetens Mr. Dall's pancakes.
When the diner's door is open, Donna can hear the aching thrum of another one of the Norfolk Southern freight trains that clatter day and night through the city. Bound for Cleveland or Chicago with endless containers of goods made across the country and overseas, they slice through Elyria, once more prominent as a maker of things.
The familiar freight-train siren can conjure memories of the writer Sherwood Anderson, who once ran a mail-order and paint business down by the railroad line. One Thanksgiving Day, he said goodbye to his secretary, walked out the door and followed the tracks east, out of Elyria. A breakdown, apparently, one that led to his fictional classic ''Winesburg, Ohio,'' whose inhabitants, including some with distinctly Elyrian traits, ache for fulfillment.
Yes, Donna hears it. She also hears the Judge -- James M. Burge, the meticulously dressed administrative judge of the Lorain County Court of Common Pleas -- as he sits at the table reserved for him in the back and dines on that same health-conscious grilled-chicken lunch, day after day.
Donna, you're working yourself to death. Donna, you're not making any money. Donna, you have a heart -- feeding people who don't have money, raising money for good causes -- but there's no room for heart in capitalism.
Donna, how about this? Close up the diner, come across the street to the new courthouse and run the cafeteria: five days a week, a steady stream of customers and no worries about utilities. If you're interested, I can try to make this happen.
The Judge's words linger.
Imagine: no electric bill, no heating bill, no worries about security, air-conditioning. ...
Imagine, too: no Donna's Diner, open to all of Elyria. ...
Donna has told the Judge that she'll think about it. Maybe one of these days she'll drive to Lake Erie. Sit on one of the benches. Gaze into the undulating blue. Clear her head. These are big decisions.
Kitchen Salvation
Cooking is vital to Donna. You can lose yourself in the stirring of sauce. You can nourish others and make things seem better, if only for a little while. This she discovered early on, as the turbulent marriage of her parents was upending her childhood.
Born on Flag Day 1955, Donna was the first child of a Navy man, Jerry Jacobson, and his Bay Village bride, Jean. But he refused to give up his beer and Black Velvet or his saloon romance with a woman named Sophie. Leaving a bar in Elyria one night, he drove into a telephone pole. When he awoke weeks later, he called out -- for Sophie.
With her household's cash being slapped on bar counters instead of the kitchen counter, Jean raised extra money -- between shifts at some factory or office -- by making ''sweetheart soap'' arrangements for her children to sell door-to-door. Meanwhile, as the oldest, Donna tried to fill the parental void.
One day, holding her baby brother in her arms, Donna followed her mother into a Cleveland saloon to confront her father as he sat beside a new girlfriend, this one with a beehive hairdo. The mother said the family needed money for food. The oldest child seconded the plea. The father said get lost.
After the inevitable divorce, Jean moved her four children to a government-subsidized house in Elyria, where Donna found solace, or control, in the kitchen. She began having dinner ready by the time her mother came home from work.
''She'd always put a tablecloth out, and in the summer there'd always be fresh flowers on the table,'' recalls Jean, 78. ''Dessert would be pudding, or fruit cocktail.''
Donna clearly preferred the kitchen to Elyria High School, which she found to be too big -- another way of saying integrated. She had spent most of her young life in the all-white bubble of Bay Village, 15 miles to the northeast, and now she was in a city high school with a healthy enrollment of black students.
She was intimidated by the unfamiliar, so she cut school. She became pregnant, so she got married, at 16. In the wedding photos, she and her husband look like children playing dress-up.
To say the pregnancy ended Donna's childhood is not quite accurate. In some ways, it had ended years before; in other ways, it continued. She tried to be a loving mother of two baby daughters, a doting housewife to a possessive husband, and a fun-loving young woman fond of the bar life -- all at once. Not possible.
Divorce. Temporary loss of custody. A second marriage. Two more children. A third marriage.
But Donna caught her breath, summoning the resolve that had once empowered her to confront her negligent father. She earned her general equivalency diploma. She tended bar and cooked at Stan's Villa in Elyria, across the street from the General Motors plant. She fed inmates at the Lorain County jail. She worked in marketing for the county blood bank.
One day in 2000, when she was ready for a change, Donna picked up a newspaper notice on the sidewalk that said the Lunch Break Cafe on Broad Street was for sale. Destiny. She somehow scratched up the $35,000, and spent that Mother's Day stripping the restaurant clean, even throwing out its toaster.
Driving through Elyria to her own grand opening, she thought, ''I'm going to make them remember me.''
The diner did well at first, with its 1950s décor and sandwiches named after iconic cars. It became the headquarters for Donna's annual classic-car charity event, her community project to bake cookies for soldiers overseas, her Christmas toy drive for poor children.
''She walks the walk,'' the Judge says.
This does not include all the food that Donna gave away -- to this event, to that person in need, to her father. Yes, Jerry Jacobson was back on the scene, a disabled alcoholic living above a bar in Elyria. But Donna took care of him; he was still her dad.
One day, he would be the charming Jerry, cadging beer money -- Two bucks, darlin', c'mon, two bucks -- or ordering hamburgers that he would sell for a shot and a beer down at Pudge's Place or Boomer's. The next day, he would be awful Jerry, telling Donna's customers that they would be better off at McDonald's.
Father and daughter had a contentious relationship right to the end. When he died of a heart attack in 2004, what could Donna do but place $2 in his coffin, along with a cigarette and a beer?
As downtown Elyria declined, like so many other American downtowns, so did Donna's business. By late 2009, she was preparing to turn the diner's neon off for good, but then she sensed a second chance: an ancient storefront on Middle Avenue had opened up that was larger, closer to the courts and offered a view not of Bugsy's strip joint but of verdant Ely Square.
Over several generations, many had used the three-story brick building at 148 Middle Avenue, in a stretch once called Cheapside, as their claim stake -- not to prosperity, but to the chance of it. The Candyland store, with sweets to cut the Depression's bitter taste. The H. W. Guthrie store, selling a dozen honey-dipped doughnuts for a quarter. The Roy E. Hultz store, for the supplies necessary to protect your barn.
The Jack and Jill children's store. Crandall's drugstore. Hess Pharmacy, for ''sick room supplies, surgical belts and trusses.'' A real estate company, a title company, a law firm. The headquarters for local Democrats one year and for Republicans another year. Selenti's Pizza. Naples Pizza. Village Sub and Pizza.
In 1996, a proposal to demolish the building for a parking lot went nowhere. Two years later came Stackers Deli and Pizza. Then the Court Street Cafe. Then the Pulse Cafe. Now here was another aspirant, staking her claim in the Elyrian concrete.
Diner Regulars
The unseen sparrows of Ely Square continue to dominate the morning conversation, save for the occasional beckoning of another passing train. A parks employee lost in his headset hunts for overnight litter. Coins tossed for luck tremble at the bottom of the fountain's animated waters.
Inside the diner, the sole customer eats scrambled eggs, while Donna and Pete have the kind of meandering conversation that effortlessly links a new casino in Cleveland to the diner's broken dishwasher.
''Some guy at the Polish Club supposedly hit for 130 grand,'' Pete says of the casino.
''It's never-ending,'' Donna says of her own gamble.
The dining room is as narrow as a railroad car, with the Breakfast Club's front table and the Judge's back table bracketing six booths and three small tables in the middle, all adorned with sprays of artificial flowers. Along the wall protrudes a coffee counter stocked with customer-donated mugs: ''John Deere'' beside ''Cabo San Lucas'' beside ''Jesus Saves.''
In the cramped other half of the bifurcated space, the kitchen competes for room with a freezer and two large refrigerators and cases of food and foam to-go containers and ripe bananas and a tub of Country Crock spread and the latest soda delivery and stacks of mismatched plates and a bucket filled with stale bread saved for a customer who feeds the crumbs to ducks.
At the center of it all sits the squat grill, the sizzling altar guarded by Donna with raised spatula. Orders scribbled out by her harried waitresses -- her daughter Kristy, 38, and her granddaughter, Bridgette, just short of 21 -- are tucked into the grill's hood. But Donna knows her customers so well that sometimes a mere handwritten name will do. ''Ken'' means pork chops.
Donna knows their preferences, food allergies, moods, joys, sorrows. She knows to save some perch on Fridays for the Bullocks couple, Gloria and Forrest, who was born into a sharecropping family and is now a prominent civic leader. She knows to give turkey bacon to the retired judge who loves bacon but has heart problems, and to cut a distracting slice of lemon meringue pie for the cranky woman who bangs on the door with her walker and wants to know what's so good about the morning.
Even the people Donna doesn't know, she knows. Like that elfin man who comes in every Wednesday before going to the county sheriff's auction to bid for some law firm on the foreclosed properties that riddle Lorain County. He always orders coffee and plain wheat toast, always. Hence, his diner name: ''Wheat Toast.''
Donna knows how to handle the people who come in asking for a job. First thing, she escorts them to the grill to see if they can flip a frying egg. If not, the job interview ends.
She also knows how to handle Ike Maxwell when he wanders in, looking for money or food. Still built like a piston-powerful running back, he has not been the same since he was beaten on the head with a baseball bat 30 years ago. Once a high school football superstar who carried Elyria's Friday night hopes, he now loops its streets shouting ''Golden Helmet,'' ''They killed my brother'' and other phrases that only a few Elyrians can decode.
But sometimes Ike's shouting becomes disruptive, even unnerving, and Donna has to order him to leave. He may protest by shouting a few names -- President Obama! Mitt Romney! Les Miles! -- but as he heads for the door, Ike often says something else, softly:
''O.K., Donna, O.K., Donna, O.K., Donna.''
In this way, Donna's Diner has become a living thing, humming with the flow of the human condition, alternating between harried motion and fleeting rest. When lunchtime comes, an orderly chaos takes hold in the back, as the diner's telephone beckons with a ''There's no place like home'' ringtone and denizens communicate in a shorthand language rooted in the immediate.
''That's to go! That's to go! Put it in a box!''
''O.K., her Reuben went out. Are the tenders done? This is a crap microwave. This one's lettuce and mayo.''
''I just spilled ranch all over the counter.''
''I told Ryan I'd be there about 1:30.''
''This have cheese-lettuce-tomato?''
''How much is French toast with scrambled eggs?''
''Four-seventy-nine. How come I only have two sausage links?''
''Hello, Donna's Diner?''
It can get to be too much, like the smell of toast burning. An unanticipated trigger -- a forgotten order, a returned meal, a splatter of ranch dressing -- can set Donna off, and her tirades will spill into the dining room like scalding coffee.
''Is she O.K.?'' a customer asks one difficult day.
''My mom?'' asks Kristy, the waitress.
''Yes,'' the customer replies.
''No.''
Sometimes you can see why, as Donna hunches into the desk space she has carved from the back-room clutter and works through the mound of mail. ''I'm looking for shut-off notices,'' she says, half-joking.
She also examines the income and expense figures she keeps in a brown spiral notebook. Last year, the daily receipts, in terms of hundreds of dollars, were in the threes, fours and fives; this year, they are in the twos, threes and occasional fours. Meanwhile, the expenses keep coming. Rent, $650 a month. Electric, $1,416 a month.
''My bug guy, my pop guy, my towel guy, my window washer,'' she says. Cable. Orlando Bread. Port Clinton Fish.
She tries to lower expenses. When her vexing electric bill shot up a while back, she sold off several appliances and bought a cheaper, more energy-efficient freezer. She spent Mother's Day shopping for wholesale bargains on eggs and dish soap. She bounces from Rural King to Sam's Club to Giant Eagle, looking for the cheapest coffee.
She cannot afford health insurance, she says; it would be $1,500 a month for her and her out-of-work husband, Tim, who has congestive heart failure at 57. A while back, she tore something in her left shoulder while pulling a heavy box of bleach down from a shelf at Sam's Club. Never had it fixed.
Life has become cyclical. Every night, Donna returns to her modest two-story house in Elyria, with its untidy backyard that she never has the time or the energy to reclaim, and stares at the television until sleep comes. Every morning, she awakens to worries, beginning with what to offer for lunch.
Every day, after expenses, there is not much left -- though, now and then, she peels off $20 to gamble at a video-lottery place she calls ''the joint.'' And every week, after lunch, here comes Mark Ondrejech, the affable salesman for US Foods, a wholesale supplier, to provide counsel. He sits with her at a back table, opens his laptop and goes down his list.
''All your dressings are good this week? Meat broth, chicken broth, French fries? Onion rings, sauerkraut? Ketchup packets, crackers, chip bags? Foam containers are good? Dinner napkins, straws -- grape tomatoes. Steak fries, cinnamon rolls. ''
But Donna is ordering less and less from US Foods. She has raised her prices ever so slightly -- two eggs and toast went from $1.99 to $2.39 -- in trying to strike the proper balance between fair profit and customer contentment. She is making her daughter and granddaughter occasionally pay for what they eat. She is holding on for better days, amid news that a new Taco Bell is replacing a downtown apartment building once occupied by Sherwood Anderson.
A Taco Bell.
All the while, the Judge's suggestion -- that she consider moving to the courthouse cafeteria -- preys on Donna's mind. ''All you're doing is, you're working hard and you're entertaining your customers,'' she says he tells her.
But the diner's people matter to her: Pete, Speedy, the Judge, Gloria and Forrest, Ike, even that unpleasant woman who bangs her walker against the door. The diner matters. It all matters.
''I've got to figure out what I'm doing,'' she says. ''When I get myself to this point, I can't see a way out.''
Haunted by Fears
The Elyrian morning is now full-throated. Birds chirping, waters rushing, trains calling, music pounding from the cars stopped for the light just outside the diner. Sunlight paints the treetops of Ely Square.
Gazing at the park through her plate-glass window, Donna is reminded of a recurring image that she just can't shake: that of a short woman with unruly gray hair, hunting through the park's garbage for redeemable cans. Twenty years ago, Donna worked with this woman at a nursing home on East Avenue. She knew her to say hello.
The woman, Anna Hallman, redeems aluminum cans to pay a mortgage and make ends meet, getting about 50 cents for every 26 cans that she methodically crushes with her heel. She is 69, and other scavengers have kindly ceded to her the treasures to be found in the garbage bins downtown. And when she has had a good day, she sometimes treats herself to a meal at Donna's -- something that sticks to the ribs, like meatloaf.
Anna's situation haunts Donna. Too close. Too possible.
How she needs to step away from the grill and take that drive to Lake Erie. No breakfast orders being shouted at her. No bills demanding her attention. Just Donna alone, sitting on a bench and staring into the infinite waters that calm her, help her think. Big decisions.
But now she has customers. The first two members of the Breakfast Club take their seats at the front table. Coffee for both. No breakfast for one, eggs over medium, wheat toast for the other. Orders taken, the owner of Donna's Diner disappears into the kitchen.
DONNA'S DINER: Articles in this series will examine the expectations, disappointments and challenges that shape the lives of Donna Dove, her customers and the city they know intimately, Elyria, Ohio.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/14/us/this-land-corner-of-hope-and-worry-elyria.html
LOAD-DATE: October 14, 2012
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: Donna's Diner is in a brick building dating to the 1880s in Elyria, Ohio. Freight trains clatter day and night through the city.
Donna Dove opened her diner in 2000. Her days blend into one endless shift. (A1)
A CRAMPED KITCHEN: Since childhood, Donna Dove has found solace and control in the kitchen. Center, photos taken by a Breakfast Club member, Dale Price, hang above the diner's coat rack.
DONNA DOVE, the owner of Donna's Diner in Elyria, Ohio
THE BREAKFAST CLUB: For the diner's regulars, the presidential election in this swing state can be a conversation starter. (A20)
A LONG DAY BEGINS: The neon sign at Donna's Diner goes on at 7 a.m. Soon, the regulars will pour in to the dining room, as narrow as a railroad car. Donna knows her customers so well that sometimes a mere handwritten name on an order will do. ''Ken'' means pork chops. She knows their preferences, food allergies, moods, joys and sorrows.
RECEIPTS DOWN: ''I'm just going in circles and circles and circles,'' Donna says.
SCENES OF ELYRIA: From left, sunset in Elyria
a statue of a Union soldier in Ely Square Park
and the annual Memorial Day Parade winding its way through the city. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY NICOLE BENGIVENO/THE NEW YORK TIMES) (A21) GRAPHIC (A20)
DOCUMENT-TYPE: News; Series
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company
473 of 2097 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
October 14, 2012 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
The Self-Destruction of the 1 Percent
BYLINE: By CHRYSTIA FREELAND.
The editor of Thomson Reuters Digital and the author of ''Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else,'' from which this essay is adapted.
SECTION: Section SR; Column 0; Sunday Review Desk; OPINION; Pg. 5
LENGTH: 1799 words
IN the early 14th century, Venice was one of the richest cities in Europe. At the heart of its economy was the colleganza, a basic form of joint-stock company created to finance a single trade expedition. The brilliance of the colleganza was that it opened the economy to new entrants, allowing risk-taking entrepreneurs to share in the financial upside with the established businessmen who financed their merchant voyages.
Venice's elites were the chief beneficiaries. Like all open economies, theirs was turbulent. Today, we think of social mobility as a good thing. But if you are on top, mobility also means competition. In 1315, when the Venetian city-state was at the height of its economic powers, the upper class acted to lock in its privileges, putting a formal stop to social mobility with the publication of the Libro d'Oro, or Book of Gold, an official register of the nobility. If you weren't on it, you couldn't join the ruling oligarchy.
The political shift, which had begun nearly two decades earlier, was so striking a change that the Venetians gave it a name: La Serrata, or the closure. It wasn't long before the political Serrata became an economic one, too. Under the control of the oligarchs, Venice gradually cut off commercial opportunities for new entrants. Eventually, the colleganza was banned. The reigning elites were acting in their immediate self-interest, but in the longer term, La Serrata was the beginning of the end for them, and for Venetian prosperity more generally. By 1500, Venice's population was smaller than it had been in 1330. In the 17th and 18th centuries, as the rest of Europe grew, the city continued to shrink.
The story of Venice's rise and fall is told by the scholars Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, in their book ''Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty,'' as an illustration of their thesis that what separates successful states from failed ones is whether their governing institutions are inclusive or extractive. Extractive states are controlled by ruling elites whose objective is to extract as much wealth as they can from the rest of society. Inclusive states give everyone access to economic opportunity; often, greater inclusiveness creates more prosperity, which creates an incentive for ever greater inclusiveness.
The history of the United States can be read as one such virtuous circle. But as the story of Venice shows, virtuous circles can be broken. Elites that have prospered from inclusive systems can be tempted to pull up the ladder they climbed to the top. Eventually, their societies become extractive and their economies languish.
That was the future predicted by Karl Marx, who wrote that capitalism contained the seeds of its own destruction. And it is the danger America faces today, as the 1 percent pulls away from everyone else and pursues an economic, political and social agenda that will increase that gap even further -- ultimately destroying the open system that made America rich and allowed its 1 percent to thrive in the first place.
You can see America's creeping Serrata in the growing social and, especially, educational chasm between those at the top and everyone else. At the bottom and in the middle, American society is fraying, and the children of these struggling families are lagging the rest of the world at school.
Economists point out that the woes of the middle class are in large part a consequence of globalization and technological change. Culture may also play a role. In his recent book on the white working class, the libertarian writer Charles Murray blames the hollowed-out middle for straying from the traditional family values and old-fashioned work ethic that he says prevail among the rich (whom he castigates, but only for allowing cultural relativism to prevail).
There is some truth in both arguments. But the 1 percent cannot evade its share of responsibility for the growing gulf in American society. Economic forces may be behind the rising inequality, but as Peter R. Orszag, President Obama's former budget chief, told me, public policy has exacerbated rather than mitigated these trends.
Even as the winner-take-all economy has enriched those at the very top, their tax burden has lightened. Tolerance for high executive compensation has increased, even as the legal powers of unions have been weakened and an intellectual case against them has been relentlessly advanced by plutocrat-financed think tanks. In the 1950s, the marginal income tax rate for those at the top of the distribution soared above 90 percent, a figure that today makes even Democrats flinch. Meanwhile, of the 400 richest taxpayers in 2009, 6 paid no federal income tax at all, and 27 paid 10 percent or less. None paid more than 35 percent.
Historically, the United States has enjoyed higher social mobility than Europe, and both left and right have identified this economic openness as an essential source of the nation's economic vigor. But several recent studies have shown that in America today it is harder to escape the social class of your birth than it is in Europe. The Canadian economist Miles Corak has found that as income inequality increases, social mobility falls -- a phenomenon Alan B. Krueger, the chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, has called the Great Gatsby Curve.
Educational attainment, which created the American middle class, is no longer rising. The super-elite lavishes unlimited resources on its children, while public schools are starved of funding. This is the new Serrata. An elite education is increasingly available only to those already at the top. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama enrolled their daughters in an exclusive private school; I've done the same with mine.
At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, earlier this year, I interviewed Ruth Simmons, then the president of Brown. She was the first African-American to lead an Ivy League university and has served on the board of Goldman Sachs. Dr. Simmons, a Harvard-trained literature scholar, worked hard to make Brown more accessible to poor students, but when I asked whether it was time to abolish legacy admissions, the Ivy League's own Book of Gold, she shrugged me off with a laugh: ''No, I have a granddaughter. It's not time yet.''
America's Serrata also takes a more explicit form: the tilting of the economic rules in favor of those at the top. The crony capitalism of today's oligarchs is far subtler than Venice's. It works in two main ways.
The first is to channel the state's scarce resources in their own direction. This is the absurdity of Mitt Romney's comment about the ''47 percent'' who are ''dependent upon government.'' The reality is that it is those at the top, particularly the tippy-top, of the economic pyramid who have been most effective at capturing government support -- and at getting others to pay for it.
Exhibit A is the bipartisan, $700 billion rescue of Wall Street in 2008. Exhibit B is the crony recovery. The economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty found that 93 percent of the income gains from the 2009-10 recovery went to the top 1 percent of taxpayers. The top 0.01 percent captured 37 percent of these additional earnings, gaining an average of $4.2 million per household.
The second manifestation of crony capitalism is more direct: the tax perks, trade protections and government subsidies that companies and sectors secure for themselves. Corporate pork is a truly bipartisan dish: green energy companies and the health insurers have been winners in this administration, as oil and steel companies were under George W. Bush's.
The impulse of the powerful to make themselves even more so should come as no surprise. Competition and a level playing field are good for us collectively, but they are a hardship for individual businesses. Warren E. Buffett knows this. ''A truly great business must have an enduring 'moat' that protects excellent returns on invested capital,'' he explained in his 2007 annual letter to investors. ''Though capitalism's 'creative destruction' is highly beneficial for society, it precludes investment certainty.'' Microsoft attempted to dig its own moat by simply shutting out its competitors, until it was stopped by the courts. Even Apple, a huge beneficiary of the open-platform economy, couldn't resist trying to impose its own inferior map app on buyers of the iPhone 5.
Businessmen like to style themselves as the defenders of the free market economy, but as Luigi Zingales, an economist at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, argued, ''Most lobbying is pro-business, in the sense that it promotes the interests of existing businesses, not pro-market in the sense of fostering truly free and open competition.''
IN the early 19th century, the United States was one of the most egalitarian societies on the planet. ''We have no paupers,'' Thomas Jefferson boasted in an 1814 letter. ''The great mass of our population is of laborers; our rich, who can live without labor, either manual or professional, being few, and of moderate wealth. Most of the laboring class possess property, cultivate their own lands, have families, and from the demand for their labor are enabled to exact from the rich and the competent such prices as enable them to be fed abundantly, clothed above mere decency, to labor moderately and raise their families.''
For Jefferson, this equality was at the heart of American exceptionalism: ''Can any condition of society be more desirable than this?''
That all changed with industrialization. As Franklin D. Roosevelt argued in a 1932 address to the Commonwealth Club, the industrial revolution was accomplished thanks to ''a group of financial titans, whose methods were not scrutinized with too much care, and who were honored in proportion as they produced the results, irrespective of the means they used.'' America may have needed its robber barons; Roosevelt said the United States was right to accept ''the bitter with the sweet.''
But as these titans amassed wealth and power, and as America ran out of free land on its frontier, the country faced the threat of a Serrata. As Roosevelt put it, ''equality of opportunity as we have known it no longer exists.'' Instead, ''we are steering a steady course toward economic oligarchy, if we are not there already.''
It is no accident that in America today the gap between the very rich and everyone else is wider than at any time since the Gilded Age. Now, as then, the titans are seeking an even greater political voice to match their economic power. Now, as then, the inevitable danger is that they will confuse their own self-interest with the common good. The irony of the political rise of the plutocrats is that, like Venice's oligarchs, they threaten the system that created them.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/14/opinion/sunday/the-self-destruction-of-the-1-percent.html
LOAD-DATE: October 14, 2012
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTO: A painting of 17th-century Venice, with a view of the banks of the Grand Canal and the Doge's Palace, by Leandro Bassano. (PHOTOGRAPH BY GIANNI DAGLI ORTI/ART ARCHIVE AT ART RESOURCE)
DOCUMENT-TYPE: Op-Ed
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company
474 of 2097 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
October 14, 2012 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
A Messenger Who Does the Shooting
BYLINE: By AMY CHOZICK
SECTION: Section ST; Column 0; Style Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 2215 words
TWO days after President Obama's first debate against Mitt Romney, Stephanie Cutter, a deputy campaign manager for the Obama re-election effort, decided to tweak Mr. Romney for his attack on federal funding for PBS.
On Twitter, Ms. Cutter, known for her dry sense of humor and sharp edge, circulated a photo of Big Bird outside an Obama rally with the hashtag #ProtectSesameStreetNotWallStreet to her 42,700-plus followers.
The Big Bird attacks started to take on a life of their own. The following week, the Obama campaign introduced a tongue-in-cheek ad that compares Big Bird to Bernard L. Madoff and other corporate criminals. ''Big, yellow, a menace to our economy,'' the ominous voice-over intoned.
It was a typical quick-response effort by Ms. Cutter, doing damage control after an admittedly lackluster performance by the president. ''She spotted right away that this was something that was trending out there and that was making an impact,'' David Axelrod, the president's chief strategist, said of Ms. Cutter, who was not involved in the making of the ad itself.
Ms. Cutter, who turns 44 on Oct. 22, has emerged as Mr. Obama's one-woman attack squad. In the process, she has become a popular but polarizing face of a campaign that until recently had been largely dominated by middle-aged white men.
Late last year, Ms. Cutter left her role as deputy senior adviser in the White House to move to Chicago and become one of three deputy campaign managers, overseeing policy, research and communications. In essence, Ms. Cutter has become the chief messenger for the Obama campaign, a loyal soldier who says the things the candidate can't (or won't) say -- often on YouTube.
In a series of straight-talking videos set in front of a bustling campaign office, she rejects point by point Mr. Romney's policies.
''All Stephanie wants is results,'' said an Obama administration aide and friend of Ms. Cutter's who is not allowed to discuss campaign issues. ''She is an old-school, take-no-prisoners political operative. Losing is not tolerated.'' (Ms. Cutter has earned the nickname The Ninja at campaign headquarters, since she stealthily inserts herself into battles.)
As Ms. Cutter's role in the campaign has become more prominent, she has become a lightning rod of controversy to detractors and a skirt-suited folk hero to supporters.
Both the adoration (''Stephanie Cutter is SOOO hot,'' said one online commenter) and the attacks (''Lying liar Stephanie Cutter has hissy fit,'' the conservative blogger Michelle Malkin recently tweeted) directed at Ms. Cutter are often manifest in ways that a male aide, like Mr. Axelrod or Robert Gibbs, would probably never experience.
Rush Limbaugh calls Ms. Cutter ''Obama's chief campaign babe,'' and she's also been nicknamed Box Cutter for her sharp attacks. Nicolle Wallace, a White House communications director under George W. Bush, praised Ms. Cutter as ''the warrior princess of this election cycle.''
The Second City comedy troupe in Chicago even has a YouTube parody of a drunk Ms. Cutter impersonator holding a flask with charts in the background. ''Hey, let's look at a graph!'' the blond comedian slurs before chugging vodka.
Ms. Cutter doesn't always stick to the talking points. In a recent CNN interview, she said Mr. Romney's tax cuts ''stipulated, it won't be near $5 trillion,'' as the Obama campaign had earlier claimed. The gaffe became fodder for a Romney attack ad three days later and was raised by Representative Paul D. Ryan in the vice-presidential debate on Thursday night.
Ms. Cutter's prominence puts her in a contradictory position. Similar to other high-profile female political operatives, like the Republicans Dana Perino, Mary Matalin and Ms. Wallace, Ms. Cutter exposes herself to attacks (and dishes them out). But she also serves as a crucial figure in a campaign that is relying on female voters to win.
''If this president wins, it will be because there is a tremendous gender gap and women will make up the margin of victory,'' said Neera Tanden, president of the liberal research group Center for American Progress and a former adviser to Mr. Obama and Hillary Clinton. ''I feel comforted that there's a woman at the table.''
In an administration not known for its embrace of outsiders, Ms. Cutter managed to become a trusted aide to both Michelle Obama, whom she worked for in 2008 and in the White House, and Mr. Obama, who pleaded with her to take West Wing and campaign jobs.
Ms. Cutter previously worked for President Bill Clinton and Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, as well as for Edward M. Kennedy, quickly becoming a trusted Kennedy family confidante.
Her bright career was almost derailed in 2004, though, after Senator John Kerry's failed presidential bid. Ms. Cutter, who had been the campaign's communications chief, bore the brunt of criticism in the election post-mortem, a blame that Mr. Kerry said she had to shoulder unfairly. ''I was frankly appalled at some of the stories and gossip,'' Mr. Kerry said in an interview. ''At the end of the day, I'm the one responsible.''
But she came back in a turnaround that speaks as much to Washington's short memory as to Ms. Cutter's gritty perseverance. In her role as Mrs. Obama's chief of staff during the 2008 campaign, Ms. Cutter (who signed on after Mrs. Obama's widely publicized comment that ''for the first time in my adult lifetime, I'm really proud of my country'') is largely credited for turning the would-be first lady from a potential liability to an enormous asset.
In the Treasury Department, she protected Secretary Timothy F. Geithner's fragile reputation and tried to spin unpopular policies like the Troubled Asset Relief Program and the A.I.G. bailout, a mostly thankless task that did not go unnoticed in Washington.
In addition, Ms. Cutter helped develop ''Let's Move!,'' Mrs. Obama's childhood-obesity initiative, and prepared Sonia Sotomayor for her Supreme Court confirmation hearings. Ms. Cutter's prep work involved not only peppering Ms. Sotomayor with sample questions and overseeing media coverage, but also taking on the more delicate task of asking Ms. Sotomayor to tone down her giant dangly earrings.
''She has an attention to detail that builds huge confidence on the part of the people she works for and, I say this parenthetically, especially women,'' said Anita Dunn, Mr. Obama's former White House communications director.
Ms. Cutter's defining political inspiration is Mr. Kennedy (his picture hangs on her office wall in Chicago). But she received a lesson in campaign tactics from Karl Rove.
In 2004, a veterans group called the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, with ties to Mr. Rove, then Mr. Bush's chief political aide, went after Mr. Kerry's record in Vietnam. In attack ads, the Swift Boaters seized on Mr. Kerry's antiwar statements in the 1970s and accused him of fabricating events that led to his war medals. (Mr. Rove has denied any connection to the group.)
The post-campaign chatter -- much of which blamed Ms. Cutter for the Kerry campaign's seeming inability to fight back -- is said to have devastated her. In reality, she had pushed to respond early to the attacks, but the campaign lacked funds to do so.
The experience helped shape Ms. Cutter's strategic approach in the current election. She urged the Obama campaign to turn Mr. Romney's greatest strength, his tenure at Bain Capital, into his biggest weakness. ''In many ways, it's the revenge of 2004,'' the Democratic strategist Phil Singer said.
On a call with reporters in July, Ms. Cutter said it seemed possible Mr. Romney had misrepresented his position at Bain to the Securities and Exchange Commission, ''which is a felony.'' Matt Rhoades, Mr. Romney's campaign manager, called the comment ''reckless and unsubstantiated'' and said Mr. Obama ''ought to apologize for the out-of-control behavior of his staff.''
But the ''felony'' attack stuck, said Steve Schmidt, a Republican strategist and a chief adviser to Senator John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign. ''If this were football, she might have had a yellow flag thrown on her,'' Mr. Schmidt said, ''but it's a tough business and it was a brutal hit.''
STEPHANIE CUTTER doesn't like to talk about herself. She declined to be interviewed for this article. ''I really, really, really don't like profiles,'' she wrote in an e-mail. ''Is there any way not to do this?''
A native of Raynham, Mass., Ms. Cutter is the only daughter of a single schoolteacher mother, Grace, whom she talks to daily. One of her brothers served in the military in Afghanistan, and she often entertains her nieces and nephews by taking them on tours of the White House briefing room and the National Zoo.
After graduating from Smith College, Ms. Cutter received her law degree from Georgetown. Early in her career, she worked for the Environmental Protection Agency and in the White House to help restore Mr. Clinton's image in the aftermath of impeachment and Monica Lewinsky.
She went back to work for Mr. Kennedy after the Kerry campaign. ''He told her, 'Your job is waiting for you when you're ready, come home,' '' said Vicki Kennedy, the senator's widow.
Ms. Cutter sealed her loyalty with the Kennedy clan in the wake of Mr. Kennedy's cancer diagnosis in 2008. ''I called 911, the doctor and Stephanie in that order when Teddy got sick,'' Mrs. Kennedy said.
She gives Ms. Cutter credit for helping to ensure that her husband's legacy is that of legislative accomplishments, not personal foibles, and still counts Ms. Cutter as a confidante. The night before Mrs. Kennedy's July appearance on ABC's ''This Week With George Stephanopoulos,'' Ms. Cutter called to give some advice.
''She said 'Cheesy scrambled eggs, be sure to eat cheesy scrambled eggs,' '' Mrs. Kennedy said. ''That's what Teddy would always eat before going on the Sunday shows.''
Ms. Cutter became close to the Obama campaign when she orchestrated Mr. Kennedy's surprise endorsement of Mr. Obama and Caroline Kennedy's pro-Obama Op-Ed column in The Times titled ''A President Like My Father.''
Accepting the role as Mrs. Obama's chief of staff could have been seen as a step backward, but it proved to be a deft move that cemented Ms. Cutter's place in Obamaland.
In 2010, Ms. Cutter was tapped to help the White House sell health care reform, and the next year she stepped into an advisory role in the West Wing, arriving at a time when even the president admitted the administration's message was not being communicated effectively. She quickly developed a reputation as the polished, sometimes scarily organized strategist who gets things done, compared with Mr. Axelrod's reputation as a charming but shambling personality who was widely blamed for dropping the ball on White House communication.
While working for the president, Ms. Cutter played a key part in developing the ''We Can't Wait'' campaign, an effort to pass economic policy by executive order that paints Congressional gridlock as standing in Mr. Obama's way.
Ms. Cutter, who is single, lives in a rented apartment on Chicago's Gold Coast with her beagle-hound-cocker spaniel mix, Sammy. A longtime friend likened her intense focus and determination to Claire Danes's C.I.A. agent in the Showtime series ''Homeland'' (minus the bipolar disorder and paranoia).
She has a tight-knit group of like-minded friends, including the MSNBC political analyst Karen Finney; Alyssa Mastromonaco, White House deputy chief of staff; and Julianna Smoot, the Democratic fund-raiser and former White House social secretary.
Friends said she is as direct in offering relationship and fashion advice as she is in advising Mr. Obama and the other politicians she's worked for.
When Ms. Smoot, a fellow Smith graduate who is also a deputy campaign manager, was named White House social secretary, Ms. Cutter helped her buy a new wardrobe. ''She'd say, 'Yeah, that color isn't working' or 'Why don't you not wear that shirt anymore?,' but she's careful not to hurt people's feelings,'' Ms. Smoot said.
MS. CUTTER has said that this will be her last presidential campaign and that she does not want to return to the White House after the coming election. Several friends said they would not be surprised if she left Washington and took a job in the private sector or as a well-paid television pundit.
In the last several years, Ms. Cutter has become more TV ready, with straightened, highlighted blond locks and 5 a.m. workouts at a Washington gym, or long walks and jogs with Sammy while in Chicago.
Although she has been known to fight Mr. Axelrod over TV appearances, Obama advisers will ask Ms. Cutter, who pores over policy data and writes painstakingly detailed talking points, for advice before being interviewed, according to several people close to the campaign.
Ms. Cutter is well aware of the workaholic, control-freak stereotypes that seem to follow her from campaign to campaign. And she does try to let go. She recently hosted a baby shower for Jennifer O'Malley Dillon, a deputy campaign manager. In June, Ms. Cutter (a devoted Boston sports fan) took young staff members to a Cubs game against the Red Sox.
But during the game, Republicans jumped on a speech about immigration policy Mr. Obama had delivered the previous day, putting Ms. Cutter in campaign defense mode. She spent most of the game on her iPhone.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/14/us/politics/stephanie-cutter-is-a-messenger-who-does-the-shooting-for-obama.html
LOAD-DATE: October 14, 2012
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: SPEAKING OUT: Stephanie Cutter on TV in July. (PHOTOGRAPH BY CHRIS USHER/CBS NEWS, VIA GETTY IMAGES)(ST1)
WORK LIFE: Far left, Stephanie Cutter with Sen. Edward M. Kennedy in 2002. Left, Ms. Cutter with Sen. John Kerry in 2004, when she was his presidential campaign's communications chief. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY SCOTT J. FERRELL/CONGRESSIONAL QUARTERLY, VIA GETTY IMAGES
JUSTIN SULLIVAN/GETTY IMAGES)(ST8)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company
475 of 2097 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
October 14, 2012 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
G.O.P. Ticket Focuses On Crucial Ohio Votes
BYLINE: By TRIP GABRIEL and THOMAS KAPLAN; Trip Gabriel reported from Portsmouth, and Thomas Kaplan from Youngstown, Ohio.
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; Pg. 22
LENGTH: 963 words
PORTSMOUTH, Ohio -- The Republican ticket has all but taken up residence in vital Ohio: Mitt Romney spent four days in the state this week and Representative Paul D. Ryan two, with plans to return Monday.
Ohio, which two weeks ago seemed to be slipping from Mr. Romney's grasp, has become a tighter contest, according to polls released late last week. The Republicans' barnstorming was in response to state leaders who pressed Mr. Romney to help turn out voters.
As Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan charted separate paths on Saturday, they tailored messages to each region -- Mr. Ryan promising a return of manufacturing in the industrial northeast, Mr. Romney defending coal jobs on the banks of the Ohio River in the south.
Mr. Romney, who has never drawn the throngs typical of President Obama's -- 15,000 turned out to hear the president at Ohio State University early last week -- has seen his crowds swell to some of the largest of his campaign, and he aimed an offhand barb at Mr. Obama on Saturday. ''His campaign is about smaller and smaller things and our campaign is about bigger and bigger crowds,'' Mr. Romney said at an outdoor rally on the campus of Shawnee State University.
In Portsmouth, on the western edge of Ohio coal country, Mr. Romney raised an attack that the Obama administration threatens jobs and energy independence by excessive environmental regulation. ''We've got 250 years of coal; it could be burned cleanly,'' he said. ''This president, when he was running for office, said if you want to build a new coal plant you can -- but if you do, you'll go bankrupt.''
In the same speech, he attacked the president for directing $90 billion in government support to ''green energy companies,'' but called for a local uranium enrichment plant to have ''the most modern technology.''
The plant, American Centrifuge, has sought a $2 billion loan guarantee from the Department of Energy, which has balked, although it provided $88 million this year.
Mr. Ryan appeared in Youngstown, an industrial city once known for its steel mills, where he focused on how a Romney White House would help support manufacturing. He said the country had lost over 600,000 manufacturing jobs since Mr. Obama was elected.
''You know, we come from similar areas,'' Mr. Ryan said. ''Please know we want to get these manufacturing jobs back here. We want to make sure that this is a country and society where we are the envy of the world, where we're No. 1 in manufacturing again, not second to China like we are right now.''
(Although it is true there are fewer manufacturing jobs since the president took office, more than 500,000 have been added since February 2010, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a reversal of decades of slow decline.)
Mr. Ryan, who spoke to supporters at Youngstown State University, used a PowerPoint presentation to lament the rising national debt and ticked off a list of manufacturing plants that had closed in his home state of Wisconsin, including a General Motors plant in Janesville, his hometown.
''We know what it's like to lose manufacturing jobs,'' Mr. Ryan said. ''We know what it's like when the factories that provided great livelihoods for generations are gone.''
Mr. Ryan has been criticized by fact-checkers for suggesting Mr. Obama was somehow responsible for the plant's closing, since it largely shut down in December 2008, before the president took office. During his campaign that year, Mr. Obama promised to pursue policies to save plants like Janesville. Although he bailed out the auto industry, over Mr. Romney's objections, the plant in Mr. Ryan's hometown remains closed.
Mr. Ryan missed no opportunity to emphasize his local ties. When a college student told him that he had risen at 5 a.m. to drive to Youngstown from Akron, Mr. Ryan responded that he also attended college in Ohio, at Miami University. The mention of the college drew an enthusiastic cheer from the crowd.
Mr. Ryan then told the student that one of his best friends was from Akron, noting that Goodyear had a plant there, and adding that he had visited several times.
''It's a great town,'' he said, ''and it reminds me so much of where I come from. It really does.''
Afterward, Mr. Ryan stopped with his wife and children at a nearby soup kitchen. The family put on aprons and washed several large pans, though they did not appear to need washing, according to a pool reporter. There also was no one to serve at the soup kitchen, as breakfast had ended.
Meanwhile, the Romney campaign took aim at another local issue in a radio ad that said the administration wanted to ''to take away one of the most vital weapons in our arsenal -- made right here in Ohio.''
The ad aired in northwest Ohio, around Lima, home of the plant that makes the M-1 tank. At the vice-presidential debate on Thursday, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. said that the Army was not seeking any more M-1's; instead, he said, ''what we need is more U.A.V.'s,'' or drones.
Mr. Ryan and Mr. Romney appeared together on Friday evening in Lancaster, a picturesque community in central Ohio, where their outdoor rally took place as the sun set and thousands amassed downtown.
It turned out there was a very local angle as well. ''It's good to be back,'' Mr. Romney said. ''And you may say, 'I don't remember seeing you here before.' But I was here a long time ago.''
He explained ''my very first assignment at my first job'' as a consultant fresh out of Harvard Business School was to work with a local company, Anchor Hocking, which makes glass tableware. He recalled ''standing next to those big glass furnaces'' and learning about ''triple gob machines'' at the glassworks.
''It's good to be back,'' he said, acknowledging the timeless truth that all politics -- M-1 tanks or glass casseroles -- is local.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/14/us/politics/gop-ticket-focuses-on-crucial-ohio-votes.html
LOAD-DATE: October 14, 2012
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GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: Representative Paul D. Ryan and his family stopped by a soup kitchen in Youngstown, Ohio. (PHOTOGRAPH BY MAX WHITTAKER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)
President Obama met supporters in Williamsburg, Va., where he went for debate preparation. (PHOTOGRAPH BY DOUG MILLS/THE NEW YORK TIMES)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
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The New York Times
October 14, 2012 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
Romney's Go-To Economist
BYLINE: By DAVID SEGAL
SECTION: Section BU; Column 0; Money and Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 3897 words
''I HOPE you're sitting down for this,'' said Ali Velshi, the CNN anchor, staring into the camera, his voice booming with incredulity about a campaign promise issued by Mitt Romney: that, if elected, Mr. Romney would create 12 million jobs in four years.
Having framed this idea as preposterous, Mr. Velshi introduced R. Glenn Hubbard, the dean of Columbia Business School, a Romney campaign adviser and a ''very smart man,'' as the host put it. So smart, Mr. Velshi told Mr. Hubbard, that ''you couldn't have been involved in the writing of that policy.'' Why? ''Because you would know that that is just not possible.''
Wearing a dark suit and projecting an air of geeky, avuncular calm, Mr. Hubbard appeared before a blue backdrop festooned with the words ''Columbia Business School.'' If he was supposed to be cowed or disarmed by the bluster or flattery, he did not show it.
''It is absolutely possible, Ali, both in terms of models of policy effects on the recovery and historical experience,'' he said, in a tone that was professorial but not patronizing, ''If you look at the recovery from '74, '75, or '81, '82, you can easily get job growth in this range. We have the wrong policy mix. We've had a nasty shock, we're in a different situation, but we could do a lot better.''
Succinct, authoritative and unabashedly partisan. Leave aside that most economists see a vast difference between the recessions of the '70s and '80s and the crisis that began in 2008. This was exactly the sort of performance Mr. Hubbard has been delivering for the Republican candidate, both on television and in op-ed articles, for more than a year. Straddling the occasionally uncomfortable line between academia and politics, Mr. Hubbard is playing a role now familiar in modern campaigns: the in-house economist.
Mr. Hubbard has helped to draft many of Mr. Romney's economic and tax policies, and, at least implicitly, lent his imprimatur to others he did not conceive. The benefits are potentially mutual. If Mr. Romney is elected, Mr. Hubbard is considered a strong candidate for the job of Treasury secretary and even, after Ben S. Bernanke's term expires, chairman of the Federal Reserve. (Robert Zoellick, former president of the World Bank, is another possible contender for the Treasury job.)
To the job of in-house economist, Mr. Hubbard brings a rare ability to translate complex policy into plain English, as well as a conservative's love for small government and a faith that cutting taxes will spur growth. During a stint as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers for President George W. Bush, from 2001 to 2003, Mr. Hubbard was known as the principal architect of the Bush tax cuts.
Mr. Hubbard also brings to this job a certain amount of baggage. He appeared briefly in ''Inside Job,'' a scathing and Oscar-winning 2010 documentary about the financial crisis. The film has a segment about high-profile professors who blessed many of the financial instruments that led to the fiasco. Enter Mr. Hubbard, who is presented as a leading thinker far too cozy with industries he ought to be assessing at a critical distance.
''You have three more minutes,'' he tells an interviewer who is pressing for the names of his consulting clients. And then, as his face contorts with rage, he adds, ''Give it your best shot.''
MR. HUBBARD is hardly the only marquee economist to parlay his experience and stature into millions of dollars, for speeches, papers and expert witness testimony. Lawrence H. Summers, once the Obama administration's top economic adviser, pocketed about $5.2 million in compensation for giving advice to a hedge fund. But in Mr. Hubbard's case, some of his amply compensated work takes policy stands that buttress the viewpoints of the corporate interests that are paying him.
That's been true of the mutual fund industry, which has paid him more than $1 million over the years. In an academic paper and a book, he took a strong position favoring the industry's approach to fees, which critics say hurt everyday investors. He was paid what he called an honorarium of $150,000 for the academic paper by the insurance arm of the Investment Company Institute, the mutual fund industry trade and lobbying group.
''Dean Hubbard is a mercenary,'' says John P. Freeman, emeritus professor of business and professional ethics at the University of South Carolina School of Law, who has accused the mutual fund industry of profiteering, ''out to protect fund managers who are taking advantage of investors.''
Mr. Hubbard says the source of funding is irrelevant because his academic writing stands on its own.
Some of Mr. Hubbard's extracurricular activities have also made faculty members at his Columbia Business School unhappy, because, they say, they reflect poorly on the institution. Others complain that he has run the school with a somewhat autocratic hand and feel that they have been buffaloed into casting votes and rallying behind causes that they haven't necessarily supported.
One of those causes was Mr. Hubbard himself. It's been a well-kept secret, but faculty members say that in 2008, the president of Columbia, Lee C. Bollinger, wanted to bounce Mr. Hubbard from his job. Why? Nobody has offered an explanation, not even to the senior faculty members who were asked at a meeting to rally behind their leader by signing a petition of support. Neither Mr. Hubbard nor Mr. Bollinger would answer questions on the subject.
Mr. Hubbard's friends and fans note that he is a conservative leading an institution dominated by liberals, and that some friction is inevitable. As for calling Mr. Hubbard a mercenary -- that suggests that he will fight for causes he doesn't believe in. Which, one former colleague says, is not so.
''Glenn is ideologically conservative,'' says Ron Miller, a former economics professor at Columbia who now works for NERA, an economic consulting firm. ''Nobody has to pay him to say this stuff. That's what he believes.''
Mr. Hubbard declined to be interviewed for this article, citing a busy schedule. He agreed to answer questions via e-mail, though many seemed the answers of a man striving to come across as nothing-to-see-here bland. He also provided the names of some friends, many of whom wanted to underscore the same idea: the guy is not bland.
''Did you know, for instance, that he has a brother who is a country music star?'' asked Kevin A. Hassett, a friend and scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
Hubbard's younger brother, Gregg -- known to fans as Hobie -- is a member of Sawyer Brown, a country rock band that gained fame via ''Star Search,'' a sort of precursor to ''American Idol.''
''He's always had a great sense of humor,'' says Gregg Hubbard, speaking by telephone before a flight to a concert. He recounts celebrating his 40th birthday in New York City and sharing a gift he had just been given, a Razor scooter, with his brother. ''We were with my older nephew,'' he says, ''and we took turns, the three of us, riding up and down Broadway on a scooter.''
Glenn Hubbard was raised in Apopka, Fla., a suburb of Orlando known as the ''Indoor Foliage Capital of the World,'' because of its many greenhouses. His father taught at a community college, and his mother taught at the high school he attended. She is remembered by her students as both pleasant and exacting, a formidable presence whom Mr. Hubbard's friends regard as the wellspring of her son's discipline and ambition.
''I write a column for a local paper,'' says Bryan Nelson, a state representative and a onetime pupil of Ms. Hubbard's, ''and to this day, when I run into her she has no qualms about telling me what I got wrong -- the grammar, the spelling.''
Glenn Hubbard was an Eagle scout, a star of the chess team and a stellar student who graduated at the top of his class. He scored high enough on College Level Examination Program tests to enter the University of Central Florida with enough credits so he could graduate with two degrees in three years.
''At the age of 8 or 9, we both began collecting coins,'' says Nelson Smith, a childhood friend and now a physician. ''That led to questions about currencies: how the concept of money evolved over the centuries, how systems of finance are set up. He never said, 'I'm going to be an economist,' but you could see that's where his mind was headed.''
Mr. Hubbard received his master's and Ph.D. at Harvard and became a hugely productive scholar with a wide range of interests. Fellow conservatives view his work with pure reverence. From the left, you hear grudging caveats like, ''He'll never win the Nobel Prize.'' He is best known for research in tax policy and government spending programs. One influential study quantified the major role that cash flow plays in driving corporations to invest.
''The lesson,'' says James Poterba, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an admirer of Mr. Hubbard, ''is that if someone is looking for policy instruments that might raise investment, then lower corporate rates could do it because you change the current availability of cash for firms.''
On behalf of the Romney campaign, Mr. Hubbard has argued that the Obama administration has ''stuck the economy in a slow growth trap,'' as it was put in a recent position paper, ''The Romney Program for Economic Recovery, Growth and Jobs,'' of which he was a co-author.
The way out of this trap, he and his co-authors wrote, is to reduce federal spending, cut marginal income tax rates by 20 percent across the board and gradually reduce the growth in Social Security and Medicare benefits for more affluent seniors. He would also like to repeal the Dodd-Frank financial legislation and the Affordable Care Act.
That paper, of course, is a campaign document, but if Mr. Hubbard has any differences with Mr. Romney on economic matters, he won't name them. ''I support Governor Romney's economic program,'' he wrote when asked if his candidate had any taken positions he does not support.
If Mr. Hubbard becomes Treasury secretary, cutting taxes would very likely be his highest priority. Altering the tax code to encourage savings and bolster investment has been one of his favorite causes. While serving under President Bush as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, he pushed to reduce dividend taxes to zero. (Ultimately, the top tax rate on dividends was cut by more than half, to 15 percent.)
In that job, he also demonstrated great skills as political player. He turned the council, which had existed until then mainly to rah-rah administration policy, into a force in Washington.
''Glenn usurped the Treasury Department on tax policy,'' says Leonard E. Burman, a professor of public affairs at Syracuse University who worked at the Treasury Department during the Clinton administration. ''I had friends who worked at the department after I left, and they said that Glenn shifted the balance of power dramatically.''
As Mr. Hubbard has moved seamlessly through the Republican upper echelons of Washington, he has also cultivated relationships in corporate suites. He serves on three corporate boards, which collectively paid him $785,000 last year. One of those is the board of KKR Financial, a finance firm affiliated with Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, the private equity firm of which Henry R. Kravis was a co-founder. In 2010, Mr. Kravis pledged $100 million to the Columbia Business School, his alma mater, for the construction of a new building. It was the largest gift in the school's history.
DURING his eight years as dean, Mr. Hubbard has charmed some faculty members and alienated others. A few say that despite his buttoned-up appearance, he is approachable and is always up for some banter.
''He was teaching a class across the hall and I would complain to him, 'Glenn, why is my classroom such a sauna?' '' says Jonathan Levav, a former member of the faculty who is now an associate professor of marketing at Stanford. ''And he would say: 'That's funny. The temperature in my classroom is perfect.' When the person in power can have fun with you like that, it puts you at ease. It puts a human face on your boss.''
Mr. Hubbard can take a bit of needling, too, says Raymond Horton, a professor of ethics and corporate governance at Columbia Business School.
''When Romney made his 47 percent boo-boo, I went to the dean's office and said 'Way to go, Glenn,' '' Professor Horton says. He diplomatically declined to put Mr. Hubbard's response on the record.
There is another, more prickly side to Mr. Hubbard, though it is not a side he has shown very often. One faculty member who saw it is Noel Capon, a tenured professor in the school's marketing department. In October 2010, he received a letter from Christopher J. Mayer, a professor in the finance and economics division who was then the senior vice dean, accusing him of violating a number of Columbia University rules on outside commercial ventures. The letter had what Mr. Capon considered an aggressive tone; it took him aback. After a few months and a conversation with a fellow professor, Mr. Capon concluded that Mr. Hubbard was behind what he regarded as a carefully orchestrated campaign against him. The point, he believes, was to bully him into line.
''There were situations in the past where I might have made statements that challenged Glenn,'' says Mr. Capon, who acknowledges that he has a hard time keeping his opinion to himself. One opinion he couldn't keep to himself concerned a decision, in May 2010, to offer tenure to a professor from another university -- a decision he opposed. He wrote a letter saying so, copying the provost, and stating that the process had not allowed him to air his dissenting views. (The issue went away when the outside professor turned down the job.)
Eventually, Mr. Capon met with Mr. Hubbard to discuss the issues raised in Mr. Mayer's October letter.
Mr. Capon says Mr. Hubbard told him that ''you've given me crap from the day I started'' and that ''you've been abusive from Day 1.''
Mr. Hubbard says that he never said those words. ''I would not speak in that manner to anyone, let alone a faculty colleague,'' he wrote.
Mr. Mayer did not reply to e-mails requesting comment.
The dispute ultimately fizzled away. But Mr. Capon is no longer buying Mr. Hubbard's placid exterior.
''If he's crossed,'' Mr. Capon said, ''he can be brutal.''
As dean, Mr. Hubbard has made some high-profile hires, including Patrick Bolton, a specialist in contract theory who was lured away from Princeton, and twice revamped the curriculum, to give students more flexibility in choosing classes and to shorten the time it takes to complete required courses.
Neither change was controversial, but the way some decisions have been made at the school was described as ''Brezhnevian'' by one professor, who like many interviewed for this article requested anonymity in order to preserve relationships with the school. In one vote, faculty members were asked to raise a hand if they were in favor of a particular change. There were no dissenters, several attendees recalled.
The most memorable vote came in the fall of 2008, when Mr. Mayer gathered senior faculty members and made a surprising announcement: Dean Hubbard's job was in peril. President Bollinger was balking at appointing him to a second five-year term.
According to several participants, Mr. Mayer urged professors to demonstrate their support for Mr. Hubbard with a petition, which attendees were asked to sign on the spot. Several current and former faculty members used the identical word to describe the experience: bizarre.
It wasn't just that some professors, even fans of Mr. Hubbard's, felt a little coerced. It was that nobody had any idea why President Bollinger wanted to jettison him.
''I was not happy,'' one faculty member says. ''There was no way to have a view on the subject. It was like signing a contract that you haven't read.'' Mr. Mayer did not reply to e-mails seeking comment.
In an e-mail, Mr. Hubbard kept his thoughts on this subject to an anodyne minimum. ''I am honored that President Bollinger gave me the opportunity to be dean,'' he wrote.
Mr. Bollinger declined to discuss this episode or respond to written questions about it. He sent an e-mail that described Mr. Hubbard as ''a distinguished academic economist who as dean has maintained an active, engaged voice in the public debate.''
In absence of any official word, faculty members have been left to speculate about why Mr. Hubbard nearly lost his job. Nor does anyone know why Mr. Bollinger decided to reappoint him, though current and former faculty members have a pet theory: that Mr. Bollinger was worried about losing the financial support of Mr. Hubbard's friends, most notably Mr. Kravis.
As several faculty members pointed out, a little acidly, Mr. Hubbard had helped to cut taxes for people like Mr. Kravis. ''They owed him,'' one professor said.
IN conversations with Columbia Business School faculty members, you hear occasional hints of irritation with Mr. Hubbard over his cameo in ''Inside Job'' and the embarrassment they say it visited on the school. Part of the reason is that the fallout led to new and more stringent conflict-of-interest and disclosure rules -- and that those forced many professors to drop lucrative side projects. It's as though Mr. Hubbard was caught overeating, so everyone had to go on a diet.
Others question whether it is wise for Mr. Hubbard to take on certain clients. For instance, he served as an expert witness in the defense of two Bear Stearns hedge fund managers accused of defrauding investors in 2009. Both men were ultimately acquitted, and in a recent interview, one of their lawyers, Edward Little, praised Mr. Hubbard's testimony as ''absolutely critical.'' Some at the school wonder whether it served the institution's interests for its leader to be publicly linked with people accused in one of the only Wall Street cases to stem from the great recession.
Asked whether he was concerned about connecting the school to matters like the Bear Stearns prosecution, Mr. Hubbard wrote, ''I am comfortable that I balance my scholarship and teaching, deanship, and outside activities very well.''
That balance has included work for many corporations that have generated unflattering headlines in recent years. On his résumé, in the category of ''consulting or advisory relationships,'' Mr. Hubbard lists Freddie Mac, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs. He was co-author of a paper with William C. Dudley, then the chief economist of Goldman Sachs, titled ''How Capital Markets Enhance Economic Performance and Facilitate Job Creation,'' which praised derivatives and the housing boom in 2004, as both were inflating into an epic bubble.
''Credit derivative obligations have become an important element that has helped protect bank lending portfolios against loss,'' he and Mr. Dudley wrote.
The mutual fund industry has been a major source of income for Mr. Hubbard, and through that work he has taken a solidly pro-industry stand on a much-debated and much-litigated question: Do mutual fund advisers gouge clients by charging excessive fees? No, Mr. Hubbard argued in a paper he wrote with John C. Coates IV of Harvard Law School, titled ''Competition in the Mutual Fund Industry.''
In the paper, the authors argued that it was essentially impossible for mutual fund advisers to overcharge on fees because the mutual fund business was so competitive. As the authors wrote, ''fund investors may fire advisers at any time by redeeming shares and switching to other investments.''
Unlike Mr. Hubbard, who was paid that $150,000 honorarium for the paper, Professor Coates said in an interview that he had not taken any money from the Investment Company Institute and that as a matter of personal policy did not accept money in such circumstances for academic work.
Mr. Hubbard earned much more making the same pro-industry point in several court appearances, as an expert witness on behalf of corporations and mutual fund interests. One of those cases was a lawsuit by employees of ABB, a power generation products manufacturer, against the company and Fidelity, the mutual fund giant, over accusations that ABB paid excessive fees, at the employees' expense, to manage the company's 401(k) plan.
During a cross-examination, Mr. Hubbard said Fidelity had paid him $420,000 for his participation in the case. About $200,000 of that was direct billings -- he charged $1,200 an hour -- and the rest came from a company called the Analysis Group, which provides teams of experts for research projects. Mr. Hubbard earned 7.5 percent of the amount that Analysis Group researchers charged Fidelity.
A federal judge in Missouri ultimately found that ABB and Fidelity had breached a number of their fiduciary duties and in March of this year ordered ABB to pay $35.2 million and Fidelity to pay $1.7 million for losses.
But Professor Freeman at the University of South Carolina says he believes that Mr. Hubbard's scholarship on this subject -- particularly the paper he co-wrote -- was shoddy and did genuine damage.
''What Hubbard and Coates have done is pour holy water on the Investment Company Institute's hopelessly stupid defense of fees charged by mutual funds,'' he said in a telephone interview. That Mr. Hubbard took money for the paper casts doubts on his motives, Professor Freeman says.
Mr. Hubbard wrote that he did not worry that the money might appear to influence his findings.
''Any work of scholarship rises or falls on its ideas, empirical support, and argument,'' he wrote. ''Readers can then make whatever judgment they wish.''
IF Mr. Hubbard becomes the Treasury secretary, the job will surely mean a drastic cut in pay. What it would mean for the rest of the country is not easy to divine; the Romney campaign has been vague on many details, particularly how it would offset a 20 percent across-the-board tax cut without adding to the deficit.
But you can get a pretty good sense from looking at the economic priorities of the George W. Bush administration, says Martin N. Baily, who served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Bill Clinton and is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Mr. Baily was a critic of the Bush tax cuts because, he says, they left the country without the wherewithal to battle the great recession.
''When I read the Romney economic plan,'' he wrote in an e-mail, ''it seemed to me that it was basically the Bush plan.''
There are plenty of centrist and right-of-center economists who think that Mr. Hubbard would make a fine Treasury secretary. They are impressed by his intellect, trust his instincts and commend his leadership during previous stints in Washington.
Some right-leaning economists, though, have reservations. Their worry is that Mr. Hubbard is not enough of a deficit hawk, and that if he follows through with tax cuts as articulated in the Romney plan, the results could be a disaster.
''Cutting taxes in 2001 wasn't a crime,'' says Luigi Zingales, an economist at the University of Chicago, who was one of the co-authors of an op-ed article with Mr. Hubbard. ''Not fixing the deficit today is. If you think he's a guy who'll go ahead and play the same strategy, which I have to say most people do, then we'll ultimately wind up with an even bigger deficit. I trust he's smart enough not to play the same strategy.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/14/business/glenn-hubbard-is-romneys-go-to-economist.html
LOAD-DATE: October 21, 2012
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GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: R. Glenn Hubbard, the dean of the Columbia Business School and adviser to Mitt Romney, has been straddling the sometimes shaky line between academia and politics. (PHOTOGRAPH BY LUCAS JACKSON/REUTERS)
Mr. Hubbard appeared briefly in the 2010 documentary ''Inside Job,'' a scathing look at the financial crisis. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY SONY PICTURES CLASSICS) (BU4)
In Apopka, Fla., where Mr. Hubbard grew up, Mitt Romney cast a shadow on a banner as he spoke during a recent campaign rally. Mr. Hubbard has said President Obama's policies have left the nation in a slow-growth trap. (PHOTOGRAPH BY JEWEL SAMAD/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE -- GETTY IMAGES)(BU5) DRAWING (DRAWING BY MINH UONG/THE NEW YORK TIMES)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company
477 of 2097 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
October 14, 2012 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
Romney’s Go-To Economist
BYLINE: By DAVID SEGAL
SECTION: Section BU; Column 0; Money and Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 4123 words
“I HOPE you’re sitting down for this,” said Ali Velshi, the CNN anchor, staring into the camera, his voice booming with incredulity about a campaign promise issued by Mitt Romney: that, if elected, Mr. Romney would create 12 million jobs in four years.


Having framed this idea as preposterous, Mr. Velshi introduced R. Glenn Hubbard, the dean of Columbia Business School, a Romney campaign adviser and a “very smart man,” as the host put it. So smart, Mr. Velshi told Mr. Hubbard, that “you couldn’t have been involved in the writing of that policy.” Why? “Because you would know that that is just not possible.”
Wearing a dark suit and projecting an air of geeky, avuncular calm, Mr. Hubbard appeared before a blue backdrop festooned with the words “Columbia Business School.” If he was supposed to be cowed or disarmed by the bluster or flattery, he did not show it.
“It is absolutely possible, Ali, both in terms of models of policy effects on the recovery and historical experience,” he said, in a tone that was professorial but not patronizing, “If you look at the recovery from ’74, ’75, or ’81, ’82, you can easily get job growth in this range. We have the wrong policy mix. We’ve had a nasty shock, we’re in a different situation, but we could do a lot better.”
Succinct, authoritative and unabashedly partisan. Leave aside that most economists see a vast difference between the recessions of the ’70s and ’80s and the crisis that began in 2008. This was exactly the sort of performance Mr. Hubbard has been delivering for the Republican candidate, both on television and in op-ed articles, for more than a year. Straddling the occasionally uncomfortable line between academia and politics, Mr. Hubbard is playing a role now familiar in modern campaigns: the in-house economist.
Mr. Hubbard has helped to draft many of Mr. Romney’s economic and tax policies, and, at least implicitly, lent his imprimatur to others he did not conceive. The benefits are potentially mutual. If Mr. Romney is elected, Mr. Hubbard is considered a strong candidate for the job of Treasury secretary and even, after Ben S. Bernanke’s term expires, chairman of the Federal Reserve. (Robert Zoellick, former president of the World Bank, is another possible contender for the Treasury job.)
To the job of in-house economist, Mr. Hubbard brings a rare ability to translate complex policy into plain English, as well as a conservative’s love for small government and a faith that cutting taxes will spur growth. During a stint as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers for President George W. Bush, from 2001 to 2003, Mr. Hubbard was known as the principal architect of the Bush tax cuts.
Mr. Hubbard also brings to this job a certain amount of baggage. He appeared briefly in “Inside Job,” a scathing and Oscar-winning 2010 documentary about the financial crisis. The film has a segment about high-profile professors who blessed many of the financial instruments that led to the fiasco. Enter Mr. Hubbard, who is presented as a leading thinker far too cozy with industries he ought to be assessing at a critical distance.
“You have three more minutes,” he tells an interviewer who is pressing for the names of his consulting clients. And then, as his face contorts with rage, he adds, “Give it your best shot.”
MR. HUBBARD is hardly the only marquee economist to parlay his experience and stature into millions of dollars, for speeches, papers and expert witness testimony.  Lawrence H. Summers, once the Obama administration’s top economic adviser, pocketed about $5.2 million in compensation for giving advice to a hedge fund. But in Mr. Hubbard’s case, some of his amply compensated work takes policy stands that buttress the viewpoints of the corporate interests that are paying him.
That’s been true of the mutual fund industry, which has paid him more than $1 million over the years. In an academic paper and a book, he took a strong position favoring the industry’s approach to fees, which critics say hurt everyday investors. He was paid what he called an honorarium of $150,000 for the academic paper by the insurance arm of the Investment Company Institute, the mutual fund industry trade and lobbying group.
“Dean Hubbard is a mercenary,” says John P. Freeman, emeritus professor of business and professional ethics at the University of South Carolina School of Law, who has accused the mutual fund industry of profiteering, “out to protect fund managers who are taking advantage of investors.”
Mr. Hubbard says the source of funding is irrelevant because his academic writing stands on its own.
Some of Mr. Hubbard’s extracurricular activities have also made faculty members at his Columbia Business School unhappy, because, they say, they reflect poorly on the institution. Others complain that he has run the school with a somewhat autocratic hand and feel that they have been buffaloed into casting votes and rallying behind causes that they haven’t necessarily supported.
One of those causes was Mr. Hubbard himself. It’s been a well-kept secret, but faculty members say that in 2008, the president of Columbia, Lee C. Bollinger, wanted to bounce Mr. Hubbard from his job. Why? Nobody has offered an explanation, not even to the senior faculty members who were asked at a meeting to rally behind their leader by signing a petition of support. Neither Mr. Hubbard nor Mr. Bollinger would answer questions on the subject.
Mr. Hubbard’s friends and fans note that he is a conservative leading an institution dominated by liberals, and that some friction is inevitable. As for calling Mr. Hubbard a mercenary — that suggests that he will fight for causes he doesn’t believe in. Which, one former colleague says, is not so.
“Glenn is ideologically conservative,” says Ron Miller, a former economics professor at Columbia who now works for NERA, an economic consulting firm. “Nobody has to pay him to say this stuff. That’s what he believes.”
Mr. Hubbard declined to be interviewed for this article, citing a busy schedule. He agreed to answer questions via e-mail, though many seemed the answers of a man striving to come across as nothing-to-see-here bland. He also provided the names of some friends, many of whom wanted to underscore the same idea: the guy is not bland.
“Did you know, for instance, that he has a brother who is a country music star?” asked Kevin A. Hassett, a friend and scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
Hubbard’s younger brother, Gregg — known to fans as Hobie — is a member of Sawyer Brown, a country rock band that gained fame via “Star Search,” a sort of precursor to “American Idol.”
“He’s always had a great sense of humor,” says Gregg Hubbard, speaking by telephone before a flight to a concert. He recounts celebrating his 40th birthday in New York City and sharing a gift he had just been given, a Razor scooter, with his brother. “We were with my older nephew,” he says, “and we took turns, the three of us, riding up and down Broadway on a scooter.”
Glenn Hubbard was raised in Apopka, Fla., a suburb of Orlando known as the “Indoor Foliage Capital of the World,” because of its many greenhouses. His father taught at a community college, and his mother taught at the high school he attended. She is remembered by her students as both pleasant and exacting, a formidable presence whom Mr. Hubbard’s friends regard as the wellspring of her son’s discipline and ambition.
“I write a column for a local paper,” says Bryan Nelson, a state representative and a onetime pupil of Ms. Hubbard’s, “and to this day, when I run into her she has no qualms about telling me what I got wrong — the grammar, the spelling.”
Glenn Hubbard was an Eagle scout, a star of the chess team and a stellar student who graduated at the top of his class. He scored high enough on College Level Examination Program tests to enter the University of Central Florida with enough credits so he could graduate with two degrees in three years.
“At the age of 8 or 9, we both began collecting coins,” says Nelson Smith, a childhood friend and now a physician. “That led to questions about currencies: how the concept of money evolved over the centuries, how systems of finance are set up. He never said, ‘I’m going to be an economist,’ but you could see that’s where his mind was headed.”
Mr. Hubbard received his master’s and Ph.D. at Harvard and became a hugely productive scholar with a wide range of interests. Fellow conservatives view his work with pure reverence. From the left, you hear grudging caveats like, “He’ll never win the Nobel Prize.” He is best known for research in tax policy and government spending programs. One influential study quantified the major role that cash flow plays in driving corporations to invest.
“The lesson,” says James Poterba, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an admirer of Mr. Hubbard, “is that if someone is looking for policy instruments that might raise investment, then lower corporate rates could do it because you change the current availability of cash for firms.”
On behalf of the Romney campaign, Mr. Hubbard has argued that the Obama administration has “stuck the economy in a slow growth trap,” as it was put in a recent position paper, “The Romney Program for Economic Recovery, Growth and Jobs,” of which he was a co-author.
The way out of this trap, he and his co-authors wrote, is to reduce federal spending, cut marginal income tax rates by 20 percent across the board and gradually reduce the growth in Social Security and Medicare benefits for more affluent seniors. He would also like to repeal the Dodd-Frank financial legislation and the Affordable Care Act.
That paper, of course, is a campaign document, but if Mr. Hubbard has any differences with Mr. Romney on economic matters, he won’t name them. “I support Governor Romney’s economic program,” he wrote when asked if his candidate had any taken positions he does not support.
If Mr. Hubbard becomes Treasury secretary, cutting taxes would very likely be his highest priority. Altering the tax code to encourage savings and bolster investment has been one of his favorite causes. While serving under President Bush as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, he pushed to reduce dividend taxes to zero. (Ultimately, the top tax rate on dividends was cut by more than half, to 15 percent.)
In that job, he also demonstrated great skills as political player. He turned the council, which had existed until then mainly to rah-rah administration policy, into a force in Washington.
“Glenn usurped the Treasury Department on tax policy,” says Leonard E. Burman, a professor of public affairs at Syracuse University who worked at the Treasury Department during the Clinton administration. “I had friends who worked at the department after I left, and they said that Glenn shifted the balance of power dramatically.”
As Mr. Hubbard has moved seamlessly through the Republican upper echelons of Washington, he has also cultivated relationships in corporate suites. He serves on three corporate boards, which collectively paid him $785,000 last year. One of those is the board of KKR Financial, a finance firm affiliated with Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, the private equity firm of which Henry R. Kravis was a co-founder. In 2010, Mr. Kravis pledged $100 million to the Columbia Business School, his alma mater, for the construction of a new building. It was the largest gift in the school’s history.
DURING his eight years as dean, Mr. Hubbard has charmed some faculty members and alienated others. A few say that despite his buttoned-up appearance, he is approachable and is always up for some banter.
“He was teaching a class across the hall and I would complain to him, ‘Glenn, why is my classroom such a sauna?’ ” says Jonathan Levav, a former member of the faculty who is now an associate professor of marketing at Stanford. “And he would say: ‘That’s funny. The temperature in my classroom is perfect.’ When the person in power can have fun with you like that, it puts you at ease. It puts a human face on your boss.”
Mr. Hubbard can take a bit of needling, too, says Raymond Horton, a professor of ethics and corporate governance at Columbia Business School.
“When Romney made his 47 percent boo-boo, I went to the dean’s office and said ‘Way to go, Glenn,’ ” Professor Horton says. He diplomatically declined to put Mr. Hubbard’s response on the record.
There is another, more prickly side to Mr. Hubbard, though it is not a side he has shown very often. One faculty member who saw it is Noel Capon, a tenured professor in the school’s marketing department. In October 2010, he received a letter from Christopher J. Mayer, a professor in the finance and economics division who was then the senior vice dean, accusing him of violating a number of Columbia University rules on outside commercial ventures. The letter had what Mr. Capon considered an aggressive tone; it took him aback. After a few months and a conversation with a fellow professor, Mr. Capon concluded that Mr. Hubbard was behind what he regarded as a carefully orchestrated campaign against him. The point, he believes, was to bully him into line.
“There were situations in the past where I might have made statements that challenged Glenn,” says Mr. Capon, who acknowledges that he has a hard time keeping his opinion to himself. One opinion he couldn’t keep to himself concerned a decision, in May 2010, to offer tenure to a professor from another university — a decision he opposed. He wrote a letter saying so, copying the provost, and stating that the process had not allowed him to air his dissenting views. (The issue went away when the outside professor turned down the job.)
Eventually, Mr. Capon met with Mr. Hubbard to discuss the issues raised in Mr. Mayer’s October letter.
Mr. Capon says Mr. Hubbard told him that “you’ve given me crap from the day I started” and that “you’ve been abusive from Day 1.”
Mr. Hubbard says that he never said those words. “I would not speak in that manner to anyone, let alone a faculty colleague,” he wrote.
Mr. Mayer did not reply to e-mails requesting comment.
The dispute ultimately fizzled away. But Mr. Capon is no longer buying Mr. Hubbard’s placid exterior.
“If he’s crossed,” Mr. Capon said, “he can be brutal.”
As dean, Mr. Hubbard has made some high-profile hires, including Patrick Bolton, a specialist in contract theory who was lured away from Princeton, and twice revamped the curriculum, to give students more flexibility in choosing classes and to shorten the time it takes to complete required courses.
Neither change was controversial, but the way some decisions have been made at the school was described as “Brezhnevian” by one professor, who like many interviewed for this article requested anonymity in order to preserve relationships with the school. In one vote, faculty members were asked to raise a hand if they were in favor of a particular change. There were no dissenters, several attendees recalled.
The most memorable vote came in the fall of 2008, when Mr. Mayer gathered senior faculty members and made a surprising announcement: Dean Hubbard’s job was in peril. President Bollinger was balking at appointing him to a second five-year term.
According to several participants, Mr. Mayer urged professors to demonstrate their support for Mr. Hubbard with a petition, which attendees were asked to sign on the spot. Several current and former faculty members used the identical word to describe the experience: bizarre.
It wasn’t just that some professors, even fans of Mr. Hubbard’s, felt a little coerced. It was that nobody had any idea why President Bollinger wanted to jettison him.
“I was not happy,” one faculty member says. “There was no way to have a view on the subject. It was like signing a contract that you haven’t read.” Mr. Mayer did not reply to e-mails seeking comment.
In an e-mail, Mr. Hubbard kept his thoughts on this subject to an anodyne minimum. “I am honored that President Bollinger gave me the opportunity to be dean,” he wrote.
Mr. Bollinger declined to discuss this episode or respond to written questions about it. He sent an e-mail that described Mr. Hubbard as “a distinguished academic economist who as dean has maintained an active, engaged voice in the public debate.”
In absence of any official word, faculty members have been left to speculate about why Mr. Hubbard nearly lost his job. Nor does anyone know why Mr. Bollinger decided to reappoint him, though current and former faculty members have a pet theory: that Mr. Bollinger was worried about losing the financial support of Mr. Hubbard’s friends, most notably Mr. Kravis.
As several faculty members pointed out, a little acidly, Mr. Hubbard had helped to cut taxes for people like Mr. Kravis. “They owed him,” one professor said.
IN conversations with Columbia Business School faculty members, you hear occasional hints of irritation with Mr. Hubbard over his cameo in “Inside Job” and the embarrassment they say it visited on the school. Part of the reason is that the fallout led to new and more stringent conflict-of-interest and disclosure rules — and that those forced many professors to drop lucrative side projects. It’s as though Mr. Hubbard was caught overeating, so everyone had to go on a diet.
Others question whether it is wise for Mr. Hubbard to take on certain clients. For instance, he served as an expert witness in the defense of two Bear Stearns hedge fund managers accused of defrauding investors in 2009. Both men were ultimately acquitted, and in a recent interview, one of their lawyers, Edward Little, praised Mr. Hubbard’s testimony as “absolutely critical.” Some at the school wonder whether it served the institution’s interests for its leader to be publicly linked with people accused in one of the only Wall Street cases to stem from the great recession.
Asked whether he was concerned about connecting the school to matters like the Bear Stearns prosecution, Mr. Hubbard wrote, “I am comfortable that I balance my scholarship and teaching, deanship, and outside activities very well.”
That balance has included work for many corporations that have generated unflattering headlines in recent years. On his résumé, in the category of “consulting or advisory relationships,” Mr. Hubbard lists Freddie Mac, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs. He was co-author of a paper with William C. Dudley, then the chief economist of Goldman Sachs, titled “How Capital Markets Enhance Economic Performance and Facilitate Job Creation,” which praised derivatives and the housing boom in 2004, as both were inflating into an epic bubble.
“Credit derivative obligations have become an important element that has helped protect bank lending portfolios against loss,” he and Mr. Dudley wrote.
The mutual fund industry has been a major source of income for Mr. Hubbard, and through that work he has taken a solidly pro-industry stand on a much-debated and much-litigated question: Do mutual fund advisers gouge clients by charging excessive fees? No, Mr. Hubbard argued in a paper he wrote with John C. Coates IV of Harvard Law School, titled  “Competition in the Mutual Fund Industry.”
In the paper, the authors argued that it was essentially impossible for mutual fund advisers to overcharge on fees because the mutual fund business was so competitive. As the authors wrote, “fund investors may fire advisers at any time by redeeming shares and switching to other investments.”
Unlike Mr. Hubbard, who was paid that $150,000 honorarium for the paper, Professor Coates said in an interview that he had not taken any money from the Investment Company Institute and that as a matter of personal policy did not accept money in such circumstances for academic work.
Mr. Hubbard earned much more making the same pro-industry point in several court appearances, as an expert witness on behalf of corporations and mutual fund interests. One of those cases was a lawsuit by employees of ABB, a power generation products manufacturer, against the company and Fidelity, the mutual fund giant, over accusations that ABB paid excessive fees, at the employees’ expense, to manage the company’s 401(k) plan.
During a cross-examination, Mr. Hubbard said Fidelity had paid him $420,000 for his participation in the case. About $200,000 of that was direct billings — he charged $1,200 an hour — and the rest came from a company called the Analysis Group, which provides teams of experts for research projects. Mr. Hubbard earned 7.5 percent of the amount that Analysis Group researchers charged Fidelity.
A federal judge in Missouri ultimately found that ABB and Fidelity had breached a number of their fiduciary duties and in March of this year ordered ABB to pay $35.2 million and Fidelity to pay $1.7 million for losses.
But Professor Freeman at the University of South Carolina says he believes that Mr. Hubbard’s scholarship on this subject — particularly the paper he co-wrote — was shoddy and did genuine damage.
“What Hubbard and Coates have done is pour holy water on the Investment Company Institute’s hopelessly stupid defense of fees charged by mutual funds,” he said in a telephone interview. That Mr. Hubbard took money for the paper casts doubts on his motives, Professor Freeman says.
Mr. Hubbard wrote that he did not worry that the money might appear to influence his findings.
“Any work of scholarship rises or falls on its ideas, empirical support, and argument,” he wrote. “Readers can then make whatever judgment they wish.”
IF Mr. Hubbard becomes the Treasury secretary, the job will surely mean a drastic cut in pay. What it would mean for the rest of the country is not easy to divine; the Romney campaign has been vague on many details, particularly how it would offset a 20 percent across-the-board tax cut without adding to the deficit.
But you can get a pretty good sense from looking at the economic priorities of the George W. Bush administration, says Martin N. Baily, who served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Bill Clinton and is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Mr. Baily was a critic of the Bush tax cuts because, he says, they left the country without the wherewithal to battle the great recession.
“When I read the Romney economic plan,” he wrote in an e-mail, “it seemed to me that it was basically the Bush plan.”
There are plenty of centrist and right-of-center economists who think that Mr. Hubbard would make a fine Treasury secretary. They are impressed by his intellect, trust his instincts and commend his leadership during previous stints in Washington.
Some right-leaning economists, though, have reservations. Their worry is that Mr. Hubbard is not enough of a deficit hawk, and that if he follows through with tax cuts as articulated in the Romney plan, the results could be a disaster.
“Cutting taxes in 2001 wasn’t a crime,” says Luigi Zingales, an economist at the University of Chicago, who was one of the co-authors of an op-ed article with Mr. Hubbard. “Not fixing the deficit today is. If you think he’s a guy who’ll go ahead and play the same strategy, which I have to say most people do, then we’ll ultimately wind up with an even bigger deficit. I trust he’s smart enough not to play the same strategy.”
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/14/business/glenn-hubbard-is-romneys-go-to-economist.html
LOAD-DATE: October 25, 2012
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: R. Glenn Hubbard, the dean of the Columbia Business School and adviser to Mitt Romney, has been straddling the sometimes shaky line between academia and politics. (PHOTOGRAPH BY LUCAS JACKSON/REUTERS)
Mr. Hubbard appeared briefly in the 2010 documentary “
Inside Job,”
a scathing look at the financial crisis. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY SONY PICTURES CLASSICS) (BU4)
In Apopka, Fla., where Mr. Hubbard grew up, Mitt Romney cast a shadow on a banner as he spoke during a recent campaign rally. Mr. Hubbard has said President Obama’
s policies have left the nation in a slow-growth trap. (PHOTOGRAPH BY JEWEL SAMAD/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE -- GETTY IMAGES)(BU5) DRAWING (DRAWING BY MINH UONG/THE NEW YORK TIMES)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company
478 of 2097 DOCUMENTS
Washingtonpost.com
October 14, 2012 Sunday 8:12 PM EST
Mittsterpiece Theatre Mittserpiece Theatre
BYLINE: Pat Myers
SECTION: Style; Pg. T20
LENGTH: 2195 words
Oscar the Grouch becomes the new hose of "Hoarders."
"News12Minutes With Jim Lehrer."
"Sesame Street" becomes a 20-minute segment of "The Honey Boo Boo Hour."
One thing Mitt Romney said during the debate that made even President Obama wake up for a minute was his vow to "stop the subsidy to PBS," even though "I love Big Bird." (You'd think he would have loved Big Bird's role in selling $47 million worth of products for the nonprofit Sesame Workshop, but we don't think that's what he meant.)
This week, in a contest suggested by Longtime Loser Larry Yungk: Suppose public-TV shows, past or present, were turned out onto the open market to make a living on commercial TV. Tell us what could happen, as in Larry's examples above.
Winner gets the Inkin' Memorial, the bobblehead that is the official Style Invitational trophy. Second place receives, for once from this contest, money. Two cash prizes, in fact: First, a seat cushion of clear plastic - the stiff kind your great-aunt used to cover her nice upholstery with so that no one would hurt the extra-soft and comfortable fabric - stuffed with genuine finely shredded U.S. currency; it's being regifted right back to the Invitational by Tom Witte, who won it in Week 164 (1996); I cannot guarantee, however, that it has ever actually cushioned the Hall of Fame Loser's rear end. And we'll throw in a genuine rubber $100 bill, donated by Dave Prevar. A budget-stretcher. Or a budget stretcher.
Other runners-upwin their choice of a yearned-for Loser Mug or the ardently desired Grossery Bag. Honorable mentions get a lusted-after Loser magnet. First Offenders receive a smelly, tree-shaped air "freshener" (FirStink for their first ink). E-mail entries to losers@washpost.com or fax to 202-334-4312. Deadline is Monday, Oct. 22; results published Nov. 11 (online Nov. 8). No more than 25 entries per entrant per week. Include "Week 992" in your e-mail subject line or it might be ignored as spam. Include your real name, postal address and phone number with your entry. See contest rules and guidelines at wapo.st/inviterules. The subhead for this week's honorable mentions is by Kevin Dopart. Join the lively Style Invitational Devotees group on Facebook at on.fb.me/invdev.
Report from Week 988
in which we asked for ways to speed up or to add excitement to various sports and leisure activities. Lots of people suggested that NBA games begin in the last five minutes, since that's all that matters anyway. We said we'd be flexible about what constitutes a leisure activity: So: scratching, okay; even watching paint dry, okay. Doing one's taxes or talking to tech support, no.
The winner of the Inkin' Memorial
For speed and excitement:Dog racing: Turn the tables and have the greyhounds chased by genetically modified saber-toothed rabbits. (Martin Bancroft, Rochester, N.Y.)
2Winner of the three-sided dice plus the instructions on exploding animal carcasses:For speed and excitement: Baseball: Spike their steroids with amphetamines. (Dixon Wragg, Santa Rosa, Calif.)
3For excitement:Rock-Paper-Scissors: Use real rocks and scissors, but you still have to use your hand for paper. (Roy Ashley, Washington)
4 For speed:The Rubik's Square. (Jim Reagan, Herndon)
A bit gamy:honorable mentions
Require that batters' crotches be pre-scratched before they reach the plate. (Ralph Nitkin, Rockville, a First Offender)
For every false start or delay of game, an NFL team has to replace one of its linemen with a cheerleader. (Katherine Stikkers, Poughkeepsie, N.Y.)
Baseball: Pitchers who are replaced fall through a trapdoor under the mound. (David Genser, Poway, Calif.)
Lugers slide down the track on their backs as usual, but headfirst, guided only by three rear-mounted dental mirrors. (Stephen Dudzik, Olney)
Soccer: Keep adding balls until someone finally scores a goal.(Anne Clark, Rochester, N.Y.)
Binary sudoku. (Kevin Dopart, Washington)
Instead of using chess clocks in tournaments, have crowds of spectators count aloud,"One hippopotamus, two hippopotamus . . ." (Don Kirkpatrick, Waynesboro, Pa.)
Divide the football field in half lengthwise, and play both halves at once - with the offense on one team playing the defense of the other. Better sideline views, and more time for tailgating. (Owen Hammett, Lorton, a First Offender)
A golfer has one minute to make a shot before the sprinklers come on. (Dan Steinbrocker, Los Angeles)
Bowling alleys should have ball-return cannons. (Michael Burch, Nashville, a First Offender; Rob Huffman, Fredericksburg, Va.)
The Game of REAL Life: Just hand all cash, stock certificates and properties to the banker.(Jeff Contompasis, Ashburn)
Call-and-response tennis: The audience divides into two groups to enthusiastically echo every grunt and squeal made by the players. (Amanda Yanovitch, Midlothian, Va.)
Hockey: Put the penalty box inside the goal. (David Genser)
Replace those boring X's and O's with real ticks, tacks and toes. (Laurie Tompkins, Rockville)
Institute 40-second clocks in stadium restrooms. When a stall's clock expires, someone in a striped uniform bangs on the door, pelts the user with yellow flags and blows his whistle until the person finishes. (Gregory Koch, Storrs, Conn.)
Water polo: Award points for removing an opponent's swimsuit. (Mike Gips, Bethesda)
Taking a cue from baseball: Golfers should be acknowledged with their own "putting songs" blared over loudspeakers as they prepare their shots. (David Ballard, Reston)
Pictionary: The Muhammad card. (Danny Bravman, Chicago)
Watching paint dry: First take away the "wet paint" sign . . . (David Genser)
To make opera go faster, give the fat lady the first aria. (Beverley Sharp, Montgomery, Ala.)
Speed up the men's 100-meter dash by renaming it "foreplay." (Dion Black, Washington)
Boxing: Between rounds, don't have those bikini-clad ring girls prance around degradingly with signs. Have them fight each other. (David Genser)
Still running - deadline Monday night - is Week 991, the contest for neologisms incorporating the letter block V-O-T-E (in any order). See bit.ly/inv991.
Oscar the Grouch becomes the new host of "Hoarders."
"News12Minutes With Jim Lehrer."
"Sesame Street" becomes a 20-minute segment of "The Honey Boo Boo Hour."
One thing Mitt Romney said during the debate that made even President Obama wake up for a minute was his vow to "stop the subsidy to PBS," even though "I love Big Bird." (You'd think he would have loved Big Bird's role in selling $47 million worth of products for the nonprofit Sesame Workshop, but we don't think that's what he meant.)
This week, in a contest suggested by Longtime Loser Larry Yungk: Suppose public-TV shows, past or present, were turned out onto the open market to make a living on commercial TV. Tell us what could happen, as in Larry's examples above. Winner gets the Inkin' Memorial, the bobblehead that is the official Style Invitational trophy. Second place receives, for once from this contest, money. Two cash prizes, in fact: First, a seat cushion of clear plastic - the stiff kind your great-aunt used to cover her nice upholstery with so that no one would hurt the extra-soft and comfortable fabric - stuffed with genuine finely shredded U.S. currency; it's being regifted right back to the Invitational by Tom Witte, who won it in Week 164 (1996); I cannot guarantee, however, that it has ever actually cushioned the Hall of Fame Loser's rear end. And we'll throw in a genuine rubber $100 bill, donated by Dave Prevar. A budget-stretcher. Or a budget stretcher.
Other runners-upwin their choice of a yearned-for Loser Mug or the ardently desired Grossery Bag. Honorable mentions get a lusted-after Loser magnet. First Offenders receive a smelly, tree-shaped air "freshener" (FirStink for their first ink). E-mail entries to losers@washpost.com or fax to 202-334-4312. Deadline is Monday, Oct. 22; results published Nov. 11 (online Nov. 8). No more than 25 entries per entrant per week. Include "Week 992" in your e-mail subject line or it might be ignored as spam. Include your real name, postal address and phone number with your entry. See contest rules and guidelines at wapo.st/inviterules. The subhead for this week's honorable mentions is by Kevin Dopart; the alternative headline in the "next week's results" line is by Tom Witte. Join the lively Style Invitational Devotees group on Facebook at on.fb.me/invdev.
Report from Week 988
in which we asked for ways to speed up or to add excitement to various sports and leisure activities. Lots of people suggested that NBA games begin in the last five minutes, since that's all that matters anyway. We said we'd be flexible about what constitutes a leisure activity: So: scratching, okay; even watching paint dry, okay. Doing one's taxes or talking to tech support, no.
The winner of the Inkin' Memorial
For speed and excitement:Dog racing: Turn the tables and have the greyhounds chased by genetically modified saber-toothed rabbits. (Martin Bancroft, Rochester, N.Y.)
2.Winner of the three-sided dice plus the instructions on exploding animal carcasses:For speed and excitement: Baseball: Spike their steroids with amphetamines. (Dixon Wragg, Santa Rosa, Calif.)
3.For excitement:Rock-Paper-Scissors: Use real rocks and scissors, but you still have to use your hand for paper. (Roy Ashley, Washington)
4.For speed:The Rubik's Square. (Jim Reagan, Herndon, Va.)
A bit gamy: honorable mentions
Require that batters' crotches be pre-scratched before they reach the plate. (Ralph Nitkin, Rockville, Md.)
For every false start or delay of game, an NFL team has to replace one of its linemen with a cheerleader. (Katherine Stikkers, Poughkeepsie, N.Y.)
Baseball: Pitchers who are replaced fall through a trapdoor under the mound. (David Genser, Poway, Calif.)
Lugers slide down the track on their backs as usual, but headfirst, guided only by three rear-mounted dental mirrors. (Stephen Dudzik, Olney, Md.)
Soccer: Keep adding balls until someone finally scores a goal.(Anne Clark, Rochester, N.Y.)
Binary sudoku. (Kevin Dopart, Washington)
Instead of using chess clocks in tournaments, have crowds of spectators count aloud "One hippopotamus, two hippopotamus . . ." (Don Kirkpatrick, Waynesboro, Pa.)
Divide the football field in half lengthwise, and play both halves at once - with the offense on one team playing the defense of the other. Better sideline views, and more time for tailgating. (Owen Hammett, Lorton, Va., a First Offender)
A golfer has one minute to make a shot before the sprinklers come on. (Dan Steinbrocker, Los Angeles)
Bowling alleys should have ball-return cannons. (Michael Burch, Nashville, a First Offender; Rob Huffman, Fredericksburg, Va.)
The Game of REAL Life: Just hand all cash, stock certificates and properties to the banker.(Jeff Contompasis, Ashburn, Va.)
Call-and-response tennis: The audience divides into two groups to enthusiastically echo every grunt and squeal made by the players. (Amanda Yanovitch, Midlothian, Va.)
Hockey: Put the penalty box inside the goal. (David Genser)
Replace those boring X's and O's with real ticks, tacks and toes. (Laurie Tompkins, Rockville, Md.)
Institute 40-second clocks in stadium restrooms. When a stall's clock expires, someone in a striped uniform bangs on the door, pelts the user with yellow flags and blows his whistle until the person finishes. (Gregory Koch, Storrs, Conn.)
Water polo: Award points for removing an opponent's swimsuit. (Mike Gips, Bethesda, Md.)
Taking a cue from baseball: Golfers should be acknowledged with their own "putting songs" blared over loudspeakers as they prepare their shots. (David Ballard, Reston, Va.)
Pictionary: The Muhammad card. (Danny Bravman, Chicago)
Watching paint dry: First take away the "wet paint" sign . . . (David Genser)
To make opera go faster, give the fat lady the first aria. (Beverley Sharp, Montgomery, Ala.)
Speed up the men's 100-meter dash by renaming it "foreplay." (Dion Black, Washington)
Boxing: Between rounds, don't have those bikini-clad ring girls prance around degradingly with those signs. Have them fight each other. (David Genser)
Still running - deadline Monday night - is Week 991, the contest for neologisms incorporating the letter block V-O-T-E (in any order). See bit.ly/inv991.
Visit the online discussion group The Style Conversational, in which the Empress discusses today's new contest and results along with news about the Loser Community - and you can vote for your favorite among the inking entries, since you no doubt figured the Empress chose the wrong winner. If you'd like an e-mail notification each week when the Invitational and Conversational are posted online, write to the Empress at losers@washpost.com (note that in the subject line) and she'll add you to the mailing list. And on Facebook, join the far more lively group Style Invitational Devotees and chime in.
Next week's results: On the double,orTwainful employment,the contest about having one person have two particular professions.
LOAD-DATE: October 14, 2012
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication
Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved
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Washingtonpost.com
October 14, 2012 Sunday 8:12 PM EST
2012 presidential election coverage at KidsPost 2012 presidential election coverage at KidsPost
SECTION: ; Pg. Y03
LENGTH: 440 words
1 KidsPost covers the campaign
Presidential elections take place every four years, so many of our readers may not remember the last one. KidsPost has planned special coverage to explain how elections work. For current and past stories as well as quizzes, you can go to kidspost.com.
1 September 30 - Debates: Explains the presidential debates and why they are important. If you can imagine taking a test where you could be asked science, math or history questions with 100 million people watching to see if you get it right, you have a sense of what a presidential debate is like. There is another presidential debate on Tuesday in New York.
1 Today - Campaign ads:If you watch TV in the Washington area, you've probably seen campaign ads for President Barack Obama and his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney. Like ads for cereal or toys that make you want to buy a product, the goal of these commercials is to get you to vote for - or against - a certain candidate. After telling you more about such ads, we'll encourage you to come up with your own campaign ads.
1 November 4 - Voting: On November 6, Americans will vote for president. Who can vote? Who does vote? Do all votes count equally? We'll get you ready for Election Day (November 6) with a map of the United States that you can color as you watch the results come in.
1 Where you can learn more
Here are some places to find great, kid-friendly information about elections and the presidency. Always ask a grown-up (parent or teacher) before going online.
1 For kids: Nickelodeon has a Web site with kids talking about the issues, the job of the president and biographies of the candidates. You can check it out at www.nick.com/shows/kids-pick-the-president. Nick will air a special on the presidential candidates as part of "Nick News with Linda Ellerbee" on Monday at 8 p.m. President Obama will answer questions submitted by kids. Mitt Romney said he was too busy to participate in the show.
The U.S. government has a kid-friendly site that includes a very cool, downloadable poster about how the president is chosen. It's at www.kids.gov.
1 For teachers: The Washington Post's Newspapers in Education Web site has many resources to use in the classroom. You can go to nie.washingtonpost.com and search such keywords as "election," "campaign," "debate" and "voting."
PBS offers teachers videos, lesson plans and games related to the election through its PBS Learning Media site, www.pbslearningmedia.org.
Your students can participate in a nationwide mock election. For details, go to www.nationalmockelection.org.
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October 14, 2012 Sunday 8:12 PM EST
In Ohio, Bill Clinton and Bruce Springsteen will lend a hand to Obama
BYLINE: David Nakamura
SECTION: A section; Pg. A11
LENGTH: 378 words
President Obama is calling on former president Bill Clinton and rocker Bruce Springsteen in an effort to inject new momentum into his campaign in the stretch run.
The Obama campaign announced that the heavyweight duo will headline a rally on behalf of the president in Parma, Ohio, on Thursday. The event, at which Clinton will deliver remarks, is free and open to the public, the campaign said in a statement. Obama will not attend.
Campaign manager Jim Messina said Springsteen echoes the values the president is fighting for and added that his appearances will help get-out-the-vote efforts in Ohio, a swing state whose 18 electoral college votes are considered crucial.
"We are thrilled with his ongoing support," Messina said in a statement.
The Obama campaign has been struggling to regain its footing since the president's listless debate performance against Republican nominee Mitt Romney in Denver on Oct. 3. Romney's poll numbers have risen in the wake of the matchup, and the president has been under increasing pressure from Democratic supporters to make a stronger case for his reelection in the next debate Tuesday at Hofstra University in New York.
Clinton delivered a memorable speech at the Democratic National Convention last month that many observers felt made a better argument on behalf of Obama's agenda and first-term record than the president has done. Since then, Clinton has toured several swing states on Obama's behalf.
Springsteen has been a supporter of Obama, endorsing him in April 2008 and playing at several rallies in Obama's first campaign. The president uses Springsteen's song "We Take Care of Our Own" in his 2012 campaign song playlist at rallies.
The president's campaign also released a new television advertisement Saturday narrated by actor Morgan Freeman that heralds Obama's accomplishments in his first term. Titled "Challenges," the ad highlights the president's response to the fiscal crisis in 2009, the end of the Iraq war and the killing of Osama bin Laden.
"Every president inherits challenges. Few have faced so many," Freeman says in the voiceover. But, he adds, "There are still challenges to meet, children to educate, a middle class to rebuild. But the last thing we should do is turn back now."
nakamurad@washpost.com
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October 14, 2012 Sunday 8:12 PM EST
Savvy vendors skirt campaign law
BYLINE: T.W. Farnam
SECTION: A section; Pg. A04
LENGTH: 1083 words
Mitt Romney's presidential campaign and American Crossroads, an allied interest group, are barred by federal law from working together on political advertising.
But it's perfectly legal for them to hire the same company to run Internet ads. That company uses some of the same employees to represent the two clients, and the same databases to store information on people it will target with ads.
By all accounts, Romney's campaign and the group spending millions of dollars on his behalf are not violating the law that prohibits campaigns and independent organizations from coordinating their efforts.
The law was meant to separate campaigns from outside groups with wealthy donors - the theory being that large political contributions could have a corrupting influence on candidates.
But it is a fuzzy line that separates the campaigns from groups such as Crossroads and the super PACs that have sprung up in the wake of a 2010 Supreme Court decision that allowed unrestricted corporate spending on campaigns. And the 2012 campaign, with its surge in spending from independent groups, offers many examples of how little the law actually prohibits when it comes to "coordination."
The major super PACs helping President Obama and Romney, for example, were formed by men who previously worked as aides to the candidates.
And at least 30 political consulting companies have been hired by both a campaign or party and an independent group, according to campaign disclosure reports. The consultants provide a range of services, from polling to legal advice to media consulting.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee shares 10 vendors with the major super PAC helping Democrats win House races, the House Majority PAC. The super PAC, for example, paid $31,000 to Ralston Lapp Media to produce television ads, while the DCCC paid $173,000 for the same purpose. Nine Democratic congressional candidates also hired the company.
Contributions to candidates are capped at $2,500 for each election, but for many types of interest groups, there are no restrictions on donations. In order to prevent the groups from becoming de facto extensions of the campaigns, they are prohibited from spending money at the request of candidates or using inside knowledge of their strategies or wishes. But hiring a firm that works for both sides is legal as long as information is not shared.
Advocates for tighter restrictions on political money say the weakness of the law has allowed interest groups to essentially become another arm of the campaigns.
"The real scandal in 2012 is what's legal," said Paul S. Ryan, a lawyer with the Campaign Legal Center, which supports tightening campaign finance laws. "Certainly the law does not prevent coordination in the way that word is generally understood by the public."
Over the past decade, more than 30 complaints of alleged coordination in federal races have been brought to the Federal Election Commission. But the complaints rarely prompt investigations because of the difficulty of collecting private communications that might prove coordination.
The high-tech realm of online ad targeting offers a new example of how tightly integrated campaigns and interest groups can become.
Romney's campaign has bought $21 million in online advertising through an Alexandria-based ad agency called Targeted Victory, the same firm hired by American Crossroads to run $1 million in ads. The company spends most of that money buying space on the Web through ad networks.
The company also works for the Republican Party, prominent Republican House and Senate candidates, and interest groups active in congressional races, including the American Action Network, Americans for Prosperity and Crossroads GPS, which is affiliated with American Crossroads.
Targeted Victory uses Internet video ads to persuade people to oppose Obama and vote for Romney. It also uses a stockpile of data it has collected on Web users to reach them with ads for both Romney and Crossroads.
Separately, Targeted Victory keeps a record of those who have visited the Romney campaign Web site or the Crossroads site, and stores that information in the same location.
Romney campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul said the campaign's vendors "understand the law and follow it."
Targeted Victory's chief executive, Michael Beach, said in an e-mailed statement that the company has separate teams of strategists for the two clients, crafting ad messages and finding potential voters online. Those teams work on opposite sides of a "firewall" described in FEC regulations, he said.
"Targeted Victory takes its compliance responsibilities seriously and continually reviews its operations to ensure compliance with the FEC rules," Beach wrote.
He said the rules allow some employees to work for both Romney and Crossroads, including "personnel who merely forward the Internet ad buys to placement firms."
FEC regulations specifically point to those working on "the selection or purchasing of advertising slots" as employees with the potential to share inside information that could be used for coordination.
A look at the same custom-built software running on the Romney and Crossroads Web sites shows the tight links between the organizations. When people visit the Romney or Crossroads site, their browsers download software written by Targeted Victory.
The code creates a trigger so that when users press a "donate" button, for example, their browsers report that information, which is kept in a database that commingles Romney and Crossroads users.
When users move on to a site with ads, that starts another chain reaction of code, transmitting the Romney and Crossroads information to ad networks, which may then display Romney or Crossroads ads.
Storing data together and using the same employees to represent Romney and Crossroads is not coordination under the law. To break the rule, an interest group would have to use inside information on the candidate's needs or wishes to shape its own ad campaign.
Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster who works for prominent liberal super PACs, said he uses a password-protected computer system to keep sensitive materials from his colleagues who might work directly for candidates or the official party committees. He praised the value of the rules as one of the only defenses keeping the work of candidates and well-funded interest groups separate.
"It seems we have a Swiss-cheese system here," Garin said. "No offense to Swiss cheese."
farnamt@washpost.com
Dan Eggen contributed to this report.
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October 14, 2012 Sunday 8:12 PM EST
When it comes to sequestration and defense cuts, there is plenty of blame to go around
BYLINE: Glenn Kessler
SECTION: A section; Pg. A05
LENGTH: 932 words
"$500 Billion In Cuts . . . $500 Billion In Proposed Cuts. Fewer Troops. Fewer Planes. Fewer Ships. 136,000 Fewer Jobs In Virginia."
- messages in a new Romney campaign Web video
Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney has repeatedly hammered President Obama for cutting military spending - in the first presidential debate, in a new Web video and in mailers sent to residents in vote-rich Virginia. "Over 130,000 Virginia jobs and America's national security are on the line," the glossy pamphlet says. "Barack Obama's agenda ignores Virginia's families and security."
The mailer even quotes Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta as decrying the impact of the cuts. That's actually a clue that something more complex is going on here - why would Panetta be complaining about his boss's policies?
This is a classic Washington food fight. But any fair reading of the facts would show the blame game is much more complex than Romney's rhetoric. Indeed, as the moderator of the vice-presidential debate, ABC's Martha Raddatz, noted when Romney running mate Paul Ryan raised them: "Let's put the automatic defense cuts aside, okay? No one wants that."
So, what's really going on here?
The Facts
In 2011, Democrats and Republicans had a bitter showdown on whether to raise the ceiling on the national debt. The impasse ended with bipartisan passage of the Budget Control Act of 2011, which cut spending by nearly $1 trillion over 10 years by setting new budget caps for security and nonsecurity discretionary spending.
Security spending included not just the Defense Department but also Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs, foreign aid, intelligence and other areas. The goal was to allow some flexibility to avoid being locked into a specific number for defense spending.
The law also tasked a "supercommittee" with finding ways to reduce the deficit by an additional $1.2 trillion over 10 years. If the committee failed - which it did - then automatic cuts totaling $1.2 trillion also would be ordered in security and nonsecurity spending. This process is known as "sequestration."
Ryan was one of the many Republican members of Congress who voted for the agreement. In fact, he was one of its biggest cheerleaders.
"The Budget Control Act represents a victory for those committed to controlling government spending and growing our economy," he said in a statement issued after the measure passed.
Romney, for his part, blasted the deal as soon as it was made, saying it "opens the door to higher taxes and puts defense cuts on the table." Romney has also since said that Republican leaders made a mistake in agreeing to this deal.
So why blame Obama for the defense cuts? The Romney campaign points to passages in Bob Woodward's new book, "The Price of Politics," and Glenn Thrush's e-book, "Obama's Last Stand," as showing that Obama was the first to come up with the idea of putting defense cuts on the table. The accounts show that Obama wanted to have leverage to force the Republicans to accept tax hikes for the wealthy.
In other words, it was part of a negotiation. The two sides were haggling over an enforcement trigger that would cause pain on both sides. As The Washington Post previously reported, the Obama administration originally wanted the trigger to hinge on repeal of George W. Bush tax cuts on the wealthy. Republicans responded by saying the trigger should be balanced by repeal of the individual mandate in Obama's health-care law.
Ultimately, that was too much for both sides, so they settled on security spending (pain for Republicans) balanced by nonsecurity spending (pain for Democrats). The inside accounts of sausage-making are interesting, but not surprising. Ultimately, the final deal was good enough for top Republicans, including Romney's running mate.
Since then, both sides have played political games over the defense cuts.
Earlier this year, Ryan crafted a bill that would have halted the automatic cuts in defense spending for one year while cutting in other areas. It passed the House in May on a party-line vote, with not a single Democrat voting for it.
The Democratic-controlled Senate did not accept the bill - and has not done much else, either, to deal with the problem. Democrats have proposed ending Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy as a way to meet the deficit targets in the Budget Control Act, although no vote has ever been taken on a sequestration replacement plan.
The Romney ad and pamphlet cite a study by Stephen S. Fuller of George Mason University as showing how "Obama's cuts" would kill more than 130,000 jobs in Virginia. But the study never mentions Obama, and Fuller says both sides are responsible for the scenario he envisages.
"The cuts that I have calculated are a result of sequestration, the Budget Control Act of 2011," Fuller said in an e-mail. "These were in effect approved by all of the Congressmen and Senators voting for the Act and the president as he signed it. There is lots of blame to go around since the Republicans have their fingerprints on this Act, too."
The Pinocchio Test
Romney may have always opposed this deal, but it is wrong to lay all of the blame on Obama for the defense cuts in the sequester; the Budget Control Act was a bipartisan deal designed to spread the pain around.
Republicans may now be experiencing buyer's remorse, but that's no excuse for claiming that these are all Obama's defense cuts - especially since the study cited in the ad makes no such claim.
kesslerg@washpost.com
To read previous Fact Checker columns, go to washingtonpost.com/factchecker.
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Monday
}Congress in recess all week
}Federal Depository Library Program opens its four-day conference; DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel
}The Woodrow Wilson Center hosts a discussion on the national broadband map
}Retail sales report
}Business inventories report
}Charles Schwab, Citigroup, Gannett earnings reports
Tuesday
}McDermott Will & Emery hosts discussion about the role of the law firm's in D.C.'s economic future
}The Center for Capital Markets Competitiveness holds talk on money market mutual fund reform
}Second presidential debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney
}Consumer price index
}Industrial production report
}Housing market index
}Coca-Cola, Domino's Pizza, GameTech, Goldman Sachs, IBM, Intel, Johnson & Johnson, Mattel, PNC Financial, UnitedHealth earnings reports
Wednesday
}Housing starts report
}American Express, Bank of New York Mellon, Bank of America, BlackRock, eBay, Halliburton, M&T Bank; Media General, PepsiCo, Piper Jaffray, Quest Diagnostic, Sallie Mae, Stanley Black & Decker, US Bancorp earnings report
Thursday
}Philadelphia Fed survey of business outlook
}Blackstone, Capital One, Chipotle, Danaher, ETrade, Google, Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, Southwest Air, Supervalu, Travelers, Verizon earnings report
Friday
}Existing home sales report
}General Electric, Honeywell, Kinder Morgan, McDonald's, Orbit, Schlumberger, Wynn Resorts earnings report
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October 14, 2012 Sunday 8:12 PM EST
S e l l i ng t he p resi d e nt
BYLINE: Paul Farhi
SECTION: ; Pg. Y01
LENGTH: 580 words
Maybe you've seen commercials on TV for one of the presidential candidates. President Barack Obama is running for reelection, and he and his opponent, Mitt Romney, are spending lots of money to broadcast commercials to voters. They hope that the ads will convince people to vote for them on Election Day, just as a toy company or cereal maker hopes you'll buy its product after watching their ads.
In fact, political ads are a lot like other TV commercials. But there are a few differences. For one thing, many of the political ads are negative. That is, they tell you something bad about the other candidate rather than saying something positive about the candidate who placed the ad. It's as if a toy company had an ad telling you not to buy another company's toy because it breaks.
Are these ads fair?
Some people think it's wrong to advertise this way, especially if an ad says something mean or even untrue about a competitor. But candidates can say almost anything they want in ads, even if they stretch the truth or exaggerate.
Candidates have been saying negative things about each other for a very long time. One famous commercial put on by President Lyndon Johnson in 1964 suggested that if his opponent became president, he might start a war that would destroy the world!
This year, there are more campaign ads on TV than ever before. President Obama, the Democratic nominee, and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, the Republican, have raised millions of dollars from their supporters to pay for their ad campaigns. But they're not the only ones advertising. The Republican Party is buying ads to help Romney, while the Democratic Party is helping Obama. A few other groups have formed just to run ads for or against a candidate.
A new ad that is getting a lot of attention is all about Big Bird and "Sesame Street." During the first debate, Romney said he would cut government funding for educational shows including "Sesame Street." The Obama campaign quickly made an ad making fun of Romney's statement, saying that a president should worry about issues bigger than Big Bird.
Some people feel too much money is being spent to run too many ads. But others say everyone has the right to advertise as much as they want.
What's a 'swing' state?
One of the interesting things about all these ads is that many voters won't ever see them. Almost all of the commercials are airing in about eight states, not the whole country. The states with lots of advertising are known as "swing" states because the race is so close in them that it could swing in either direction on November 6, Election Day. The candidates don't spend much money on commercials in states where they know they'll win or lose by a lot of votes.
One of the swing states this year is Virginia. That's why people who live in the Washington area have been seeing a lot of political commercials. The ads are aimed at voters who live in Northern Virginia. But people who live nearby also see them, because Washington's TV stations broadcast to Virginia, Maryland and Washington.
The candidates also advertise on radio, in newspapers and on the Internet. But TV gets most of the attention. This is because a lot of voters who still don't know for whom they will vote are watching TV and are likely to see the ads. Who knows? Maybe watching a few more commercials will help them make up their minds. That's what the candidates hope, anyway!
- Paul Farhi
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The Fix
October 14, 2012 Sunday 4:35 PM EST
Report: Feds investigating Jesse Jackson Jr.'s finances
BYLINE: Sean Sullivan
LENGTH: 664 words
Make sure to sign up to receive "Afternoon Fix" every day in your e-mail inbox by 5(ish) p.m.!
FIRST ON THE FIX:
* Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-Nev.) holds a slight, 42 percent to 39 percent lead over Sen. Dean Heller (R), according to a poll conducted for her Senate campaign by Mark Mellman. The survey of 600 likely voters was conducted Oct. 8-10.
EARLIER ON THE FIX:
What Google can tell us about Joe Biden, Paul Ryan and ourselves - in one graphic
Michele Bachmann raised $4.5 million in the third quarter
Why Senate debates matter - and our latest rankings!
Democrats' split-screen problem
Berman-Sherman debate turns nasty, in a House race that is already heated
Wonk|Fix: VP debate recap
The vice presidential debate, by the numbers
The Biden-Ryan debate, and the art of not losing
WHAT YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED:
* Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) is reportedly the subject of a federal investigation that focuses on "suspicious activity" involving the congressman's finances related to his House seat and the possibility of inappropriate expenditures. The probe was reportedly active in the weeks before Jackson took leave from the House in June to seek treatment for bipolar disorder.
* President Obama slams Mitt Romney over his personal taxes in a new TV ad featuring an exchange from a "60 Minutes" interview in which the Republican's 14 percent tax rate in 2011 comes up. "Lower tax rates for him than us. Is that the way to grow America?" asks the narrator of the Obama ad, which will air in Colorado, Iowa, North Carolina, Nevada, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin.
* Former congresswoman Heather Wilson (R) raised $2.2 million during the third quarter for her New Mexico Senate bid against Rep. Martin Heinrich (D). Wilson ended the period with about $1 million in the bank. Heinrich's campaign announced he raised nearly $2 million during the quarter and ended with about $1 million in the bank.
* A super PAC supporting former senator George Allen's (R) Virginia Senate bid received $1 million worth of contributions from wealthy Texas homebuilder and prominent GOP donor Bob Perry.
WHAT YOU SHOULDN'T MISS:
* Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-Tenn.), the subject of a Wednesday report detailing pressure he applied on his former patient and mistress to get an abortion, says the woman was never pregnant. "I don't mind telling people that there was no pregnancy, and no abortion," DesJarlais said.
* The writer/director of the "Friday Night Lights" film and TV series isn't a fan of Romney's use of the phrase "Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose" (which is from FNL). Romney's been saying it on the stump, and now writer/director Peter Berg is accusing him of plagiarism. "The only relevant comparison that I see between your campaign and Friday Night Lights is in the character of Buddy Garrity - who turned his back on American car manufacturers selling imported cars from Japan," Berg wrote in a letter to the Romney campaign.
* Former surgeon general Richard Carmona (D) released a new TV ad in the Arizona Senate race Friday that pushes back against Rep. Jeff Flake's (R) commercial ad alleging that Carmona had issues with anger and working for a female boss. "Rich treats everyone with respect," Kathleen Brennan, Carmona's former SWAT team commander, says in the Democrat's ad.
* Rapper Chamillionaire appeared to appreciate the story ABC's Martha Raddatz told Thursday night about her cellphone going off during a White House press briefing with the ringtone "Riding Dirty," thanks to her son. He tweeted: "Can't lie. That just made my night. Appreciate it. @MarthaRaddatz Keep it gangsta."
THE FIX MIX:
Happy snacking.
With Aaron Blake
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The Washington Post
October 14, 2012 Sunday
Every Edition
Mittserpiece Theatre
BYLINE: Pat Myers
SECTION: STYLE; Pg. T20
LENGTH: 2160 words
Oscar the Grouch becomes the new hose of "Hoarders."
"News12Minutes With Jim Lehrer."
"Sesame Street" becomes a 20-minute segment of "The Honey Boo Boo Hour."
One thing Mitt Romney said during the debate that made even President Obama wake up for a minute was his vow to "stop the subsidy to PBS," even though "I love Big Bird." (You'd think he would have loved Big Bird's role in selling $47 million worth of products for the nonprofit Sesame Workshop, but we don't think that's what he meant.)
This week, in a contest suggested by Longtime Loser Larry Yungk: Suppose public-TV shows, past or present, were turned out onto the open market to make a living on commercial TV. Tell us what could happen, as in Larry's examples above.
Winner gets the Inkin' Memorial, the bobblehead that is the official Style Invitational trophy. Second place receives, for once from this contest, money. Two cash prizes, in fact: First, a seat cushion of clear plastic - the stiff kind your great-aunt used to cover her nice upholstery with so that no one would hurt the extra-soft and comfortable fabric - stuffed with genuine finely shredded U.S. currency; it's being regifted right back to the Invitational by Tom Witte, who won it in Week 164 (1996); I cannot guarantee, however, that it has ever actually cushioned the Hall of Fame Loser's rear end. And we'll throw in a genuine rubber $100 bill, donated by Dave Prevar. A budget-stretcher. Or a budget stretcher.
Other runners-up win their choice of a yearned-for Loser Mug or the ardently desired Grossery Bag. Honorable mentions get a lusted-after Loser magnet. First Offenders receive a smelly, tree-shaped air "freshener" (FirStink for their first ink). E-mail entries to losers@washpost.com or fax to 202-334-4312. Deadline is Monday, Oct.â[#x20ac][#x201a]22; results published Nov. 11 (online Nov. 8). No more than 25 entries per entrant per week. Include "Week 992" in your e-mail subject line or it might be ignored as spam. Include your real name, postal address and phone number with your entry. See contest rules and guidelines at wapo.st/inviterules. The subhead for this week's honorable mentions is by Kevin Dopart. Join the lively Style Invitational Devotees group on Facebook at on.fb.me/invdev.
Report from Week 988
in which we asked for ways to speed up or to add excitement to various sports and leisure activities. Lots of people suggested that NBA games begin in the last five minutes, since that's all that matters anyway. We said we'd be flexible about what constitutes a leisure activity: So: scratching, okay; even watching paint dry, okay. Doing one's taxes or talking to tech support, no.
The winner of the Inkin' Memorial
For speed and excitement: Dog racing: Turn the tables and have the greyhounds chased by genetically modified saber-toothed rabbits. (Martin Bancroft, Rochester, N.Y.)
2 Winner of the three-sided dice plus the instructions on exploding animal carcasses: For speed and excitement: Baseball: Spike their steroids with amphetamines. (Dixon Wragg, Santa Rosa, Calif.)
3 For excitement: Rock-Paper-Scissors: Use real rocks and scissors, but you still have to use your hand for paper. (Roy Ashley, Washington)
4 For speed: The Rubik's Square. (Jim Reagan, Herndon)
A bit gamy:honorable mentions
Require that batters' crotches be pre-scratched before they reach the plate. (Ralph Nitkin, Rockville, a First Offender)
For every false start or delay of game, an NFL team has to replace one of its linemen with a cheerleader. (Katherine Stikkers, Poughkeepsie, N.Y.)
Baseball: Pitchers who are replaced fall through a trapdoor under the mound. (David Genser, Poway, Calif.)
Lugers slide down the track on their backs as usual, but headfirst, guided only by three rear-mounted dental mirrors. (Stephen Dudzik, Olney)
Soccer: Keep adding balls until someone finally scores a goal. (Anne Clark, Rochester, N.Y.)
Binary sudoku. (Kevin Dopart, Washington)
Instead of using chess clocks in tournaments, have crowds of spectators count aloud,"One hippopotamus, two hippopotamus . . ." (Don Kirkpatrick, Waynesboro, Pa.)
Divide the football field in half lengthwise, and play both halves at once - with the offense on one team playing the defense of the other. Better sideline views, and more time for tailgating. (Owen Hammett, Lorton, a First Offender)
A golfer has one minute to make a shot before the sprinklers come on. (Dan Steinbrocker, Los Angeles)
Bowling alleys should have ball-return cannons. (Michael Burch, Nashville, a First Offender; Rob Huffman, Fredericksburg, Va.)
The Game of REAL Life: Just hand all cash, stock certificates and properties to the banker. (Jeff Contompasis, Ashburn)
Call-and-response tennis: The audience divides into two groups to enthusiastically echo every grunt and squeal made by the players. (Amanda Yanovitch, Midlothian, Va.)
Hockey: Put the penalty box inside the goal. (David Genser)
Replace those boring X's and O's with real ticks, tacks and toes. (Laurie Tompkins, Rockville)
Institute 40-second clocks in stadium restrooms. When a stall's clock expires, someone in a striped uniform bangs on the door, pelts the user with yellow flags and blows his whistle until the person finishes. (Gregory Koch, Storrs, Conn.)
Water polo: Award points for removing an opponent's swimsuit. (Mike Gips, Bethesda)
Taking a cue from baseball: Golfers should be acknowledged with their own "putting songs" blared over loudspeakers as they prepare their shots. (David Ballard, Reston)
Pictionary: The Muhammad card. (Danny Bravman, Chicago)
Watching paint dry: First take away the "wet paint" sign . . .(David Genser)
To make opera go faster, give the fat lady the first aria. (Beverley Sharp, Montgomery, Ala.)
Speed up the men's 100-meter dash by renaming it "foreplay." (Dion Black, Washington)
Boxing: Between rounds, don't have those bikini-clad ring girls prance around degradingly with signs. Have them fight each other. (David Genser)
Still running - deadline Monday night - is Week 991, the contest for neologisms incorporating the letter block V-O-T-E (in any order). See bit.ly/inv991.
Oscar the Grouch becomes the new host of "Hoarders."
"News12Minutes With Jim Lehrer."
"Sesame Street" becomes a 20-minute segment of "The Honey Boo Boo Hour."
One thing Mitt Romney said during the debate that made even President Obama wake up for a minute was his vow to "stop the subsidy to PBS," even though "I love Big Bird." (You'd think he would have loved Big Bird's role in selling $47 million worth of products for the nonprofit Sesame Workshop, but we don't think that's what he meant.)
This week, in a contest suggested by Longtime Loser Larry Yungk: Suppose public-TV shows, past or present, were turned out onto the open market to make a living on commercial TV. Tell us what could happen, as in Larry's examples above. Winner gets the Inkin' Memorial, the bobblehead that is the official Style Invitational trophy. Second place receives, for once from this contest, money. Two cash prizes, in fact: First, a seat cushion of clear plastic - the stiff kind your great-aunt used to cover her nice upholstery with so that no one would hurt the extra-soft and comfortable fabric - stuffed with genuine finely shredded U.S. currency; it's being regifted right back to the Invitational by Tom Witte, who won it in Week 164 (1996); I cannot guarantee, however, that it has ever actually cushioned the Hall of Fame Loser's rear end. And we'll throw in a genuine rubber $100 bill, donated by Dave Prevar. A budget-stretcher. Or a budget stretcher.
Other runners-up win their choice of a yearned-for Loser Mug or the ardently desired Grossery Bag. Honorable mentions get a lusted-after Loser magnet. First Offenders receive a smelly, tree-shaped air "freshener" (FirStink for their first ink). E-mail entries to losers@washpost.com or fax to 202-334-4312. Deadline is Monday, Oct.â[#x20ac][#x201a]22; results published Nov. 11 (online Nov. 8). No more than 25 entries per entrant per week. Include "Week 992" in your e-mail subject line or it might be ignored as spam. Include your real name, postal address and phone number with your entry. See contest rules and guidelines at wapo.st/inviterules. The subhead for this week's honorable mentions is by Kevin Dopart; the alternative headline in the "next week's results" line is by Tom Witte. Join the lively Style Invitational Devotees group on Facebook at on.fb.me/invdev.
Report from Week 988
in which we asked for ways to speed up or to add excitement to various sports and leisure activities. Lots of people suggested that NBA games begin in the last five minutes, since that's all that matters anyway. We said we'd be flexible about what constitutes a leisure activity: So: scratching, okay; even watching paint dry, okay. Doing one's taxes or talking to tech support, no.
The winner of the Inkin' Memorial
For speed and excitement: Dog racing: Turn the tables and have the greyhounds chased by genetically modified saber-toothed rabbits. (Martin Bancroft, Rochester, N.Y.)
2. Winner of the three-sided dice plus the instructions on exploding animal carcasses: For speed and excitement: Baseball: Spike their steroids with amphetamines. (Dixon Wragg, Santa Rosa, Calif.)
3. For excitement: Rock-Paper-Scissors: Use real rocks and scissors, but you still have to use your hand for paper. (Roy Ashley, Washington)
4.For speed: The Rubik's Square. (Jim Reagan, Herndon, Va.)
A bit gamy: honorable mentions
Require that batters' crotches be pre-scratched before they reach the plate. (Ralph Nitkin, Rockville, Md.)
For every false start or delay of game, an NFL team has to replace one of its linemen with a cheerleader. (Katherine Stikkers, Poughkeepsie, N.Y.)
Baseball: Pitchers who are replaced fall through a trapdoor under the mound. (David Genser, Poway, Calif.)
Lugers slide down the track on their backs as usual, but headfirst, guided only by three rear-mounted dental mirrors. (Stephen Dudzik, Olney, Md.)
Soccer: Keep adding balls until someone finally scores a goal. (Anne Clark, Rochester, N.Y.)
Binary sudoku. (Kevin Dopart, Washington)
Instead of using chess clocks in tournaments, have crowds of spectators count aloud "One hippopotamus, two hippopotamus . . ." (Don Kirkpatrick, Waynesboro, Pa.)
Divide the football field in half lengthwise, and play both halves at once - with the offense on one team playing the defense of the other. Better sideline views, and more time for tailgating. (Owen Hammett, Lorton, Va., a First Offender)
A golfer has one minute to make a shot before the sprinklers come on. (Dan Steinbrocker, Los Angeles)
Bowling alleys should have ball-return cannons. (Michael Burch, Nashville, a First Offender; Rob Huffman, Fredericksburg, Va.)
The Game of REAL Life: Just hand all cash, stock certificates and properties to the banker. (Jeff Contompasis, Ashburn, Va.)
Call-and-response tennis: The audience divides into two groups to enthusiastically echo every grunt and squeal made by the players. (Amanda Yanovitch, Midlothian, Va.)
Hockey: Put the penalty box inside the goal. (David Genser)
Replace those boring X's and O's with real ticks, tacks and toes. (Laurie Tompkins, Rockville, Md.)
Institute 40-second clocks in stadium restrooms. When a stall's clock expires, someone in a striped uniform bangs on the door, pelts the user with yellow flags and blows his whistle until the person finishes. (Gregory Koch, Storrs, Conn.)
Water polo: Award points for removing an opponent's swimsuit. (Mike Gips, Bethesda, Md.)
Taking a cue from baseball: Golfers should be acknowledged with their own "putting songs" blared over loudspeakers as they prepare their shots. (David Ballard, Reston, Va.)
Pictionary: The Muhammad card. (Danny Bravman, Chicago)
Watching paint dry: First take away the "wet paint" sign . . . (David Genser)
To make opera go faster, give the fat lady the first aria. (Beverley Sharp, Montgomery, Ala.)
Speed up the men's 100-meter dash by renaming it "foreplay." (Dion Black, Washington)
Boxing: Between rounds, don't have those bikini-clad ring girls prance around degradingly with those signs. Have them fight each other. (David Genser)
Still running - deadline Monday night - is Week 991, the contest for neologisms incorporating the letter block V-O-T-E (in any order). See bit.ly/inv991.
Visit the online discussion group The Style Conversational, in which the Empress discusses today's new contest and results along with news about the Loser Community - and you can vote for your favorite among the inking entries, since you no doubt figured the Empress chose the wrong winner. If you'd like an e-mail notification each week when the Invitational and Conversational are posted online, write to the Empress at losers@washpost.com (note that in the subject line) and she'll add you to the mailing list. And on Facebook, join the far more lively group Style Invitational Devotees and chime in.
Next week's results: On the double,or Twainful employment, the contest about having one person have two particular professions.
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October 14, 2012 Sunday
Every Edition
Why isn't Big Bird on a major network?
BYLINE: Brian Palmer
SECTION: STYLE; Pg. T08
LENGTH: 437 words
Big Bird has emerged as the surprise star of the 2012 campaign. Mitt Romney says he likes Big Bird but wants to cut federal funding to PBS, while the big yellow bird has appeared in an ad made by President Obama's campaign. Why is "Sesame Street" on public television, anyway?
Because the networks turned it down. In 1967, a couple of years before the first episode aired on PBS, one of the co-founders of the Children's Television Workshop (now Sesame Workshop) pitched the concept to NBC and CBS. They both passed, as did Time-Life Broadcasting and Westinghouse.
The problem wasn't that the show was for children: "Captain Kangaroo" had been a modest success on CBS for 12 years, and the networks had offered periodic programming for preschoolers. But the Workshop was a somewhat revolutionary idea in 1967. It had a strongly academic bent, drawing together child psychiatrists and child-development researchers from the ivory tower in a way that suggested profit wasn't their motivation.
Its executives also refused to allow commercials to interrupt the program, although they were open to ads at the beginning and end. The Children's Television Workshop leadership also insisted that the show focus on disadvantaged urban kids, rejecting calls from television producers that they broaden the target demographic to all preschool children.
PBS desperately needed a winner in the late 1960s and was willing to take a chance. Some PBS programming was so poor that the New York Times television critic noted, "Congressmen could scarcely be blamed for wondering if a huge permanent investment in noncommercial video is warranted." "Sesame Street" was exactly the kind of innovative show that could change the narrative about public broadcasting.
It's an odd quirk of history that Bert and Ernie's first-ever television appearance came not on PBS but in a preview on NBC. And commercialism was the first thing viewers saw: A Muppet noted that Xerox had sponsored the preview, in a move that infuriated some "Sesame Street" executives.
"Sesame Street" has always had an uncomfortable relationship with money. After the show became a smash success, producers worried that the foundations that paid to get the show off the ground would expect it to sustain itself. Some executives adamantly opposed any attempt at merchandising. Even Jim Henson, who was already making money merchandising his comedic Muppets, opposed doing the same with the more educational "Sesame Street" characters.
But eventually, the prospect of becoming self-financing convinced most of the creators that Oscar the Grouch dolls wouldn't tarnish the program.
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The Washington Post
October 14, 2012 Sunday
Suburban Edition
In Ohio, Bill Clinton and Bruce Springsteen will lend a hand to Obama
BYLINE: David Nakamura
SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A11
LENGTH: 378 words
President Obama is calling on former president Bill Clinton and rocker Bruce Springsteen in an effort to inject new momentum into his campaign in the stretch run.
The Obama campaign announced that the heavyweight duo will headline a rally on behalf of the president in Parma, Ohio, on Thursday. The event, at which Clinton will deliver remarks, is free and open to the public, the campaign said in a statement. Obama will not attend.
Campaign manager Jim Messina said Springsteen echoes the values the president is fighting for and added that his appearances will help get-out-the-vote efforts in Ohio, a swing state whose 18 electoral college votes are considered crucial.
"We are thrilled with his ongoing support," Messina said in a statement.
The Obama campaign has been struggling to regain its footing since the president's listless debate performance against Republican nominee Mitt Romney in Denver on Oct. 3. Romney's poll numbers have risen in the wake of the matchup, and the president has been under increasing pressure from Democratic supporters to make a stronger case for his reelection in the next debate Tuesday at Hofstra University in New York.
Clinton delivered a memorable speech at the Democratic National Convention last month that many observers felt made a better argument on behalf of Obama's agenda and first-term record than the president has done. Since then, Clinton has toured several swing states on Obama's behalf.
Springsteen has been a supporter of Obama, endorsing him in April 2008 and playing at several rallies in Obama's first campaign. The president uses Springsteen's song "We Take Care of Our Own" in his 2012 campaign song playlist at rallies.
The president's campaign also released a new television advertisement Saturday narrated by actor Morgan Freeman that heralds Obama's accomplishments in his first term. Titled "Challenges," the ad highlights the president's response to the fiscal crisis in 2009, the end of the Iraq war and the killing of Osama bin Laden.
"Every president inherits challenges. Few have faced so many," Freeman says in the voiceover. But, he adds, "There are still challenges to meet, children to educate, a middle class to rebuild. But the last thing we should do is turn back now."
nakamurad@washpost.com
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The Washington Post
October 14, 2012 Sunday
Suburban Edition
Savvy vendors skirt campaign law
BYLINE: T.W. Farnam
SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A04
LENGTH: 1083 words
Mitt Romney's presidential campaign and American Crossroads, an allied interest group, are barred by federal law from working together on political advertising.
But it's perfectly legal for them to hire the same company to run Internet ads. That company uses some of the same employees to represent the two clients, and the same databases to store information on people it will target with ads.
By all accounts, Romney's campaign and the group spending millions of dollars on his behalf are not violating the law that prohibits campaigns and independent organizations from coordinating their efforts.
The law was meant to separate campaigns from outside groups with wealthy donors - the theory being that large political contributions could have a corrupting influence on candidates.
But it is a fuzzy line that separates the campaigns from groups such as Crossroads and the super PACs that have sprung up in the wake of a 2010 Supreme Court decision that allowed unrestricted corporate spending on campaigns. And the 2012 campaign, with its surge in spending from independent groups, offers many examples of how little the law actually prohibits when it comes to "coordination."
The major super PACs helping President Obama and Romney, for example, were formed by men who previously worked as aides to the candidates.
And at least 30 political consulting companies have been hired by both a campaign or party and an independent group, according to campaign disclosure reports. The consultants provide a range of services, from polling to legal advice to media consulting.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee shares 10 vendors with the major super PAC helping Democrats win House races, the House Majority PAC. The super PAC, for example, paid $31,000 to Ralston Lapp Media to produce television ads, while the DCCC paid $173,000 for the same purpose. Nine Democratic congressional candidates also hired the company.
Contributions to candidates are capped at $2,500 for each election, but for many types of interest groups, there are no restrictions on donations. In order to prevent the groups from becoming de facto extensions of the campaigns, they are prohibited from spending money at the request of candidates or using inside knowledge of their strategies or wishes. But hiring a firm that works for both sides is legal as long as information is not shared.
Advocates for tighter restrictions on political money say the weakness of the law has allowed interest groups to essentially become another arm of the campaigns.
"The real scandal in 2012 is what's legal," said Paul S. Ryan, a lawyer with the Campaign Legal Center, which supports tightening campaign finance laws. "Certainly the law does not prevent coordination in the way that word is generally understood by the public."
Over the past decade, more than 30 complaints of alleged coordination in federal races have been brought to the Federal Election Commission. But the complaints rarely prompt investigations because of the difficulty of collecting private communications that might prove coordination.
The high-tech realm of online ad targeting offers a new example of how tightly integrated campaigns and interest groups can become.
Romney's campaign has bought $21 million in online advertising through an Alexandria-based ad agency called Targeted Victory, the same firm hired by American Crossroads to run $1 million in ads. The company spends most of that money buying space on the Web through ad networks.
The company also works for the Republican Party, prominent Republican House and Senate candidates, and interest groups active in congressional races, including the American Action Network, Americans for Prosperity and Crossroads GPS, which is affiliated with American Crossroads.
Targeted Victory uses Internet video ads to persuade people to oppose Obama and vote for Romney. It also uses a stockpile of data it has collected on Web users to reach them with ads for both Romney and Crossroads.
Separately, Targeted Victory keeps a record of those who have visited the Romney campaign Web site or the Crossroads site, and stores that information in the same location.
Romney campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul said the campaign's vendors "understand the law and follow it."
Targeted Victory's chief executive, Michael Beach, said in an e-mailed statement that the company has separate teams of strategists for the two clients, crafting ad messages and finding potential voters online. Those teams work on opposite sides of a "firewall" described in FEC regulations, he said.
"Targeted Victory takes its compliance responsibilities seriously and continually reviews its operations to ensure compliance with the FEC rules," Beach wrote.
He said the rules allow some employees to work for both Romney and Crossroads, including "personnel who merely forward the Internet ad buys to placement firms."
FEC regulations specifically point to those working on "the selection or purchasing of advertising slots" as employees with the potential to share inside information that could be used for coordination.
A look at the same custom-built software running on the Romney and Crossroads Web sites shows the tight links between the organizations. When people visit the Romney or Crossroads site, their browsers download software written by Targeted Victory.
The code creates a trigger so that when users press a "donate" button, for example, their browsers report that information, which is kept in a database that commingles Romney and Crossroads users.
When users move on to a site with ads, that starts another chain reaction of code, transmitting the Romney and Crossroads information to ad networks, which may then display Romney or Crossroads ads.
Storing data together and using the same employees to represent Romney and Crossroads is not coordination under the law. To break the rule, an interest group would have to use inside information on the candidate's needs or wishes to shape its own ad campaign.
Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster who works for prominent liberal super PACs, said he uses a password-protected computer system to keep sensitive materials from his colleagues who might work directly for candidates or the official party committees. He praised the value of the rules as one of the only defenses keeping the work of candidates and well-funded interest groups separate.
"It seems we have a Swiss-cheese system here," Garin said. "No offense to Swiss cheese."
farnamt@washpost.com
Dan Eggen contributed to this report.
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October 14, 2012 Sunday
Suburban Edition
When it comes to sequestration and defense cuts, there is plenty of blame to go around
BYLINE: Glenn Kessler
SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A05
LENGTH: 924 words
"$500 Billion In Cuts . . . $500 Billion In Proposed Cuts. Fewer Troops. Fewer Planes. Fewer Ships. 136,000 Fewer Jobs In Virginia."
- messages in a new Romney campaign Web video
Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney has repeatedly hammered President Obama for cutting military spending - in the first presidential debate, in a new Web video and in mailers sent to residents in vote-rich Virginia. "Over 130,000 Virginia jobs and America's national security are on the line," the glossy pamphlet says. "Barack Obama's agenda ignores Virginia's families and security."
The mailer even quotes Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta as decrying the impact of the cuts. That's actually a clue that something more complex is going on here - why would Panetta be complaining about his boss's policies?
This is a classic Washington food fight. But any fair reading of the facts would show the blame game is much more complex than Romney's rhetoric. Indeed, as the moderator of the vice-presidential debate, ABC's Martha Raddatz, noted when Romney running mate Paul Ryan raised them: "Let's put the automatic defense cuts aside, okay? No one wants that."
So, what's really going on here?
The Facts
In 2011, Democrats and Republicans had a bitter showdown on whether to raise the ceiling on the national debt. The impasse ended with bipartisan passage of the Budget Control Act of 2011, which cut spending by nearly $1 trillion over 10 years by setting new budget caps for security and nonsecurity discretionary spending.
Security spending included not just the Defense Department but also Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs, foreign aid, intelligence and other areas. The goal was to allow some flexibility to avoid being locked into a specific number for defense spending.
The law also tasked a "supercommittee" with finding ways to reduce the deficit by an additional $1.2 trillion over 10 years. If the committee failed - which it did - then automatic cuts totaling $1.2 trillion also would be ordered in security and nonsecurity spending. This process is known as "sequestration."
Ryan was one of the many Republican members of Congress who voted for the agreement. In fact, he was one of its biggest cheerleaders.
"The Budget Control Act represents a victory for those committed to controlling government spending and growing our economy," he said in a statement issued after the measure passed.
Romney, for his part, blasted the deal as soon as it was made, saying it "opens the door to higher taxes and puts defense cuts on the table." Romney has also since said that Republican leaders made a mistake in agreeing to this deal.
So why blame Obama for the defense cuts? The Romney campaign points to passages in Bob Woodward's new book, "The Price of Politics," and Glenn Thrush's e-book, "Obama's Last Stand," as showing that Obama was the first to come up with the idea of putting defense cuts on the table. The accounts show that Obama wanted to have leverage to force the Republicans to accept tax hikes for the wealthy.
In other words, it was part of a negotiation. The two sides were haggling over an enforcement trigger that would cause pain on both sides. As The Washington Post previously reported, the Obama administration originally wanted the trigger to hinge on repeal of George W. Bush tax cuts on the wealthy. Republicans responded by saying the trigger should be balanced by repeal of the individual mandate in Obama's health-care law.
Ultimately, that was too much for both sides, so they settled on security spending (pain for Republicans) balanced by nonsecurity spending (pain for Democrats). The inside accounts of sausage-making are interesting, but not surprising. Ultimately, the final deal was good enough for top Republicans, including Romney's running mate.
Since then, both sides have played political games over the defense cuts.
Earlier this year, Ryan crafted a bill that would have halted the automatic cuts in defense spending for one year while cutting in other areas. It passed the House in May on a party-line vote, with not a single Democrat voting for it.
The Democratic-controlled Senate did not accept the bill - and has not done much else, either, to deal with the problem. Democrats have proposed ending Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy as a way to meet the deficit targets in the Budget Control Act, although no vote has ever been taken on a sequestration replacement plan.
The Romney ad and pamphlet cite a study by Stephen S. Fuller of George Mason University as showing how "Obama's cuts" would kill more than 130,000 jobs in Virginia. But the study never mentions Obama, and Fuller says both sides are responsible for the scenario he envisages.
"The cuts that I have calculated are a result of sequestration, the Budget Control Act of 2011," Fuller said in an e-mail. "These were in effect approved by all of the Congressmen and Senators voting for the Act and the president as he signed it. There is lots of blame to go around since the Republicans have their fingerprints on this Act, too."
The Pinocchio Test
Romney may have always opposed this deal, but it is wrong to lay all of the blame on Obama for the defense cuts in the sequester; the Budget Control Act was a bipartisan deal designed to spread the pain around.
Republicans may now be experiencing buyer's remorse, but that's no excuse for claiming that these are all Obama's defense cuts - especially since the study cited in the ad makes no such claim.
kesslerg@washpost.com
To read previous Fact Checker columns, go to washingtonpost.com/factchecker.
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October 14, 2012 Sunday
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SECTION: BUSINESS; Pg. G02
LENGTH: 228 words
Monday
}Congress in recess all week
}Federal Depository Library Program opens its four-day conference; DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel
}The Woodrow Wilson Center hosts a discussion on the national broadband map
}Retail sales report
}Business inventories report
}Charles Schwab, Citigroup, Gannett earnings reports
Tuesday
}McDermott Will & Emery hosts discussion about the role of the law firm's in D.C.'s economic future
}The Center for Capital Markets Competitiveness holds talk on money market mutual fund reform
}Second presidential debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney
}Consumer price index
}Industrial production report
}Housing market index
}Coca-Cola, Domino's Pizza, GameTech, Goldman Sachs, IBM, Intel, Johnson & Johnson, Mattel, PNC Financial, UnitedHealth earnings reports
Wednesday
}Housing starts report
}American Express, Bank of New York Mellon, Bank of America, BlackRock, eBay, Halliburton, M&T Bank; Media General, PepsiCo, Piper Jaffray, Quest Diagnostic, Sallie Mae, Stanley Black & Decker, US Bancorp earnings report
Thursday
}Philadelphia Fed survey of business outlook
}Blackstone, Capital One, Chipotle, Danaher, ETrade, Google, Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, Southwest Air, Supervalu, Travelers, Verizon earnings report
Friday
}Existing home sales report
}General Electric, Honeywell, Kinder Morgan, McDonald's, Orbit, Schlumberger, Wynn Resorts earnings report
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The Washington Post
October 14, 2012 Sunday
Every Edition
Selling the president
BYLINE: - Paul Farhi
SECTION: KIDSPOST; Pg. Y01
LENGTH: 569 words
Maybe you've seen commercials on TV for one of the presidential candidates. President Barack Obama is running for reelection, and he and his opponent, Mitt Romney, are spending lots of money to broadcast commercials to voters. They hope that the ads will convince people to vote for them on Election Day, just as a toy company or cereal maker hopes you'll buy its product after watching their ads.
In fact, political ads are a lot like other TV commercials. But there are a few differences. For one thing, many of the political ads are negative. That is, they tell you something bad about the other candidate rather than saying something positive about the candidate who placed the ad. It's as if a toy company had an ad telling you not to buy another company's toy because it breaks.
Are these ads fair?
Some people think it's wrong to advertise this way, especially if an ad says something mean or even untrue about a competitor. But candidates can say almost anything they want in ads, even if they stretch the truth or exaggerate.
Candidates have been saying negative things about each other for a very long time. One famous commercial put on by President Lyndon Johnson in 1964 suggested that if his opponent became president, he might start a war that would destroy the world!
This year, there are more campaign ads on TV than ever before. President Obama, the Democratic nominee, and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, the Republican, have raised millions of dollars from their supporters to pay for their ad campaigns. But they're not the only ones advertising. The Republican Party is buying ads to help Romney, while the Democratic Party is helping Obama. A few other groups have formed just to run ads for or against a candidate.
A new ad that is getting a lot of attention is all about Big Bird and "Sesame Street." During the first debate, Romney said he would cut government funding for educational shows including "Sesame Street." The Obama campaign quickly made an ad making fun of Romney's statement, saying that a president should worry about issues bigger than Big Bird.
Some people feel too much money is being spent to run too many ads. But others say everyone has the right to advertise as much as they want.
What's a 'swing' state?
One of the interesting things about all these ads is that many voters won't ever see them. Almost all of the commercials are airing in about eight states, not the whole country. The states with lots of advertising are known as "swing" states because the race is so close in them that it could swing in either direction on November 6, Election Day. The candidates don't spend much money on commercials in states where they know they'll win or lose by a lot of votes.
One of the swing states this year is Virginia. That's why people who live in the Washington area have been seeing a lot of political commercials. The ads are aimed at voters who live in Northern Virginia. But people who live nearby also see them, because Washington's TV stations broadcast to Virginia, Maryland and Washington.
The candidates also advertise on radio, in newspapers and on the Internet. But TV gets most of the attention. This is because a lot of voters who still don't know for whom they will vote are watching TV and are likely to see the ads. Who knows? Maybe watching a few more commercials will help them make up their minds. That's what the candidates hope, anyway!
- Paul Farhi
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The Washington Post
October 14, 2012 Sunday
Every Edition
2012 presidential election coverage at KidsPost
SECTION: KIDSPOST; Pg. Y03
LENGTH: 431 words
1 KidsPost covers the campaign
Presidential elections take place every four years, so many of our readers may not remember the last one. KidsPost has planned special coverage to explain how elections work. For current and past stories as well as quizzes, you can go to kidspost.com.
1 September 30 - Debates:Explains the presidential debates and why they are important. If you can imagine taking a test where you could be asked science, math or history questions with 100 million people watching to see if you get it right, you have a sense of what a presidential debate is like. There is another presidential debate on Tuesday in New York.
1 Today - Campaign ads:If you watch TV in the Washington area, you've probably seen campaign ads for President Barack Obama and his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney. Like ads for cereal or toys that make you want to buy a product, the goal of these commercials is to get you to vote for - or against - a certain candidate. After telling you more about such ads, we'll encourage you to come up with your own campaign ads.
1 November 4 - Voting:On November 6, Americans will vote for president. Who can vote? Who does vote? Do all votes count equally? We'll get you ready for Election Day (November 6) with a map of the United States that you can color as you watch the results come in.
1 Where you can learn more
Here are some places to find great, kid-friendly information about elections and the presidency. Always ask a grown-up (parent or teacher) before going online.
1 For kids:Nickelodeon has a Web site with kids talking about the issues, the job of the president and biographies of the candidates. You can check it out at www.nick.com/shows/kids-pick-the-president. Nick will air a special on the presidential candidates as part of "Nick News with Linda Ellerbee" on Monday at 8 p.m. President Obama will answer questions submitted by kids. Mitt Romney said he was too busy to participate in the show.
The U.S. government has a kid-friendly site that includes a very cool, downloadable poster about how the president is chosen. It's at www.kids.gov.
1 For teachers: The Washington Post's Newspapers in Education Web site has many resources to use in the classroom. You can go to nie.washingtonpost.com and search such keywords as "election," "campaign," "debate" and "voting."
PBS offers teachers videos, lesson plans and games related to the election through its PBS Learning Media site, www.pbslearningmedia.org.
Your students can participate in a nationwide mock election. For details, go to www.nationalmockelection.org.
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The New York Times Blogs
(FiveThirtyEight)
October 13, 2012 Saturday
Oct. 13: Arizona and the Spanish-Speaking Vote
BYLINE: NATE SILVER
SECTION: US; politics
LENGTH: 1528 words
HIGHLIGHT: Apart from the tracking polls, the only survey published as of our deadline on Saturday was one in Arizona. It had a surprising result, showing Mr. Obama 2 points ahead among likely voters.
President Obama halted an 8-day winning streak for Mitt Romney in the FiveThirtyEight forecast on Saturday, with his chances of winning the Electoral College ticking up to 62.9 percent from 61.1 percent on Friday.
One should be careful about making too much of this: Mr. Romney has made very strong gains in the forecast over the past week-and-a-half to draw the race nearly even. It is unlikely that there will be a major change in the landscape until Tuesday's debate in New York.
However, the polls have shifted so much toward Mr. Romney in recent days that a mediocre day of polling for Mr. Obama may look good to the model in comparison to a very poor one, as he had on Friday.
Three of the four national tracking polls on Saturday, from Gallup, Rasmussen Reports, and Investors' Business Daily, showed no change in their results among likely voters, although Mr. Obama gained one point in the version of the Gallup poll among registered voters. Mr. Obama did improve his margin by roughly one point in the online poll published by the RAND Corporation.
In general, the tracking polls have been slightly more favorable to Mr. Obama than other national surveys since the debate. The RAND Corporation poll has him leading by roughly 3 points, while the Investors' Business Daily has him up by less than a full percentage point.
In the Rasmussen Reports poll and the Gallup poll of registered voters, Mr. Obama's numbers are not far from their long-term averages, although that partly reflects methodological changes in each survey.
A note on this topic: My preference would be that polling firms did not change their methods so close to the election. Even if the changes are helpful to their accuracy in the long run, they make it harder to measure the trend in the race against a constant baseline. There are some changes that I'd like to make to the FiveThirtyEight forecast -- for instance, in making it more aggressive about responding to news events like debates -- and I'll tell you when I think it may be doing something wrong. But I'm going to save those for 2016. I think the value of an objective method is undermined if one changes the rules in midstream.
Still, things were at least not getting worse for Mr. Obama in the tracking polls. We'll know soon enough whether this reflects a dead-cat bounce or the beginning of a rebound.
A Surprising Poll in Arizona
Apart from the tracking polls, the only survey published as of our deadline on Saturday was one in Arizona. It had a surprising result, showing Mr. Obama 2 points ahead among likely voters.
The survey has a couple of things in its favor. The poll comes from a firm, the Behavior Research Center, that has had good results in the past. And almost all of its interviews postdated the Denver debate.
But I would not be too worried about the topline numbers if I were Mr. Romney's campaign -- or too enthralled with them if I were Mr. Obama's. The survey contacted relatively few respondents -- about 500 voters -- and even a good polling firm can and will produce an outlying result or two with a sample size like that.
It is plausible that Mr. Obama could win Arizona if he is running strongly nationwide -- but it is much less likely that he will do so in the current national environment, where the race is almost tied.
Consider that, in 2008, Mr. Obama lost Arizona by 8 points despite winning nationally by 7 points.
Part of that is because Arizona was John McCain's home state. Historically, the home-state advantage for a candidate is on the order of 7 points. In other words, had Mr. McCain been from another state, Arizona might have been a toss-up in 2008.
Even so, that was an in election in which Mr. Obama had a clear victory nationwide. If Mr. Obama recovers from his debate swoon and wins another clear victory this November, Arizona could fall into his column. But it is unlikely to prove decisive in a tight national race.
The FiveThirtyEight forecast model considers what we call "state fundamentals" along with the polls -- with the most important fundamental factor simply being how the state voted in recent elections. (The model incorporates an adjustment for home-state effects in Arizona and other states that were home to one of the candidates.)
When there is abundant polling in a state, the polls predominate in the forecast. But in a sparsely-polled state, like Arizona, the fundamentals have more influence.
Our research has shown that this will usually produce a more accurate forecast, reducing the risk of banking too much on potential outlier polls. In 2004, a pair of late polls showed George W. Bush just ahead of John Kerry in Hawaii -- an implausible-seeming result given that the national race was fairly close and that Hawaii is ordinarily very Democratic-leaning.
Indeed, Mr. Kerry eventually won Hawaii by 9 points, despite a late visit there by then-Vice President Dick Cheney.
Thus, the forecast still makes Mr. Romney the clear favorite in Arizona. We will need to see more polls of Arizona, or a rebound for Mr. Obama nationally, for that story to change much. (Arizona could certainly use more high-quality polling. Although there is only an outside chance that it will influence the presidential race, the senate race there is highly competitive and a loss in the state would make it very hard for Republicans to win control of the Senate.)
Are Polls Underestimating Obama's Hispanic Vote?
However, there is a potentially troubling aspect of the poll for Mr. Romney. The Behavior Research Center conducted interviews in Spanish along with English. That may account for some of why it had better results for Mr. Obama than other surveys of the state.
In the past couple of elections, polls have underestimated Democrats' standing in states with heavy Hispanic populations. (The two senate races that the FiveThirtyEight forecast called incorrectly in 2010 -- Nevada and Colorado -- are both states with a healthy number of Hispanic voters.)
This may be because many polling firms that conduct interviews only in English miss some Hispanic voters who are more comfortable speaking Spanish. According to Matt Barreto of the polling firm Latino Decisions, which conducts bilingual interviews, primarily Spanish-speaking Hispanic voters are more likely to vote Democratic than those who have more English fluency.
Polling firms such as Latino Decisions that have conducted interviews in Spanish have shown Mr. Obama with a larger advantage among Hispanic voters than those which interview in English only. The most recent Latino Decisions poll, for example, had Mr. Obama ahead 72-20 among Hispanic voters. This poll is not an outlier; other polling firms that have conducted Spanish-language interviews have found similar results.
The countervailing factor is that Hispanics who speak mostly Spanish are unlikely to be registered or likely to vote. Still, this factor could make some difference in states with heavy Hispanic populations, like Arizona.
How much of an impact might this make? On Saturday, I ran an alternate version of the FiveThirtyEight simulation in which I assumed that Mr. Obama would in fact win Hispanic voters by 50 percentage points, his edge in the Latino Decisions poll, as opposed to the roughly 35-point margin he's had on average in polls that were conducted in English only.
I scaled this adjustment based on the share of Hispanic voters in 2008 exit polls. So, for example, Mr. Obama gained a net of 3 points in Texas because of the adjustment, but almost nothing in Kentucky.
Even with this adjustment, Mr. Obama was far from being favored in Arizona. Instead, the model gave him just an 8 percent chance of winning there, although this was better than the 4 percent chance from the standard FiveThirtyEight model.
However, the adjustment increased Mr. Obama's win probability in Colorado to 57 percent from 44 percent, in Florida to 53 percent from 35 percent, and in Nevada to 77 percent from 62 percent. It even helped him slightly in Virginia, where about 5 percent of voters identified as Hispanic in 2008 exit polls.
Overall, Mr. Obama's chances of winning the Electoral College rose to 69 percent from 63 percent.
More of the Hispanic population is concentrated in noncompetitive states like Texas, California and New York. Thus, the increase in Mr. Obama's Electoral College win probability was slightly smaller than increase in his probability of winning the popular vote, which rose to 71 percent from 61 percent.
This adjustment is speculative -- as I mentioned, it isn't clear how many primarily Spanish-speaking Hispanics will actually turn out to vote. And a few surveys do conduct interviews in Spanish.
I recommend the regular FiveThirtyEight model as providing the best overall forecast of the state of the race. There might be ways in which the polls could be underestimating Mr. Obama's vote -- but there are potentially other ways in which the surveys might be biased against Mr. Romney.
Still it's the possibility that the polls are underestimating Mr. Obama's performance among Hispanics that should be the concern for Mr. Romney in the Arizona poll -- not the unlikely possibility that Arizona has suddenly become a swing state.
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October 13, 2012 Saturday
Springsteen Hits the Road for Obama
BYLINE: HELENE COOPER
SECTION: US; politics
LENGTH: 392 words
HIGHLIGHT: The entertainer plans to campaign for President Obama in Ohio and Iowa on Thursday.
3:40 p.m. | Updated SOS to BRUUUUUUUUUUCE.
Bruce Springsteen had said that he planned to stay out of the 2012 election, but these are worrying times and the race is tightening. So on Saturday, the Obama campaign announced that the Boss would be back to rally support for President Obama.
Mr. Springsteen will join former President Bill Clinton at an appearance in Parma, in the swing state of Ohio, on Thursday. In the verbiage of Obama campaign-release speak, Mr. Clinton will "lay out a clear picture of the economic choice Americans face in this election."
And the Boss? "His appearance will help with our get-out-the vote effort in these critical swing states, and we are thrilled with his ongoing support," Jim Messina, the president's campaign manager, said.
After the Parma, Ohio appearance, Mr. Springsteen, who the Obama campaign helpfully pointed out in their press release is a "supporter of President Obama and Vice President Biden," will head to Ames, Iowa for another rally/concert for the president. Iowa is also considered a crucial state for Mr. Obama to win on Nov. 6.
Mr. Springsteen campaigned (to no avail) for Senator John Kerry during his presidential bid in 2004, and he came out again, this time to better results, for Mr. Obama in 2008. But he said after that that he would stay out of the 2012 cycle.
Few people believed him, not only because Mr. Springsteen played during the inauguration festivities in 2009 for Mr. Obama, and his presence has been felt this year at every single Obama campaign rally. The tunes of the rock hero, who cut his teeth with odes to working Americans and the power of redemption, are a staple on the Obama playlist, and "We Take Care of Our Own," from the latest Springsteen album, Wrecking Ball, is the song that greets the end of every single Obama campaign rally speech.
Lately, another Springsteen song has been played at campaign rallies - Mr. Springsteen can be heard belting out "meet me in a land of hopes and dreams" while Mr. Obama works the rope line after his speeches.
Now, campaigngoers, at least in Ohio and Iowa, will be able to see him do it in person.
Bill Clinton Says He's Unsure of Wife's 2016 Plans
Clinton to Appear on 'Face the Nation'
Romney to Appear on 'Meet the Press'
Clinton Appeals to Voters in New Obama Ad
Bill Clinton Campaigns Against Walker in Wisconsin Recall Election
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Bill Clinton, Springsteen to campaign for Obama in Ohio;
President Obama calls on former president Bill Clinton and rocker Bruce Springsteen in a bid effort to inject momentum into his campaign in the stretch run.
BYLINE: David Nakamura
LENGTH: 374 words
President Obama is calling on former president Bill Clinton and rocker Bruce Springsteen in an effort to inject new momentum into his campaign in the stretch run.
The Obama campaign announced that the heavyweight duo will headline a rally on behalf of the president in Parma, Ohio, on Thursday. The event, at which Clinton will deliver remarks, is free and open to the public, the campaign said in a statement. Obama will not attend.
Campaign manager Jim Messina said Springsteen echoes the values the president is fighting for and added that his appearances will help get out the vote efforts in Ohio, a swing state whose 18 electoral college votes are considered crucial.
"We are thrilled with his ongoing support," Messina said in a statement.
The Obama campaign has been struggling to regain its footing since the president's listless debate performance against Republican nominee Mitt Romney in Denver Oct. 3. Romney's poll numbers have risen in the wake of the matchup, and the president has been under increasing pressure from Democratic supporters to make a stronger case for his reelection in the next debate Tuesday at Hofstra University in New York.
Clinton delivered a memorable speech at the Democratic National Convention last month that many observers felt made a better argument on behalf of Obama's agenda and first-term record than the president has done. Since then, Clinton has toured several swing states on Obama's behalf.
Springsteen has been a supporter of Obama's, endorsing him in April 2008 and playing at several rallies in Obama's first campaign. The president uses Springsteen's song, "We Take Care of Our Own," in his 2012 campaign song playlist at rallies.
The president's campaign also released a new television advertisement Saturday narrated by actor Morgan Freeman that heralds Obama's accomplishments in his first term. Titled "Challenges," the ad highlights the president's response to the fiscal crisis in 2009, the end of the Iraq war and the killing of Osama bin Laden.
"Every president inherits challenges. Few have faced so many," Freeman says in the voiceover. But, he adds, "There are still challenges to meet, children to educate, a middle class to rebuild. But the last thing we should do is turn back now."
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October 13, 2012 Saturday 8:12 PM EST
Direct mail still a campaign force
BYLINE: Dan Eggen
SECTION: A section; Pg. A05
LENGTH: 1109 words
The modern political campaign has fully embraced Twitter, Facebook and other social media to reach voters, but President Obama and challenger Mitt Romney are still spending massive sums on a more traditional form of communication: snail mail.
The two presidential campaigns have spent nearly twice as much on old-fashioned fliers, get-out-the-vote cards and other forms of direct mail as they have on Internet advertising, according to disclosure data and campaign aides. The hope is to appeal to millions of baby boomers and retirees, who may prefer the familiarity of the U.S. Mail to pop-up ads, YouTube videos and other flashy media.
The only cost that outstrips mail is broadcast advertising, which is notoriously expensive and has been washing over swing states for months.
Direct mail is especially crucial for Romney, whose supporters skew older than Obama's. Romney and the Republican National Committee have spent more than $100 million on mail costs, compared with about $70 million for Obama and the Democrats.
One typical Romney mailing to seniors in Florida pledges to "preserve and strengthen Medicare" with "no change in benefits for those in or near retirement." It features an elderly couple and an older woman - all white - along with a picture of the Republican candidate and his wife, Ann.
"Florida Seniors CAN'T TRUST President Obama," the brochure reads above a picture of the president looking rather grim. It continues in capital red letters: "BARACK OBAMA HAS FAILED OUR SENIORS."
Richard Beeson, the Romney campaign's political director, said that direct mail is a central part of the campaign's outreach approach, which also includes digital strategies, phone canvassing and other methods aimed at engaging supporters.
"We are believers in voter contact," Beeson said. "There's a number of different ways to talk to voters, and the mail is one very effective way."
The use of mass direct mail in politics stretches back at least as far as George S. McGovern's 1972 presidential campaign, which deployed tactics perfected by the mail-order industry. The Religious Right movement of the 1980s married sophisticated voter lists with the reach of the U.S. Postal Service to become a potent political force.
Mailings are used to attack opponents, make policy promises, solicit donations and help supporters register to vote.
"The power of it is still huge because it's reaching that age group that includes baby boomers, who are still largely more comfortable with direct mail than other, newer forms of communication," said Paul Bobnak, research director for DirectMarketingIQ, a Philadelphia-based target marketing firm that tracks campaign mailings. "It is still a huge workhorse for political fundraising and messaging."
In 2008, more than half the voters in the presidential race were 45 or older, according to exit polls. Those 65 or older went for Republican John McCain by53 percent to 45 percent, while Obama ran about even with McCain among voters aged 45 to 64, the data show.
Effective and inexpensive
For many congressional candidates, trade unions and interest groups, direct mail offers a particularly effective, and inexpensive, way to reach supporters.
Last week, the AFL-CIO labor confederation sent out 150,000 mailers to its Ohio members attacking Romney and GOP Senate candidate Josh Mandel; the same households later received robocalls repeating the messages.
"Our testing shows that union members spend more time reading and recall more info from our mail program than just general mail from campaigns," said Ohio AFL-CIO spokesman Mike Gillis.
The Obama campaign has used mailings aimed at women, Latinos, pet owners and a host of other demographic subgroups, part of the campaign's sometimes obsessive use of micro-targeting. But Obama has also used mailings to press broader themes in key battlegrounds, including sharp-edged attacks on Romney's wealth, tax policies and history as a private equity fund manager.
Obama pamphlets that poured into Ohio in recent weeks featured images of Romney's oceanside manse in California and a stretch limousine with a fake license plate reading "ROMNEY 1ST."
One leaflet shows Romney piloting his luxury powerboat near his lakeside home in New Hampshire, first facing one direction and then another. The images seem to echo a famous 2004 Republican television ad that showed Democrat John F. Kerry switching back and forth as he windsurfed, which was supposed to symbolize flip-flopping and elitism.
"A NEW $250,000 Tax Cut For Multi-Millionaires - Like Himself. But up to $2,000 in Tax Hikes on Families Like Yours," the caption on the Obama powerboat mailing reads. "Not so fast, Mitt."
The Obama campaign declined to discuss its direct-mail strategy.
Under the radar
Unlike television ads, which are widely analyzed by the media, political mailings fly under the radar into voters' mailboxes, rarely getting much notice unless they are particularly provocative. A recent 10-page "voter survey" from the conservative Faith and Freedom Foundation accused Obama of having "Communist beliefs" and compared his policies to the danger posed by Nazi Germany and imperial Japan.
One of the most unusual postal pitches to emerge this year came from the Romney campaign, which mailed fliers to voters in Northern Virginia hawking the candidate's commitment to battling Lyme disease, which it called "a massive epidemic threatening Virginia." The message may be linked to a meeting Romney had with a Virginia Republican who believes in chronic Lyme disease, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says does not exist.
"That's something that's very important to the folks in Fairfax County," Beeson said, referring to Lyme disease. "The Obama campaign made light of it, and that's fine, but at the end of the day we will talk about things that are important to people in the state."
Tim Phillips, president of Americans for Prosperity, a conservative group backed by billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, said direct mail remains a linchpin of the organization's strategy. Mail "is especially good for reaching senior citizens" and works well for complex issues such as health care, he said.
But Phillips also said mailings must be coupled with telephone banks, e-mail, broadcast ads and other approaches to break through the media noise.
"The message environment today is so much faster and so much more cluttered than it was 20 years ago, or even 10 years ago," he said. "There is no silver bullet. You better be touching people through multiple mediums, multiple times. The goal is to have a presence in all of them."
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October 13, 2012 Saturday 8:12 PM EST
BYLINE: Sean Sullivan
SECTION: A section; Pg. A04
LENGTH: 461 words
Are Senate candidate debates making a difference?
Senate candidates are debating each other with increasing frequency as Election Day nears. While the debates have proved unique opportunities for candidates to pitch their politics, policies and personalities, the set-tos haven't dramatically shifted momentum in the races.
Take Massachusetts, home to the cycle's highest-profile Senate race. Sen. Scott Brown (R) and Elizabeth Warren (D) have debated three times and will meet once more Oct. 30. Polling shows that most voters are tuning in. But neither Brown nor Warren has decisively used the debates for an advantage.
More than six in 10 (61 percent) of those likeliest to vote had seen or heard at least one of the first two debates, according to a Western New England University survey conducted late last month and early this month. Among those voters, about as many said they were more likely to vote for Brown (30 percent) as for Warren (31 percent), based on the debate they most recently saw or heard. Thirty-seven percent said the debate didn't make a difference.
While the first two Brown-Warren sessions were filled with heated exchanges and one-liners, neither candidate committed a huge gaffe; nor did either candidate dominate the other. So it's not difficult to see why the first couple of meetings turned out as draws.
But in another contest in which there was a memorable misstep during a debate, it wasn't an end-all-be-all campaign moment.
In Virginia, former Democratic National Committee chairman Tim Kaine stole the spotlight at his Sept. 20 debate against former senator George Allen (R), but not the way his campaign wanted to see him do it. Kaine's remark that he would be open to "some minimum tax level for everyone" forced a post-debate explanation and became fodder for an Allen attack ad five days later.
On its own, the debate hasn't appeared enough to propel Allen into the lead, however. The Virginia race remains close - and has been all cycle - with most polls after the Sept. 20 meeting showing Kaine leading Allen by single digits.
At the presidential level, Mitt Romney's debate performance last week was widely praised, and Republicans moved quickly to cast the campaign anew in the days that followed. Democrats, meanwhile, were forced to explain the president's performance. That's not something we're likely to see at the Senate level, even after debates as one-sided as the first Romney-Obama meeting.
Why? For one thing, presidential debates simply attract more attention and generate more media coverage. The pomp and circumstance not to mention the audience surrounding a presidential debate could never be matched at the Senate level.
- Sean Sullivan
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October 13, 2012 Saturday 8:12 PM EST
Airwaves flooded as race for president nears its end
BYLINE: Dan Eggen;T.W. Farnam
SECTION: A section; Pg. A04
LENGTH: 984 words
Republican nominee Mitt Romney and his allies are banking heavily on a high-risk, high-reward media strategy in the final weeks of the campaign, hoping that burying President Obama in ads will give them a crucial edge on Election Day.
Ad purchases in the presidential race doubled or in some cases tripled last week in swing states such as Colorado, Florida, Iowa and Virginia, tracking data show. The surge is being driven by Romney and well-funded allies, who decided against running more ads earlier in the campaign in favor of a big bang at the end.
Restore Our Future, a super PAC dedicated to helping Romney, has booked $14 million worth of ads in nine states for the final week of October - more than it spent on ads during the month of September. The group is also ramping up its spending, airing a mix of ads criticizing Obama and extolling Romney in Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio and Virginia.
Charles R. Spies, the super PAC's treasurer, said conservative groups "have been very effective in leveling the playing field" with Obama. "That effort will continue at an increasing level going forward," he said.
The GOP effort has gained momentum with Romney's advance in the polls since last week's presidential debate in Denver, where Obama turned in a widely panned performance. The Oct. 3 event sparked an influx of donations to Romney's campaign and to conservative groups supporting him, giving them more resources for the final push, strategists said.
The ramped-up advertising by Republicans left Obama behind his GOP foes in total ad expenditures last week for the first time since the summer, although he has massive cash reserves after raising $181 million in September. Obama and his key outside ally, the Priorities USA Action super PAC, have kept up a steady barrage of ads attacking Romney in Ohio and other battlegrounds.
Democrats and even some Republicans argue that the Romney team, particularly the campaign itself, wasted a key opportunity by ceding the ad advantage to Obama from late August through September, which coincided with a boost in the polls for the president.
Brad Todd, a Republican media strategist, said he suspects that the big push at the end is designed to reach voters displeased with Obama but unwilling to embrace Romney - fence-sitters who have delayed making up their minds.
"Advertising at the end typically makes the biggest difference to those voters," Todd said.
Since the Republican convention in late August, the Obama side has run 28 percent more ads than Romney and all the groups behind him combined, according to estimates from Kantar Media/CMAG. Democrats spent slightly more than Republicans during that time, taking advantage of rules mandating cheaper ad time for campaigns and also seeking out less-expensive airtime at different times of day.
But Romney and GOP groups are now flooding the airwaves in force, spending about 50 percent more on ads than Obama this week, according to tracking data. The surge comes at a fortuitous time for Romney, who is now even or ahead of Obama in many national and swing-state polls.
The Romney campaign declined to discuss its ad strategy in detail. An aide who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss internal plans said the campaign is likely to increase its volume further as Election Day approaches.
The Obama campaign also declined to comment.
The final 31 / 2 weeks of ad spending is likely to be the most concentrated in U.S. political history, in part because the field of battle is narrowly focused on nine key swing states. CMAG, the ad tracking firm, estimated Friday that about half as many television markets feature presidential campaign ads this year compared with 2008, even though the volume has skyrocketed.
Recent spending figures show a surprising move of resources into Florida, the biggest ad battleground, with 10 media markets and some of the most-expensive airtime in the country. In the first week of October, $1 of every $4 spent by the Obama campaign on broadcast advertising went to Florida; for the American Crossroads super PAC and its affiliate, Crossroads GPS, nearly $1 of every $3 was spent there.
Obama and Romney have gone up and down in Sunshine State polls in recent months, with the president posting strong numbers before the Denver debate but Romney gaining since.
The two sides have spent more than $100 million on ads in the state, with a slight advantage to Republicans.
Tad Devine, a top Democratic strategist, argues that in Florida, the Obama campaign "forced Romney to defend what should have been a Republican state."
Florida is followed closely in combined spending by Virginia ($96 million through last Sunday), Ohio ($93 million) and North Carolina ($70 million), CMAG estimates show.
Small interest groups are also getting into the mix. The American Energy Alliance will air $2 million worth of TV and radio ads in coal-country states through early November attacking Obama's energy policies, according to spokesman Benjamin Cole.
Many strategists expect the tone of many ads to change markedly during the final stretch as the campaigns shift from attacking each other to presenting a "closing argument" for their election. But that time has not quite arrived, as attack ads still dominate.
The Obama camp rolled out a pair of ads Friday attacking Romney for his stand on contraception services and his defense of paying a 14 percent tax rate on $20 million in personal income. "Lower tax rates for him than us," the spot says. "Is that the way to grow America?"
Romney, meanwhile, is bombarding battlegrounds with ads attacking Obama's economic policies. Restore Our Future is running $6 million worth of spots focused on unemployment in Florida, Iowa and Virginia.
"We're told we're going forward, even as we fall further behind," the ad's narrator says. "This is the new normal. This is President Obama's economy."
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October 13, 2012 Saturday 8:12 PM EST
Pinning down political facts
SECTION: Editorial; Pg. A13
LENGTH: 415 words
The Oct. 6 front-page article "Report deprives Romney of a magic number" unfortunately played into the apocryphal claim that President Obama promised that the unemployment rate would not go above 8 percent if his stimulus was put into place. He never made that promise.
The article gave short shrift to the disclaimers in Christina Romer and Jared Bernstein's economic report, where the 8 percent figure originated, stating simply that the report had "caveats." The article failed to note that the crucial caveats included, first, a warning that the data on which the report relied did not include the final quarter of George W. Bush's presidency, which was unavailable at the time, and, second, the awareness that the unknown data might significantly change the projections.
Furthermore, the article's assertion that the Obama team "had not understood" the economic debacle Bush left implies a misreading of the state of the economy. Obama's circle had not "understood" that sad legacy because it was unknowable, since the crucial data from that legacy did not yet exist.
Skeptics might ask themselves: If the Republicans actually had a video of Barack Obama promising that the unemployment rate would not exceed 8 percent, wouldn't they be plastering that video nonstop on commercials nationwide?
Steven Rebarber, Bethesda
l
Glenn Kessler's Oct. 7 Fact Checker column ["Is Obama correct in his assertion that tax cuts, 'trickle-down policies' led to the economic crisis?"] assessed two Obama campaign ads that slam "trickle-down policies" proposed by Mitt Romney as the same policies that led to the economic crisis. Since not enough facts are in the ads, Kessler researched, opined and inferred the meaning of words in the ads such as "led," "trickle-down," "crisis" and "policies."
Although I don't think Kessler reached unreasonable conclusions as to the meanings of these words, I disagree with some of them - particularly for "trickle-down policies," which I think include several policy sets that increase wealth and income disparity. His analysis followed such a tortured path, focusing on broad, ambiguous and even ideological terms, that he should have abandoned it as "too hard" before assigning three Pinocchios.
This is not to say that the ads' claims cannot be disputed, as they surely are by those from the opposite governing ideology. But the Fact Checker should stick to assessing stated facts that can be readily verified.
Jay Fadgen, Falls Church
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